From Honduras to Ottumwa

By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer

November 13, 2007 10:39 pm

— Editor’s Note: This is the first of three stories about the Mejía family of Ottumwa.

OTTUMWA — No matter what language they speak, few people enjoy the process of moving: packing boxes, loading up furniture, and keeping track of where everything is located.
“Moving is very difficult,” said Maria Delores Mejía. “Today, we lost some papers so we’ve been very busy looking for them.”
The Mejía family has just bought a home in Ottumwa and moved out of the house they were renting.
Ellianna, 12, pointed out the living room.
“I liked our old house. This is smaller,” she said.
But she’s laughing as she says it, then begins telling a story about how she saw some bugs when they first arrived.
“Ewww!”
Ellianna, who will soon be 13, shares a room with her sister, Katie, 11.
“I like to be more relaxed than her,” said Katie, who had been out riding her bike with neighborhood kids in the mobile home court.
There were both Hispanic and non-Hispanic kids outside playing.
“She’s not more relaxed; she’s a slob,” said Ellianna, “I’m the one who likes to keep our room neat!”
Ellianna laughs again when Katie shrugs her shoulders.
Her mother, though, doesn’t laugh when she says she’s disappointed with her “new” kitchen. Through Ellianna, who is translating from Spanish into English for Maria, the mother said the previous owner told her everything worked fine. Come to find out the oven and the stove need to be replaced, as do other parts of the kitchen.
“I’m going to have to waste money I didn’t intend to,” she said.
Now she has to find someone reliable — and affordable — to basically tear out the kitchen.
“From here to over here,” she said, pointing out the area needing work.

Life today and yesterday
Maria is up around 4 a.m., jumps in the shower, gets her lunch ready to take with her and at about 4:50 a.m. she starts the car.
“Because it is cold many mornings,” she said.
When she gets to work, she “runs” into Cargill Meat Solutions and gets ready to go out on the floor.
For one thing, it’s time to really get dressed.
“I wear a thick jacket, and two pairs of pants for the cold,” she said.
She also puts on a pair of high boots for safety, and because they provide extra traction for when the floor gets wet.
Then, she gets her knives and begins working. Her job is to cut the meat when the leg of the pig comes by. Then someone else ties it and puts the leg in a box.
Not everyone realizes how much goes into creating food for the table; food doesn’t magically appear in the supermarket.
“It’s a big process,” she said to her daughters while chatting in the living room.
She and her husband work hard because they want the children to have “everything.”
When Mom tells the children to be thankful for what they have, and to take care of their things, she says it from the background of someone who knows what it is like to go without.
Her daughters, Katie and Ellianna, said they had never in their lives heard how poor their mother was growing up.
“I’m from a little village in Honduras. When I was their age, we had a house, but the house had no floor. My father had built a fence [from vegetation], but the floor was just sand,” Maria said.
There were other problems. Her father was a heavy drinker.
Yes, she agreed, that’s a problem that could affect someone no matter where they were born, Latin America or the United States.
He had a job, she said, but all of his money went toward alcohol.
“There were seven of us children. We had only two pairs of shoes [total]. Whoever woke up first got to wear the shoes,” she said.
“I never knew that,” said Ellianna quietly.
The rest of them went to school barefoot. Maria said she tried to be awake early, a habit she still maintains.
“This is why when I tell you to take pride in your things, it is important to me,” Maria said to the two girls.
The girls, both born in the United States, said they now understand why their mother is always pushing them to take care of their shoes and clothes. Those possessions should be treated with respect. Mom knows what it is like to have nothing.
One thing she didn’t go without very often: food. Maria’s mother might not have been able to shoe every child but she made sure they had something to eat.
“On a day when there was not enough food, she gave us her meal; she made sure we children had some food,” Maria recalled.
The mother would go into the hills and sell eggs, beans and corn.
When told she sounded like a strong woman, Maria agreed, but sadly.
“Yes. But from working so hard, she died young,” she said, then paused.
The girls, 11 and 12, had never heard this part of their mother’s past, either, and were clearly moved by the story.
“This is difficult,” said Maria before going on. “She went through a hard life.”
Maria said she learned a lot from her mother. Maria’s early life was not easy, either. When it came time to move out and get a job, Maria was 12 years old.
“I went to the city, and I lived in a house, cooking in the kitchen,” she said.
Meanwhile, Maria’s mother became fed up with the father’s drinking.
“He hit my mother too much,” she said.
Eventually, she moved out and divorced the man. Maria moved back when she was a teenager and lived with her mother. That’s when she met her future husband, Abraham. When he was around, he wouldn’t let her lift a finger.
“He always did things for me,” she recalled.
For someone who had labored her whole young life just to survive, he made her feel like a princess. She was swept off her feet, and they soon married.
And when he became a Honduran police officer, she didn’t even have to work outside the home. She enjoyed her life.
But things changed, and the young family had to flee Central America for asylum in the United States.
“He had a problem at the job,” she said, providing few details other than to say there was a dangerous group angry about some arrests. “The police could not protect him. We had to leave the country.”
Toward the end of Maria’s story, it started getting dark, and the house is nearly silent. Even the girls are quiet.
Maria says she is very tired; she was up before 5 a.m. for work, and has to get up at the same time tomorrow.
Thursday: More from the Mejía family.
Mark Newman can be reached at 683-5358 or by e-mail at mgnewman@mchsi.com.

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