In my landlord duties, last weekend we were dealing with an
empty apartment that needed cleaning in between tenants. We were rushed for time and a little
desperate so hired a couple of recent Cuban immigrants to help us with the
painting. We got to talk to them a little in between trips to Home Depot.
Roman and Sergie are two 30-something guys that arrived in
the USA about 2 years ago by different routes. I’m not sure how they met but I
believe they knew each other growing up in Cuba.
Roman, is an Afro-Cuban born on the island but from Grand
Cayman’s father. He’s the more outgoing
of the two because he started working on his English during the last few years
while in Grand Cayman. He has been able
to move around our at times complicated maze of rules and regulations and how
has a bank account and knows a thing or two about running his own business. Roman has a 16 year old daughter still back
in Cuba, the product of a previous “relationship” and now has a 15 month old boy
with his wife. Apparently he left Cuba
to Grand Cayman a few years earlier and after helping his father in Grand
Cayman for a while he “got sick of the island life” and decided to move with
his pregnant wife to the USA.
Roman said that if he was not able to leave Cuba in a legal
way, he would still be there acting as if he was a fan of the Castros because taking
on any of the “adventures” his fellow Cubans take to leave the island nation,
would have been frightening to him.
Luckily for him, his Grand Cayman father came along with a British
citizenship, so he never had to do anything illegal. Sergie had a much tougher migration. After exhausting all his savings in a one-way
ticket to Ecuador, he landed and started the more that 3,000 mile journey to
the USA border. Journey is a nice way to
put it as he was harassed, robbed, beaten and locked up along the way. He said that it took him 37 days in
route. He left Cuba with 150 pounds and
arrived to the USA with 90 pounds. He ate
3 full meals in the whole 37-day odyssey.
A very sad story to listen to. A
few months after being here, Sergie’s wife arrived with his two kids legally
because she has family in the USA.
Sergie wanted to arrive first to have something for the time the wife
and kids would arrive, very sweet, but by the sound of it, he barely made it.
Both Roman and Sergie worked as electricians in Cuba so when
it came time to find a job, they decided to get into that field again. Both of them work full-time for construction
companies and are also taking classes in the evenings at local technical school
to legitimize their professions. It’s
taking Sergie a little more effort because in addition to the electrical training,
he’s working on his English in the same school.
Classes are M-F 6PM to 10PM.
I did the math, 40 hours full-time work, another 20 hours of
school attendance, and then any other job they can find for the weekends, adds
up to a busy week. No time left for
homework, family or entertainment. I don’t
think they have caught on to the work-life balance idea. In Miami, I do personally know and know of
several new-generation Cubans. Folks
that have grown up under communism and used to doing what they can to survive
and to get the most with the least effort.
Many of them arrive here and are known for sitting around to wait for
the government handouts and other benefits they get as refugees. Not these two. These guys have something that I wish I could
bottle it up and sell it at the corner grocery store. I was very impressed with their work and
hoping that I can hire them again to help them out in their goal to
successfully integrate themselves into their new home and achieve their piece
of the American dream.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment