quote:
Originally posted by Nykkii:
ricardo--can you give examples of what makes your wife "strong"?
My wife is from Cauca, Colombia. She has lots of stories about her childhood growing up in the mountains of Cauca. Some day I want to visit, to see the path that her and her 4 brothers and 2 sisters would walk down to the valley to get water to carry up the mountain to their home. Or the long frail suspension foot bridge that she would cross to bring food home. (Both were day long expeditions.) Or the river (Rio Cauca?) that she nearly drowned in when she was 5 or 6, having been carried quite some distance by the raging currents. Unfortunately, due to the conflict, travel there is impossible at this time.
When she was young (about 11 or 12), they had to flee Cauca, in the process losing their home, and were able to borrow enough money from a relative for the bus trip to Palmira, close to Cali. For reasons that I can't go into here, her mother was unable to work after that, so my wife and her older sister, being the oldest, worked to support the family. She worked at many jobs, cleaning houses, caring for other children not much younger than herself, etc.
In 1989, she was working as a maid for the neice of another woman that she had worked for previously. She had been accepted to graduate school here at the university, so her and her husband came here with their two small children, and asked my wife if she wanted to come along. They got my wife a Domestic Employee Visa, and she basically raised the two children while her friend went to school, while at the same time working part time (illegally) cleaning a resturaunt (She would bring the kids along when she worked). When her friend graduated, my wife applied for a Visa extension, but it was denied by the INS.
My wife stayed anyway (illegally), dispite the fact that she didn't know any english, and found herself alone in Ames. Working at several jobs, cleaning houses, washing dishes, cooking, and cleaning resturaunts, she saved enough money to buy her family a house in Colombia.
In the meantime, she learned english, not from taking any classes, but solely by listening to people talk.
By the time that I met her, her english was quite good. She almost had the house in Colombia paid for, and was close to leaving the US for good, to return to Colombia.
I found her just in the nick of time!
