My story is very long. I will not be able to say the names of all the countries I have been to since I left home, but I went through a lot of difficulties. I left my country not because of war but because of conflicts in my family. My family didn't have much money. When my father died, he left a few things and his family took everything from my mother and her children. We became homeless. As we had no place to sleep, we had to split up. Each one went to sleep in a different place, and we would try and get together later.
I worked selling cell phones. I earned little, but I saved as much as I could so that one day I could get out of there. One day a friend of mine told me that she couldn't take it anymore and that she was going to leave the country. I also couldn't take it anymore. I looked at the situation with my family and saw that it wasn't working. We couldn't buy rice or chicken to eat. I made up my mind to leave, but being a woman and the youngest daughter I couldn’t tell my mother. She would not have let me go. In my country, if you go out and disappear for a few days, your family will get worried and start thinking that you are dead.
I was 29 years old when I decided to leave. I escaped on a ship that was coming to the American continent. We arrived in Ecuador, but it was bad there. They didn't have much help for us. There were two boats leaving, one for Cuba, one for Colombia. My friend and I had no money to pay for the ticket, but the men on the boat took us to Colombia without charging anything. It was very difficult for me. I didn’t know at the time, but when I left my country I was already four months pregnant. The journey to Colombia took two months, so I arrived there six months pregnant. When I arrived in Colombia they stole all our money and our passports. We stayed there 10 days – I slept on the street, under a tree. I had no one to call to ask for money.
