By Jaime Jaramillo, October 7, 2019 — One year for my birthday — I can’t remember how old I was turning but I remember I was dressed nicely for the occasion — I had my nice vest on and my ‘Cali panchageros’ (nice dress shoes). So, at one point my two cousins, Judith and Sandra, and I go behind the house to a stream. This stream is where two hills meet so we jump back forth across the water just to be funny, I guess. The water was where all the sewers released into. And I fall in. While I fall, I instinctively yelled and because my mouth was open, I drank all that dirty water full of poop. I spent the rest of the day throwing up and getting shots every day for three months.
Growing up on my block I was the only little kid. My mother had come to the States. She brought me with her when I was one year old, but I got really sick in the winter, so she sent me back to Colombia and my aunts and uncles raised me. In the house you had my three uncles and one aunt, raising me — a devil child. The rest of the kids on the block were about 8 years older than me. Anyway, when I was 5 years old, they taught me how to smoke a cigarette. We would climb the roof of my house and we would sit there smoking. I heard they were all killed. They were involved in bad things. I always wonder what would have happened to me if I stayed in Colombia. I came to the states when I was 7.