Una imagen, una historia : One image, one story

I could have become a doctor or joined the armed forces. But like many others, I became a 'donkey' in real life and was taking the illegal and dangerous 'donkey route' with my family to live a life abroad, in the US. We were leaving our country via the donkey route with high dreams in our eyes!

Once we reached a Latin American country that I will not name here our real journey began. We traveled through jungles, rivers, and seas. We remained hungry for days but survived. We survived weeks eating minimum possible and few drops of water. The criminals robbed us of all our money, our clothes and even shoes. We had to walk barefoot in the cold. Our phones were with the agent because there was no network.

But our goal was to reach the United States at any cost. We were one of those Indians chasing the our dream and were close to realizing it, but then everything fell apart. You see, one can't fulfill all his desires.

When we were doing this, we were going from one country to another, from one border to another, trying to reach our dream destination through human smuggling through different countries and dangerous routes.

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Crossing the border and reaching America was our most beautiful dream. So let me tell you, when we left India, total 10 people from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lana and Pakistan were with us, and everyone was happy.

There are agents in our area who promise to take people to their dream destination. However, the fee is different for different countries. Each of us had a fixed fare of 10 thousand dollars with the human smugglers. I was to pay 25 thousand for our family of three to go to America and paid 10 thousand dollars in advance.

Let me confess when I saw people from my area settled in the US or Canada I too used to get excited. I always felt that as we could do a lot of physical labor, it would be appreciated in the US. We could get good money for our physical labor and also get other facilities and a luxurious life. We earned very little money here compared to that in the US.

So we sold our farm and managed $25 thousand. Our journey started on the donkey route. We used to travel all day, sometimes by bus, sometimes by car. Many times the agent would drop us at the hotel and disappear. Once we were kept locked in a room for six days. They would bring us food, but we were not allowed to go out.

The hotel rooms had small sliding windows, which we never opened because no one should have a clue about what is happening. Sometimes, when hotels are raided, the agents quickly take their people to an empty warehouse. But sometimes these agents also cheat their clients and run away.

But the most dangerous thing was that crossing this sea in our small boats was very risky and scary. We used to go out at night to cross the sea by boat. Many times the local security personnel used to chase us. To escape from the patrol boats, our small boat would increase its speed and we felt even more scared as these were life and death moments for us. I always thought, if we drowned in a sea in those dark nights, no one would even know back home.

Once we were stuck in the jungle for days and the jungles there were not the same as back in India but tall grass and dense trees. The jungles probably never saw the sunlight even during the day, and it would suddenly start raining without any warning signs. There were snakes, scorpions, and poisonous spiders to add to the trouble. But even more dangerous were the people who accompanied us.

However, the worst of all was the fear of high possibility of getting caught by the US forces while trying to reach their border, and the worst thing was that in such situations some people start demoralizing the people of other countries so that they give up on the way.

The worst part was that the agents did not mediate in disputes as if they had nothing to do with our quarrels. The person guiding us was just responsible for taking us from one border to another, and even when our group of 10 people was reduced to just three of us, he did not care.

We also had to face mafias once in the forest. Not once or twice, but thrice we encountered goons. One group snatched our mobile phones and money. Another snatched our food and water. The third group snatched our clothes and shoes. We had to walk without jackets and shoes in the bitter cold.

But we did not hesitate to take such risks because we had to reach and enter into America. And finally, when we tried to enter, the US border patrol caught us and kept us without clothes for days. We were given minimum clothes to cover our bodies, but it was cold and we were shivering throughout our stay.

But you see, in the end they gave us clothes and put us back in this boat. Now we have some biscuit packets to eat, a gallon of water, and we don't know how we will return. My family is scared. I wish they had sent us back to India by their air force aircraft like other illegal immigrants.

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