Personal Narrative: My Life In Nicaragua

The sun had just begun to rise and the temperature was growing warmer with each passing minute. Gusts of wind brought dust swirling into the house as I lay in the bed that I shared with my mom and sister. My mom was just beginning to scrub clothes across the surface of a washboard and was hanging them up to dry on the nearby clothesline outside. Laundry was what kept our family alive because after my father left us a few years ago life became so much harder. I often helped my mom around our one room house cleaning, fixing meals, and occasionally helping collect laundry from our neighbors. We survived off of our month-to-month income and every penny counted. Life in Nicaragua had always been tough for our village because we lived in the poorest

We were both thinking about it so when we got home we both started to sing her favorite song and somehow it gave us a sense of peace and relief. Immediately after we entered the house it began to hail and the noise of the ice pelting against the roof was the sound of a drum growing louder and louder. I had to stay strong for my sister, and I couldn’t show any sign of fear even though inside I was terrified to. After I had fixed dinner and tucked Catalina into bed the storm seized. I didn’t want to walk outside to see the damage of the storm so instead I went to sleep.

The next morning after preparing breakfast I walked outside and saw all the branches and leaves spread across the road. Clotheslines had been torn from their posts and laid limply on the ground. I saw what appeared to be a school bus pulling up to the church. People began stepping off of the bus, but they looked different then the people that I had seen before. They appeared to be whiter than most people in Nicaragua were. I walked towards the church and was immediately greeted by unfamiliar faces, one whose name was Ally. It then dawned on me that maybe these were the gringos that were coming to help