((PKG)) TRACING THE PATHS
((TRT: 15:11))
((Topic Banner: Tracing the Paths))
((Camera/Producer/Editor: Lisa Vohra))
((Map: Vienna, Virginia; Herndon, Virginia))
((Main characters: 1 female; 1 male))
((Sub characters: 0 female; 0 male))
((Blurb: An in-depth exploration of the journeys taken by a Liberian refugee and an undocumented immigrant from Bolivia to the United States, followed by their initial months in the U.S.))
((NATS/MUSIC))
Back home in Liberia, soccer was the one thing that brought everyone together.
((Text on screen))
When the first Liberian Civil War began in 1989, Zarzar and his family were forced to flee their country.
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar))
What's up, man?
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar))
Former Liberian Refugee))
It was by May, 1990. At that point, the rebels haven’t arrived in Monrovia yet. They was in the outskirts of Monrovia.
We were fortunate to be one of the few family that could afford escaping at that point.
So, we went to Sierra Leone. We arrived in Freetown and we live in a hotel.
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar))
Yo.
What's up, brother?
What's up, man?
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
For the first three months or so, we live a similar life like we did back in Liberia, where we had maid in a hotel with us, we had food, and everything seems to be fine.
With the understanding that once rebel get to Monrovia, everything will subside and pretty soon, we'll return back home, because it was our first civil war, and we didn't quite understand the impact or the magnitude of a civil war. But three months expanded to six months, six months expanded to nine months, and soon we found ourselves as true refugees in Sierra Leone.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((NATS: Eileen Villegas))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
I like hiking because it reminds me of home, but it also reminds me when I cross the border, mainly because when I hike, I can take my time and enjoy the hike, whereas when I ran across the border, it was a mad rush.
((NATS/MUSIC))
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In 1985, Eileen and her mother entered the U.S. undocumented by crossing the Mexican border.
((Title Banner:
Tracing the Paths
Recounting their journey to the U.S.))
((Camera/Editor/Producer: Lisa Vohra))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
I had a really good childhood in Bolivia. I went to private school. I had lots of friends. I played sports. I had a great life. I was there until I was 12 [years old]. And then my mother had this crazy idea that we needed to come to the United States.
((NATS: Eileen Villegas))
Good morning.
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
My name is Eileen Villegas. I'm originally from Bolivia, and I came to the U.S. in March of 1985.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
My name is Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar, and I'm originally from Monrovia, Liberia.
((Courtesy: Wead/Shutterstock.com))
It's a tiny country in West Africa.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
We could not get a visa to the U.S. We could only get a visa to Mexico. It was very hard to get a visa to the U.S. We ended up in Tijuana. We met our coyote the first night. The journey was supposed to be very brief and fast, so it wasn't supposed to be like weeks and months. It was just going to be like you land, you cross, and you fly to Virginia, and you're done. That is not what happened.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
My family ran out of money, and we had to relocate. So, at that point, I was 11 years old. So, we had to fend for ourselves. So, one thing that my mother did was, have us sell in the streets of Sierra Leone.
As with any human being, your first thinking is, I need to get something to eat. How do I get something to eat? At this point, I have to sell it to get something to eat. So, you don't think that just a few months ago, I was, you know, I had everything, and I could afford everything. At this point, you're thinking that I have to serve to eat. So, you essentially disregard the past and continue to move forward, because at that point, you just put yourself within survival mode.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
When we met our coyote, he said, “I have to cross with somebody else tonight, so you're going to cross with this other person.” So, we follow this other person who wasn't our original coyote and smuggler. So, he took us to this house and run down somewhere in Tijuana. And there was like rats, and was like 20, 25 people there, all ages, sexes. We were all cramped into this little one room where there was...I remember seeing rats, and it was dark, and we had to wait. He said, "We're going to, we're going to wait until dark. We're going to go to the border. There's the fence is already cut off. We're going to cross. We're going to wait until the helicopter goes the other way, and then we're going to run."
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
The land between San Diego and Tijuana is very dry.
((Courtesy: Tonello Photography//Shutterstock.com))
There's a lot of bushes that have thorns. So, the coyote that helped us cross that night, he said, "Yes, so if you hear a helicopter, hide into the bushes and just duck until you hear him leave, and then we'll all run. If you see the car, run, just run in opposite directions." So, that evening, it was midnight at the time. I don't know what the border fence looks like now, but at the time, it was just a chain link fence that people would just cut, and they were, you know, holding for people to get through in there.
So, we opened the hole, and there was people like having bonfires at one side. And it was lots and lots of groups of people. Like you can see them all lined up around the fence waiting. And then the helicopters left, and it was a mad rush. So, there was groups of people that just made mad rushes in different directions with different smugglers. So, we started running. The helicopter came, I remember this. And then my mother and I ducked into a...underneath a bush. And it was very prickly because I'm sure I had thorns in my hands.
And then the helicopter left, and we all ran up and started running. And the coyote would be like, "Just keep running, just keep running." But he was behind us, and we got surrounded by immigration cars. So we, they rounded us up and then they started questioning every single one of us. Like where are you from? What are you doing? And, you know, why are you going to the [United] States? And then we had to, my mother and I spoke like Mexicans. Like they said, "What is your name?" We had to lie about our names. We had to lie about everything like what we did, what we didn't do. And, you know, we just lied about everything and spoke like Mexicans. So, they sent us back to Tijuana.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Text on screen))
After street vending in Sierra Leone for a few months, Zarzar and his family still couldn’t afford housing.
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
Whatever we were selling wasn't making enough money for us to afford food and rent. So, at that point, the UN [United Nations] had opened a refugee camp little bit out, further out, away from the city. And then when we were in a refugee camp, interestingly enough, another civil war started in Sierra Leone. And it was essentially a byproduct of the war that was going on right next door in Liberia. So, we had to again move away from Sierra Leone.
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
You are thinking, literally, how do I get from this moment to this moment? How do I get...put myself into a safe position? Okay, now I'm safe. Now I realize I'm hungry. How do I feed myself? The cycle continues again the next day. How do I move from this one moment to this one moment, maintaining my safety? How do I eat? And that's how you sort of progress in those moments or in those situations.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
The second night, each one of us had a smuggler, my mother had one and I had one, and the smuggler said, "Whatever happens to you, just keep running. We're just going to run, run, run. You're not going to walk. You're going to run." So, my mother and the head smuggler went, and then I went with the younger smuggler. So, as soon as, we followed the same routine. We went to the fence, waited, and then it was just a mad rush. So, my mother and I started running, but my mother got ahead with one smuggler and I could see her. She was getting further and further away. And then my knee popped out of place, and I was just like, oh, in pain. And then the guy said, "You have to keep going." And my mom turned around, and she tried to turn back, and the smuggler said, "You have to keep going. They'll catch up." So, we started running. I was in a lot of pain. The guy was like, "You have to…you're going to be okay. We're almost there."
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
We got in the bus from Sierra Leone and traveled all the way to Guinea. And from Guinea, we stayed in Guinea, we didn't quite stay in Guinea that long. It was just essentially a pass through country. But then we went to Ivory Coast, Abidjan. Abidjan. We stay in Abidjan. I want to say we stayed in Abidjan maybe about four, three months in the capital of Ivory Coast, Abidjan. But it was just essentially a transition point, meaning that the final destination was Accra, Ghana, specifically Buduburam refugee camp. We stay there, I want to say from, again from the late 1991 or early 1992, all the way when we left in August of 1993, before we joined our father in the United States.
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
We came through the resettlement program, the United States Refugee Resettlement Program. And the program is, once you get here, you literally, not too long after, like a few weeks after, they give you a green card.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
Once we made it, there was a white van waiting for us at the opposite end. And the same at the opposite end, there was just like this fence and the guy was waiting in the van. They put us in the van. The coyote was with us, and we went to a Red Roof Inn. I will always remember that, because I was like, "Wow, this is so fancy. This hotel is so fancy." I didn't know what it was. So, we stayed at the Red Roof Inn for one night. Then the next day, a contact that we had in California through a friend of a friend, she picked us up. We stayed at her house for one day, and then she said, "Okay, I have your tickets to go to Virginia the next day." So, she took us to the airport, and then we flew to Virginia, to Reagan [airport].
((Reporter))
Wow.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
When I came here, ESL [English as a Second Language] classes were very limited. Everything was in English. So, when I got my first report card, it was all F's. I didn't know what an F was, and I was devastated because I had never gotten an F in my life. So, I talked to the doctor, and I said, "I don't know what this is." And she said, "It's because you don't know the language." It's very hard. And the only ESL class we had was to be able to communicate in English, but it didn't really help with the other major classes. So, the doctor got me a Spanish-English dictionary, and every night, I would sit with her, and we'd go through the whole dictionary. So, I learned English in six months, and then by the time I finished seventh grade, I was a straight-A student.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
When I first came to the United States, this is in the nineties, and these kids weren't used to anything that wasn't purely American attire. So, we got made fun of a lot for what we wore, what, you know, how we spoke. And an even worse, because when we cook in our house, we cook with a lot of spices. So, as you can imagine, if you live in a small apartment with a lot of people, your clothes will always smell like the food and smell like spices. And then when you get on the school bus, the kids would make a lot of fun of you, because you didn't quite, you know, smell right. You smell like spices and smell like things that they couldn't quite understand. And so, we got made fun of a lot in high school, you know, for the way we talk, our accent, and the way we dress, the fact that we're wearing cheaper clothes, and most of the time, the way we smelled on the school bus. So, it was very, very traumatic. Even for a while, into your twenties and thirties, you still remember those experiences. It was really tough.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((NATS: Eileen Villegas’ Daughter))
And then she's like, I was like, "You're just going to waste your money."
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
I have a daughter, and I've raised her to always work hard and not to rely on anybody, to always be independent. And I always tell her, "As an adult, you have to give, and you'll get back 10-time-fold."
((NATS/MUSIC)
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar and his children))
Hi, how was soccer?
Hi.
Hey, Seraphina.
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
I'm married with two kids, live in a suburb of Virginia.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar and his children))
Did your team win?
Did your team win?
Yeah, we won, 3-0.
Yeah.
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
And what advice I would have for them? I think it goes beyond them, right? What advice I would have for any young person is: work hard, have integrity, and build good relationships. You need to have those three things as your anchor in this life.
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar))
You want the whole thing?
((Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar
Former Liberian Refugee))
The United States, as much, you know, problem we have, I think it's still one of the greatest country or the greatest country in the world, where you can come from nowhere, work very, very hard, regardless of your situation, right? And you dedicate yourself, and you are honest, you'll do well.
((NATS: Fahnbulleh Gayekalla Zarzar))
That shows you how much of a chef I am.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Eileen Villegas
Former Undocumented Migrant))
I remember going to visit a friend in San Diego 15 years after arriving here, and we decided to go visit the Mexico side. Once we walked across the border, I saw a huge Mexican flag, and then I saw the hills that I ran across for the first time in the daytime, as opposed to when I ran across them, it was nighttime. So, I cried because it reminded me of what I ran across, and also the hotel, the Red Roof Inn that we stayed at that one night when we arrived, was still there. I still think back and think back, "If I was able to do what I did 38 years ago, then I can finish this hike. It might take me longer, but I'll get it done."
((NATS/MUSIC))