“I had never seen spring. Flower trees, singing birds. This is my first memory of France. The immense lime trees of avenue Gambetta, the bottom of the cold air despite the sun, and the pollen that falls on my clothes, my hair. In Colombia, I only knew winter and summer, and I dreamed of one day knowing the alternation of the four seasons, as in the films.
I arrived in Paris on April 26, 2018, at the Gallieni bus station, with my husband, Willy, and my daughter, Mariana, who was 7 years old at the time. After a Cali-Madrid flight, we took the bus; An eighteen-hour trip, trying, without intimacy or toilet. But as soon as I got off the bus, the feeling of success won. “We did it. God wanted us to get to France, and we are there”, that’s what I repeated myself, like a mantra. I was not afraid the next day, I was rather looking forward to knowing what life would be made.
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