West Side Ave, Jersey City
How’s this for a courageous adventure?
In 2016, a 39 year old man with 4 daughters leaves his family in Guatemala to make a new life. Over the course of a month, he travels through Mexico to the Rio Grande on buses.
At the Rio Grande, he and his two brothers pay their life savings of $20,000 to a coyote to ferry them across the river. On the other side, they run for the bushes and hide before the helicopter patrol returns. Many people get caught, but Javier (pseudonym) and his two brothers manage to evade the patrollers.
For seven straight days, they walk across the Texas desert with one Poland spring bottle of water (500mL) each. I ask how long the bottle of water lasted. Javier reiterates, “Una semana.” One week. No refills. Did you have food? “Un día una manzana,” he pauses, “Un día una galleta.” I clarify. One day one apple? “Sí. Like that.” Where did you sleep? a tent? “No. Arból.” Under the tree. Very dangerous, he says. He watched one man die.
Javier and his brothers eventually found their way to Jersey City where they proved themselves as capable workers and got maintenance gigs in apartment buildings. Javier now makes enough money to send his youngest daughter to university. (The oldest three dropped out of school before he came to the US). Javier works fast. In 2 hours he can sweep and mop 11 floors of apartment buildings, vacuum, windex all the windows, and take out the trash for 55 tenants. “Not easy! Not easy my friend!” But that doesn’t stop him from going on runs before work 3 days a week.
Javier takes me to his brother’s living room for lunch. His sister-in-law serves rice, beans, and corn tortillas, along with a hot oat beverage avena. “Comé! Comé!” Eat! Eat! they command. Deja vú to Africa. I pinch myself to make sure I’m really back in the US.
I ask Javier about Trump. He says, “Muy peligroso.” Very dangerous. I ask if he’s worried. “No. No hay opción.” No choice, he shrugs. “Out of my control.” His attitude reminds me of the widows in Kilimanjaro. I asked if they worried about getting enough food for their families. The question didn’t compute for them. They defined “enough” as whatever they had. Sometimes they had food. Sometimes they didn’t. It was always “enough.”
I ask Javier if he will go back to Guatemala. “One day,” he says. He has not seen his family in eight years. Now he is 47, and his youngest daughter is 20. “I come here one time. When I go home, I never come back.” he says.
As it turns out, one week of working as a laborer in apartment buildings is… just like a week of running across Africa. Non-stop all day, physically exhausting, and somehow I keep finding Mamas who feed me home-cooked traditional food.
On the phone, I told my Mom that I feel like I have a Benjamin Button career. I’m doing the American Dream in reverse. If big tech software engineer was the culmination of the dream, now I’m fresh off the [airplane] and hustling to get my feet under me.
Even with Trump’s deportation threats, I feel more excited and alive among immigrants than anywhere else in New York. The wealth of this nation is not the line of department stores on fifth avenue. What makes the US the richest place on Earth is the collage of cultures concentrated on a single block on West Side Avenue in Jersey City— Gordo’s Honduran restaurant, Tropix Dominican food, “My” Mexico restaurant, Pompei Italian pizzeria, and Giant Panda Chinese takeout.
When I walk down West Side Ave, I know I made it because people from every single region of the world upended comfortable lives to come to these hallowed streets to hustle. These folks are the stuff of legends. They gave up everything and put their lives on the line because they were willing to die for their dreams. All this time, I grew up in the presence heroes and never knew. God bless America.