“I came from the war ridden country of El Salvador,” Graca Lobo said. “I left my country with the clothes on my back and $2,500.”
Graca Lobo said that she borrowed the money in order to pay the person helping her cross the El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico borders into the United States. Graca Lobo was in a group of 12 people trying to reach the U.S.
The journey was not an easy one for Graca Lobo and her group. They had to travel across several rivers and sometimes had to travel by cargo train. She often went days without food and water, and while traveling through Mexico, their group was robbed.
One morning when she woke up, their aide told her to look up across a field they were traveling through, and it made all of the trials she had faced worth it.
“There it was, the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen waving at the rhythm of the wind, flying free,” Graca Lobo said. “The same freedom we were looking for; it was the flag of the United States of America.”
After a week and a half, Graca Lobo found herself in New York City. She was staying in a friend of a neighbor’s apartment in the Bronx. Graca Lobo found work as a housekeeper in upstate New York where she was paid $150 weekly. She cooked, cleaned, took care of a pool and tended to three children. At this time she could not speak English, so she decided to take night classes when she wasn’t working to learn the language. It was when she started going to school that everything began to change.
Today, Graca Lobo has been married for 20 years and has a 15-year-old child. She recently finished her master’s degree in the practice of teaching. She taught Spanish for Kalamazoo Valley Community College for six years, and is now a Spanish tutor for children and adults.
Graca Lobo said that this is indeed the land of opportunity, and if you work hard, learn the language and get an education, you can be a productive part of society.
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Posted by Stan Sulewski