Enrique travels north on the top of trains, through blistering hot days and chilly nights, longing to see his mother who left Honduras when he was five, arriving in the U.S. to get a job for the family to survive. Eight times he attempts to reunite with her, experiencing hunger, robbery, rape and beatings by callous police and predatory gangs. Others fare worse, falling from the train or jumping and missing it.
Sympathetic people in poor neighborhoods of Oaxaca and Veracruz threw food and clothes to him and the other migrants as the trains pass by. To put your most vexing grievances into context read about Enrique's Journey, by Los Angeles Times reporter Sonia Nazario. Feel his sorrow and that of 48,000 other children, separated from their mothers, who meant to help them yet instead left them feeling abandoned and alone.
Each morning, each moment choose to feel grateful after hearing and reading about Valentino Achak Deng, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan." When he was seven, his village was destroyed by Arab militiamen at the outbreak of a scrambled civil war. For months the surviving boys, growing into the hundreds, walk towards “the promised land” of Ethiopia. Some were eaten by crocodiles or lions. Some were shot. Some went insane. But Ethiopia is just one of many stops, including ten numbing years in one refugee camp, before he eventually gets into the U.S., where he is still trying to find his way. This gripping book is "What Is The What," by Dave Eggers.
When his village in Sierra Leone is burned and most are slaughtered by an army of rebels seeking to replace the central government, 13-year-old Ishmael Beah and five friends run for safety. Everywhere there is burning, raping, looting and shooting. Ironically, only in the Army can the boys be protected. Fed cocaine, steeped in vengeful anger, they are forced to become boy soldiers. They slits throats, chop arms, shoot prisoners in the head. Redemption, Deng learns, is a rocky path, not a cinematically climactic moment, and never complete, on his long journey to a new life in the U.S. His story is A Long Way Gone.
I know that the readers of this bog include some who have also gone through harrowing times and others, like me, were lucky by birth. I may have started life in a safe place yet can only live fully when I recognize the depth to which we are all connected. As the “lucky us” take action to support those in peril, on their path towards a safe “home” we, too, may enjoy the numinosity of feeling at home in our world. Feed your soul. Find your path for supporting someone in our world family. Feel grateful for the opportunity. This one found me.
