Has Everyone Here Lived in New Jersey?

One day in clinic, I was tickled pink when a patient responded to my wobbly Spanish question in solid English.

"Where did you learn English?" I asked her.

"I lived in New Jersey for six years. I went to high school there."

I was thrilled. We chatted for several minutes about her life in Trenton, about which members of her family still lived there and her feelings about growing up in, then ultimately leaving, an English-speaking country.

I couldn't believe that here in a remote corner of Guatemala, I had actually met someone who knew all about New Jersey. But moments later, before the thrill had completely worn off Greg, another optometrist in our group, called out to me.

"Hey, Laura. There's a guy here who says he lived in New Jersey!"

Well I could hardly contain my excitement. Another person way out here in Guatemala who had spent time in New Jersey! I ran over and introduced myself, and asked him how he came to live in the US.

This experience repeated itself many times over during the week. Soon I got used to hearing how every other person and his cousin lived in the US for some period of time. By the fourth day of clinic, I had met literally dozens of Guatemalan people who spent anywhere from six months to twenty-five years in the States, mostly in three longstanding Guatemalan enclaves: Trenton, NJ, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Many were long-term residents, and one Lions Club member told me he recently became a US citizen.

Who knew there was such a huge connection between Guatemala and the good old US of A? The more I talked with people, the more it became clear to me that if you were a Guatemalan person with ambition and the good fortune to have a relative in the States, you were going to spend some time there.

These folks wanted better jobs than were available to them at home, and good schools for their kids. It didn't hurt that these same kids came back home relatively fluent in English, and thus became much more marketable to employers in Guatemala. Who could blame them? Who wouldn't admire their spunk? I, for one, was truly impressed.