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1)      After months spent with the family in this house, I went back to Managua and went to the Ministry of Childhood and told them my experience at the “Remar” centre for children had been very bad. So they sent me to another centre for children called “Zacarias Guerra”, where I spent several months. The staff at the centre got in touch with my family to put me in touch with them, but I never agreed to see my parents again.

2)      When I was around twelve years old, my mother visited me, accompanied by friends, and asked me to come back home. She stressed that everything had changed, that my father had become a new person that would do everything differently from now on. She told me to escape the centre (because, even though the staff wanted me to be in touch with my family, they wouldn’t let me leave the centre). She wanted me to come back home. Motivated by the illusion that things could be different at home, I escaped the centre and went home.

3)      I only stayed home for a week, because nothing had changed, all was the same after two years – my father still charged furiously against me and insulted me and offended me without any reason. My father beat me again too, even more violently and aggressively than before.

4)      I spoke with my mother telling her that I was tired of this whole situation and that what she and my father had promised was a lie, my father was the same, he only needed to look at me and he got extremely mad very easily, without reason. So, I told my mother that I wanted to leave and make my own life far from my father and from all his violence. My mother reacted angrily and threw stones at me.  She told me to get out and not come back. I felt very sad about that and had never thought she would do that to me.

5)      I took some clothes and my backpack. I started to walk away and went to the house of a woman who was my friend. She owned a restaurant and I told her I needed her help at that point because my mother had expelled me from home. My friend welcomed me and I spent two months in her place. I helped her with the restaurant, doing all sorts of tasks and anything she needed help with. Her children and her husband were causing her problems because they were not comfortable with my presence, because I was a stranger to them.

6)      I decided to leave her place, put my clothes in my backpack and a map I took from a book. My guide was to walk on the Panamerican highway, because it goes all the way from South-America to Mexico. That’s why it was the main reference for me.  My ultimate goal was to make it to the United States, where I could feel more free and safe. I knew about San Fransisco, and even New York and Boston.  I was not expecting to be able to live openly as a gay man, I was simply seeking immediate safety.
 

Travelling North: Honduras, El-Salvador, Guatamala, Mexico

7)      I walked and hitch-hiked to the border with Honduras, and continued through Honduran territory, sometimes on foot, sometimes hitch-hiking, always following the Panamerican highway.

8)      In Honduras I came across a town named Pespire, where I went to the central church, which was a Catholic church. I asked the priest for help. I stayed that night at the Church, in an available room. Next day, he offered me some money to take a bus to the border point between Honduras and El Salvador named El Amatillo. When I arrived, I didn’t know how to cross the border. In exchange for some money and clothes, a man showed me how to get into El Salvador. We crossed the river to Salvadorean territory. I started walking again on the Panamerican highway.

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