When I was, a kid, I used to imagine how America looked. I used to imagine a big city, colors, and tall building. In my mind I could see kids going to school having the best life, and after a long way of imagining the day came.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) came to my house, and they told my mom and dad to be careful from now on, but at the time they came I was not home. I was at church, but one of my friends came to me running saying, "Paskaziya you guys are leaving!" At the time I did not know what she was talking about, so I had to go find out myself.
It is particularly important to the IOM that the families who are leaving are not sick and cannot bring diseases to their new countries. They took my dad first because they had to check him because he was always sick. And they told us to be ready anytime they can take us as well. The same week we were sleeping, but we heard someone knocking so my mom went to open the door and we heard the best news ever.
We got ready and started calling our family members. After calling everyone, they all came to my house to see us getting ready. By than the time was 7 am and everyone was awake. I was not excited because I was just thinking what if we come back and we already give everything away. I started over thinking everything because some people went, only to end up coming back again. Was that going to happen to us? I did not even said goodbye to my friends, so when we left, we never came back. When were in the plane they asked me what I wanted to eat, but I did not say anything because I did not know what they were saying. They just brought me some food, but I hated it. Everything was already starting to look different as we flew away from Uganda.
When we arrived, they brought pizza but still did not know what it was, so I did not eat. We arrived very late, so they just took us in the hotel to stay over the night. In the next morning they took us to and apartment. If you could have seen my face, how happy I was, I could not believe that we were going to live here. Later, we met people in the same apartment, and they knew the same language. I started to get more excited.
The weeks and days before leaving Uganda were a mix of happy and sad, but now, five years later, I am happy that I live here because I get anything I want and eat any day when I could not eat for days in Uganda because we did not have money, I am simply happy that I get a chance to be here.