Litzy

It all began one morning in Colombia—in my home country, in my hometown called Cicuco. Due to various troubles, my family and I were forced to leave the country. We set out on June 10, 2024, at 2:00 in the morning. We traveled from my hometown to a region of Colombia called Montería; from there, we stopped and spent 10 days held captive in Acandí. Afterward, we spent one day at the edge of the jungle; then, at 5:00 in the morning, we entered what is known as the Darién Gap. That is where the true odyssey of migration began; it took us two days to make it out. We emerged from the jungle and arrived at Bajo Chiquito. We spent a day there, arriving as if we felt no fatigue at all. We ate—we didn't even know what we were eating, but we ate it nonetheless. We went to bathe in the nearby river; our feet were covered in sores, and we were utterly exhausted, yet we felt a sense of accomplishment—we had been strong enough to make it through that ordeal. From there, the Panamanian army arrived to extract us and transport us to a facility known as "La Uno" in Panama, where we stayed for 15 days. From that point on, we continued moving forward, traveling from country to country until we reached Nicaragua. There, we were robbed and spent 10 days living on the streets. From there, we pressed on until we reached Hidalgo, the border crossing between Mexico and Guatemala Once there, everything we had left was taken from us. We remained there for a time until immigration authorities transported us to Tapachula, where we slept outside the bus terminal, right on the street. We then continued our journey until we reached Masatepe, from where we walked 50 kilometers to reach Pijijiapan.