Muhammad Ali once said that “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”

The way I see it, he’s totally right. There aren’t enough years of school that could’ve taught me the things the people of El Salvador did.

Year after year my mom would ship me off for the duration of summer to my little homeland of El Salvador – that’s the small strip of land in Central America. I would curse and shout and close up to anyone who tried to justify her decision and count the days till I could come back before I had even stepped foot into a terminal.

My own personal nightmare

As a teenager with a summer birthday, all I ever wanted was to spend my day with my friends in the states. I didn’t mind going, I just wishes I didn’t have to stay as long as I did. Thanks to my mom, that was next to impossible – getting her to budge and allow a tongue piercing would have been easier (and she would have my head if it happened today).

She knew I was livid but she’d proceed to call me by my full name (that’s never a good idea), and she would give me this long spiel about how “great this opportunity is” and that people would “kill to be me” and she would end in telling me that the people I visited here were going to be my friends forever, and that despite the distance they would remain even as time went by and the rest of my friends changed. I rolled my eyes at my moms stupid comment and stormed away into my room.

In retrospect I realize more and more that what she said was right and I… was wrong.

In the US it’s easy for kids to change friends as often as they switch schools because there’s always so many people you’re bound to meet. This isn’t the case in a small country like El Salvador. Today I can count the number of GOOD friends I still in one hand, but the number of “friends” I don’t talk to runs on and on.
It’s funny because I left El Salvador over 12 years ago – that’s more than half my life – and I still come back to visit every year and the love I receive from these friends is incomparable. The areas where love faltered back in Florida only allowed my friendships here to grow stronger. This isn’t to say I don’t have great friends in the states but lucky are the few who can look back and recall friendships that have lasted for as long as their time on this planet.

“Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres”

“Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell tell you who you are.”

In this hole in the wall, diamond in the rough of a country there’s a certain something in the air. A breeze that goes on and on that carries the love for those around you. People know who you are and are genuinely concerned about you, they pray for your well being and hope for your return. If there is any truth to the saying (and ill vouch for it and say there is) then I can only hope I carry that breeze of love within me and that I too can bring joy to a friend. I come here and I can always feel this happiness people radiate when we’re together and every day I’m thankful my mom decided to send me off.