Alfredo De Aza Perez September, 24, 2022
Composition for WCGI History & Culture Professor Heerah

Bond

When you first come to a new country where you do not understand the native language that the people speak there your life can be very hard and challenging at first, for instance, there can be a big language barrier which makes you inferior to others, people belittle you because you do not understand them, and people can take advantage of you.

I was born in a little village on an Island which could sink called the “Dominican Republic” located in the Caribbean in the Atlantic ocean. When it comes to the people there, they know each other as if they’re related by blood, the food there is to me by far the best food in the entire western hemisphere. The most crucial part about the little village where I was born is the fact that the families were always together to the point where there was a sense of enmeshment between each other, families had the strongest bond you could ever see people have, always being together throughout the worst storms they could face, supporting each other and always having each other backs, and throughout the happiest times in their whole lives.

Growing up my family had one of the greatest bonds people could ever have, we were always together throughout the worst times my family faced and the best times as well, the days we had to hide under the table because we thought the earthquakes were going to destroy our house, to the days we were all happy smiling and hugging each other, sadly shortly after all the joys and wonders my family faced one of the toughest battles god could have given them, one fateful night my younger brother was playing near a 12 foot tall garage iron door which wasn’t stable, my family and I were all in the living room watching tv and talking to each other when suddenly we hear a “BAM” the sound of pure metal colliding against concrete, to me it sounded like a car crash or a plane crash, my family rushes outside and to their surprise the next door neighbor huge garage door had fallen, the silent which soon followed after we got outside was suddenly abrupt when we hear my mom scream “FELIX” which made all of our hearts start racing and feel a sense of death in the air, the fear that I got when I realized that my brother Felix wasnt around us made me fall into a state of shock and fear where I couldn’t move or do anything, while I was standing still my uncles and dad rushed to the huge metal door and tried to pick it up but couldn’t, suddenly I hear my mom scream “AYUDA” so loud that the whole village stepped out their houses and rushed towards us, next thing I knew the neighbors house was fully crowded and the door was lifted shortly after, what my mom said after sent goosebumps down my spine and made my heart race, she said what any mother who just saw her dear son bleeding everywhere laying in the floor helpless would say, in a crying tone she said: “Mi pobre hijo esta muerto”. My grandma ran towards him, picked up his unconscious body, rushed to my grandpa’s car, and then they rushed to the hospital. After they left, the neighbors went to their homes and I stayed with one of my mom’s friends in her house, still in shock and fearful waiting for my family to come back home. A couple of weeks later my family came back with my brother and they told me that the huge impact of the door made him lose a lot of blood and left him with many brain-related problems, to this day he can’t learn to count numbers, and everything he is taught is soon forgotten, he is no different from a kid with down syndrome and many learning disorders.

A couple of years later my family and I ended up moving here to the United States and decided to live in the Bronx for years to come, when we first got here my mom put me in a school which only taught in english so that I could better adapt to society and start to learn english, when I entered a classroom for the first time here in the US I was met with cold stares and people looking at me in disgust, the teacher with a bad demeanor told me “Go sit in the back of the classroom” which I was very confused because I didn’t understand english whatsoever, but a girl in the back waved at me and told me to sit next to her in the far back, to my surprise she speaked spanish which made me very happy since she could help me understand what was going on and translate for me, we started talking to each other in spanish since that’s the only language that I spoke, telling each other things like: “Cual es tu nombre” meaning what is your name, and “De donde eres” trying to get to know each other better, but then another classmate called out in an aggressive tone and said “Be quiet new kid in this school we only speak english” which I replied with the only word I knew in english “Sorry”. To my surprise, for the first time in my life, I felt like speaking Spanish was wrong which made me not speak in Spanish at all for the next of the school year, and for the next couple of weeks I was tormented by the constant bullying and discrimination all the students had towards me because I could not properly speak and pronounce English, I also had a hard time scoring good grades because I could not accurately understand the things the teachers taught and the quizzes they gave, but at the end of the day, I knew deep down in my heart that I shouldn’t let anything that was going affect me and prevent me from being successful in life and moving on.

To this day I am thankful to my family for bringing me here to the United States a place where the impossible can become possible through hard work, and I am also thankful to them for always believing in me and hoping for the best for me, and I promise to always look forward and that no matter how hard life gets I will always push pass my problems and make you proud mom and dad.