Please wire money

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The equivalent of one third of Honduras’ GDP is wired home every year by Hondurans living and working abroad, the vast majority of course in the States. Without that constant inflow, the economy would collapse completely. Everywhere you go, somebody is asking you where you are from and telling you that they once worked for a year or two in Minnesota, Texas, California, or even Ontario. More often than not they are going back there in a few months.
Throughout the country there are Western Union outlets, as well as less well-known operations, dedicated to keeping that money flowing. On a Friday afternoon there will often be a lineup down the street outside these tellers, young mothers picking up the money from their husbands that will feed the children, older mothers receiving pensions from their grown up and departed children.
The attitude of the ones who have come back belies the myth of the illegal alien as usually portrayed in Hollywood. Far from being some sort of promised land to which you travel to pursue your dreams, the US seems more like a kind of purgatory, a place you must go to serve your time and earn a bit of money so that you can come home again and live your life. You come home, carry on with life, maybe get married and have children, and then when the money runs out off you go again to serve your time in exile, working towards the day when you can come home and live again.
Here in Sambo Creek, another Garifuna village on Honduras’ northern coast, almost all the young men dress impeccably in LA street styles. It seems somewhat incongruous to see them striding along the beach or riding bikes down the dusty tracks, looking like they just stepped off a basketball court in Compton or Harlem. It is not clear whether they have all served terms up north, or if the clothes and accessories have been imported by the few who have made the trip. I do know that there are large Garifuna communities in Miami, New York, LA, large enough that you can go and work and live there without ever having to learn any English. And it seems as if everyone here, at some point in their lives, must go there.

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