Where I'm From: Final Draft.

For this assignment, I had to write about my hometown. This was my favorite assignment because it made me think about many forgotten memories I had not thought of in a long time. I struggle when it comes to writing about myself but when I started writing this essay, it was hard to stop. Memories just kept pouring as I was writing.

Here is my final draft:

Jesus Arevalo Merino

Deana Nall

English Composition I

17 September 2020

Where I’m From

            I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. I lived in Caracas for the first thirteen years of my life and although I had many bad experiences there, it is the place where I spent my childhood and where I lived most of my happiest memories.

Caracas was a city full of life. It was always warm and there were always lots of people walking in the streets. Traffic was a nightmare most of the time and the subway was always packed with people. The city was also always loud; there were cars honking everywhere, local businesses and restaurants playing loud music, street sellers yelling the prices of their products and what they’re selling to get you to buy from them, and street performers singing or dancing.

My favorite time of the year was carnival. I used to go with my brother, his wife, and my niece. Parents would dress up their children in costumes and they would walk around the streets with them. Children and teenagers would throw confetti and water balloons on other kids and play. My niece and I liked to throw confetti at people’s mouths when they were talking so that the confetti went in their mouths; everyone thought it was funny. There was also a big patio with a huge TV in the middle of the street where adults could have drinks and watch a soccer game. The music was loud, the food was good, and everyone seemed to be having a great time; even the adults. It was like a huge party and everyone in the city was invited.

            My mother owned a hair salon inside a flower market. The flower market was huge. Thousands of all kinds of colorful flowers adorned the hallways of the market and the smell of the flowers was so strong you could smell them from half a mile away. The market had two floors. The first floor was only dedicated to flowers and the second floor was only for hair and nail salons. My mother worked every day which means she was never able to take me anywhere. If I wanted to spend time with her, I had to come to the salon and just sit in the waiting room for the whole day while she worked. She gave me money to buy coloring books every time I was there because she did not want me to just sit there and do nothing. Whenever I got bored with the coloring books, I would go down to the flower section of the market and talk to Compaito. Compaito was an old man who owned a flower shop on the first floor of the market. I must have been very little when I met him because I do not remember how he became my friend. I’d go to his flower shop and we would have long conversations. He would also give me money all the time and tell me to go to the store and buy a pepper chocolate bar for myself; every time I went to the store and asked the lady for a pepper chocolate bar, she’d laugh at me and just give a regular chocolate bar. I spent many days of my childhood in that market; sitting in a hair salon’s waiting room, eating chocolate, drawing, listening to the sound of hairdryers, and breathing the smell of flowers.

    When I wasn’t at my mother’s hair salon, I was wandering the streets of Caracas with Juana. Juana was a neighbor who took care of me when my mother was at work. She offered to take care of me when I was just four months old and she never asked my mother for money. She became a second mother to me and I basically became part of her family as well. Her daughter and her husband loved me. I have a very special bond with Juana because she gave me all the love my biological mother could not give me because she was working all the time. Juana a was mother earth type of person. Juana was a retired woman but she didn’t like staying home doing nothing. She would always find something to do and places to go to and of course, she took me everywhere she went. We would leave her house around eleven in the morning and come back around eight at night. I spent most of my time with her. We used to go to malls, parks, museums, squares, etc. We would also just walk the streets of the city and watch street performers sing, dance, do tricks, tell jokes, and other entertaining stuff. She would also bring me with her if she had to run some errands like go to the bank or the supermarket. Overall, we used to do stuff a mother and her child would do. Although Juana is not my biological mother, I love her as much as I love the woman who gave birth to me. I will always have two mothers.

             My first bad experience in the city happened when I was ten. The city was starting to become extremely dangerous. It happened around eleven in the morning and there were a lot of people in the streets. My mother was taking me home from my dentist appointment. All of a sudden she starts walking ahead of me which was weird because she always walks next to me. My mother is then approached by two men, they told her they had a gun and that if she didn’t give them her rings they would shoot her. My mother didn't even look at them; she just kept walking and they kept repeating the same words over and over “Give me the rings! Give me the rings!”. They eventually just snatched my mother’s necklace and ran away. I walked behind her for the rest of the way home. When we got home, she told me that the reason why she was walking ahead of me was that she knew we were being followed and she didn’t want those two men to know I was with her. Judging by their looks my mother told me she could tell they did not have a gun and even if they did, they were not going to shoot her in the middle of the day on a busy street.

A couple of months after that happened, my mother and I were going to one of her client’s house. The lady was getting married the next day and needed my mother to do her hair first thing in the morning. Since she lived kind of far, she told my mother we could spend the night at her house so my mother wouldn’t have to travel all the way from our house to her house in the morning.  It was around nine o’clock at night, there was no one walking on the streets except for me, my mother, and a man who was ahead of us. The man turned left at the end of the street, which was the way we were going as well. A minute after he turned left, we turned left and saw the man who was ahead of us being held at gunpoint by two men. The robbers looked at us but my mother just kept walking and acted like she did not see anything while I locked eyes with both of them. If that man would not have been walking ahead of us, I do not know what would have happened to me or my mother.

When I was twelve, my mother gave me some money to go to the mall and buy two tickets to go see a movie. She was going to close the salon and then she was going to meet me at the mall. We had done that before. This time, however, as I was walking to the mall, a man walks up to me and asks me for an address. I just said I didn’t know and kept walking. Then the man puts his arm around my shoulder and whispers in my ear that he just came out of prison and that if I didn’t give him my phone he was going to shoot me. There was no one around and I was so scared I just gave it to him. I did not want to go to the movies anymore, I was very sad. I just went back to my mother’s salon and from there we went home.

It was depressing to watch the news. People being robbed, kidnapped, and murdered for small things like phones or jewelry. I once heard of a woman whose ears lobes were literally ripped in halves because someone snatched her earrings. You could also hear a lot of stories about people being kidnapped and their families not being able to pay the kidnappers the money they ask for; the bodies of the people kidnapped would be found by the police on the side of the road if their families did not pay. Some kidnappers even murdered hostages after getting the money they asked for. There was also food shortage and extreme inflation in the whole country.

I’ve asked my mother and Juana if Caracas had always been that way. They told me that during the fifties and seventies, Venezuela was the richest country in South America and one of the richest in the world. Caracas, the capital of the country, was the epicenter of its wealth. The city attracted millions of immigrants from Southern Europe and other South American countries. Those days ended when the country became communist.

My mother and I moved to the United States on January 30, 2016. She knew the country was going to get worse and she decided we had to move before it was too late. As we flew over Caracas, I felt relieved. I thought of all the bad things that had happened to me in Caracas and all the bad things going on with the country; the crime, the shortage of food, and the extreme inflation. I was happy that I was finally leaving. It felt like a dream; I was moving to a country where I did not have to worry about a crime, a country where I was going to have more opportunities, I was moving to the country where everyone wants to live.

Now that I am here, I only think of the happy memories I lived in Caracas and I get sad. I think it’s sad that Caracas has become the city it is today. The city has just decayed so much, not only the city but the whole country. It makes me sad that people are starting to kill each other for food. It makes me sad to think that Juana and her husband are still there. I feel bad for the people who did not have the resources to leave and were forced to stay. I feel bad for people not having anything to eat and not having enough money to pay for food due to extreme inflation. It makes me sad to think that I might never be able to go back to the city that keeps all my childhood memories. Caracas is the place where I spent my childhood and it will always have a special place in my heart.