“Silia, come to lunch now. This girl!”
Immersed in her thoughts, Silia would spend hours sitting near the door of her house, looking at the chickens, hens, pigs and cows. But what she saw in her mind were buildings, highways, shops of all kinds, late-model cars and crowded streets, always moving, always walking fast. And that’s where she wanted to be, in some big city, it didn’t matter what, as long as it was a city of the United States.

                        Rural house, with farm animals

Since she was a child, she had listened, enthralled, to the stories of her relatives, who returned from the northern country telling wonders, talking about many things that they lacked but that there, in the country of their dreams, it was quite normal to have them. Now, at fifteen, Silia felt that she would soon be able to make the journey. Meanwhile, she began to study and improve her English every day.

Street of a city in the United States (New York)

She got up and went to have lunch with his grandmother. The good lady agreed with her granddaughter’s desire to improve, but she was sad every time she thought that it was not far from her the day she would have to separate from her. However, the decision was made and there was nothing to do.
Silia knew that she was going to need money to make the trip, so she, at 17, went to work. She is one of those people who is not afraid of work, who is not afraid of any job, but this does not mean that it was easy for her to raise the money. On the contrary, she worked very hard to earn it. Thanks to her knowledge of English, she was accepted to work as a receptionist in a hotel in the city of Trujillo, Honduras. Not content with that, she also got a job as a cook at another hotel. Thus, Silia worked as a receptionist from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, when she ran out to cook at the other hotel, until ten at night. She was like that for a little over two years, working and saving. She then prepared to set out on the journey to the north country.

Silia working at the hotel, in her receptionist uniform

And the great day has arrived. His grandmother wouldn’t stop crying; after all, he had raised her since she was a baby and loved her as if she were her daughter, besides the fact that, with her calm and affable character, Silia had known how to win her heart (a character that she retains to this day).

Crossing from his native Honduras to Guatemala was no problem. But to go from Guatemala to Mexico, things were already different; there were controls at the border. Along with other people, Silia boarded a “combi” (rectangular van) to enter Mexico. The van driver had some kind of agreement with some border guards, but anything could happen. And they got to the checkpoint; passengers were scared. The guard “inspected” the van, looked inside and very seriously asked the driver if he was carrying “chickens” (undocumented immigrants). The driver told him no and finally the guard let him pass. It should be mentioned that, currently, you can no longer enter the country of charros like this.

Guatemala-Mexico Border Post

While in Mexico, Silia was the victim of a robbery by a taxi driver. She paid him with a 100-dollar bill and the taxi driver, making a sleight of hand, exchanged it for a fake bill and began accusing her of having wanted to swindle him.

Finally, after taking a bus, Silia reached the border with the United States. She had to cross the Rio Grande. She hired a local to take her across the river. She boarded a tiny canoe, the edges of which were a few inches above the water. Terrified, Silia closed her eyes and commended herself to God. Apart from the danger of sinking, what frightened him most were some “water snakes” that jumped around the canoe. Overcoming her fear, he managed to reach the other shore. All this was happening long before the 9/11 attacks. Today, entering the United States in this way is impossible.

Asking here and there, she was able to find an American driver (a gringo) who was on his way to San Antonio. He agreed to take her, but later they had to go through a checkpoint (that’s how it was in those days). In order to pass the control, the driver agreed to let Silia settle in the truck’s cabin, which is where the driver sleeps when he makes stops at night. Upon arriving at the checkpoint, Silia, very attentive, listened to the driver’s conversation with the border guard. After a few minutes she was able to breathe easier; the truck began to move.
The driver turned out to be a very kind person, he even offered her a job as a babysitter for his newborn son, but she had to reject his offer because what she wanted was to get to Houston, where she had a sister.

After the driver dropped her off in a town, Silia took a bus to Houston. She came to her sister’s house, but she didn’t stay there long. A week later, a friend of hers arrived, an American she had met when she was working as a receptionist in Honduras, who took her to Miami. She immediately began looking for work through an employment agency. She got a job caring for an elderly lady who, unfortunately, had the beginnings of senile dementia, so her treatment of Silia was, to say the least, not very pleasant. Suffice it to say that she did not let her eat, sleep or bathe in peace. For this reason she was only with this lady for two months.
Next, the employment agency put her in touch with a family that needed a cook. This family had houses in Miami, New York and Warren (a town in the state of Vermont).

So Silia started working six months in Miami and six months in Warren; there were also times when she went to New York. These people were very different from her previous employer and treated her very well.

Warren is a small town, with only 1700 inhabitants (approximately). In the winter it is covered in snow and a photo of almost any of its houses could be used for a Christmas postcard. You can even see deer through its streets. This is because many houses have apple trees in their garden, and deer come to eat the apples. On one occasion, when Silia went out early to buy the newspaper with the family car, she almost ran over a deer, she managed to touch it; the deer looked at her and walked away from her. Silia spent several Christmas at Warren.

After a few years in his service, her employer allowed her to use one of her trucks, a Lincoln Navigator, during his days off. And then, we see Silia, very proud, driving her Lincoln Navigator through the streets of Vermont, doing her shopping and traveling many miles as she used to drive from Vermont to Boston, and there were even times when she drove to New York to go shopping stores. She was able to do this when her boss began giving her two days off, from Friday night to Sunday night.

And as if this were not enough, shortly after her employers gave her a Nissan Sentra car, zero miles. On the other hand, they had a convertible Mercedes car in Miami. As the lady wanted to enjoy her car in Warren as well, one day it occurred to her to ask Silia if she could drive her to Warren, and Silia answered that she could. In this way, on more than one occasion, Silia took the Mercedes from Miami to Warren and vice versa, a journey that took almost three days (she slept one night in Atlanta). Fortunately, Silia has very good orientation, because she never got lost or took the wrong path and keep in mind that in those days there were no GPS or cell phones.

But don’t think that Silia didn’t have setbacks.
On one occasion, wanting to travel from Vermont to Miami, she missed her plane at the Burlington airport (a city near Warren), so she had to stay at the airport, waiting for another flight to the same destination. After a while she realized that a man was staring at her; he looked at her and kept looking at her. Finally the man approached her and asked her to accompany him to the airport offices. It turned out that this man worked in the Immigration Unit. Fortunately, Silia had already managed to regularize her situation and she was a resident, but she had put her green card in her luggage, which was already being transported to the plane, so she was not believed. She said that she was Honduran and they asked her several questions about Honduras. She was finally able to show her social security card and they let her go. She was told that they had believed she was a Middle Eastern woman.

Regarding her continuous trips on the highways, Silia received many speeding tickets, for which she became a regular in the courts of Vermont and Miami.

On another occasion, on a Saturday, being with her friend Zenaida (Honduran like her), they decided to go to the Mad River, which passes through Warren. Upon arrival, they observed that all the people there were naked, entire families: women, men, girls and boys, who had come to spend the weekend. And someone told them: “If you want to go into the water, you have to take off all your clothes, like us.” They said: “This is not for me”, and turned around, they went back the way they came.

After approximately eleven years of being with them, their employers decided to retire and left their company (manufacturer of military clothing) in the hands of their only son. But, definitely, this boy was very different from his parents and soon after a lousy administration, he had to declare the company bankrupt. With great sadness they had to tell Silia that they were not going to be able to continue paying her.
He had no choice but to say goodbye to his bosses and start the trip back to Miami, in his Nissan Sentra. But, as he had done a few times before, he went through Boston and New York and did a lot of shopping, completely filling the cart with items and gifts (only Silia could get into the car), which he then sent to his relatives in Honduras.

The trips were over and already in Miami, Silia started looking for another job. She liked driving the Lincoln Navigator they lent her in Warren so much that she sold his Nissan Sentra and bought another Lincoln Navigator, brand new, zero miles.
She finally got a job, and this time she also had good luck, because she went to work for a lady who treated her very well. Soon after, Silia, very happy, managed to become a citizen of the United States.
Next, she worked for a daughter of this lady and then for another son of the same lady, in his house and in his warehouse. Work that she retains to this day.

REFERENCES: Interviews with Mrs. Silia and the Internet.