Hard Work Makes for Success
by Manuel Orona
My name is Manuel Orona. I am from the state of Durango, Mexico, where
you have to work for yourself when there is no one else that can help.
There were five of us in the family. I am the youngest in the family.
There is one sister that still lives in Mexico. My parents are also living
in the same place where I was born in Mexico. My brothers live in a town
near Austin, called La Grange, Texas.
My parents both went to primary school in Mexico and they wanted all
of us to go to school. When I lived in Mexico I was only able to go to
the fourth grade. After fourth grade I couldn’t continue to go
to school because I had to go to work with my father. We worked at cultivation
of the land. We would plant maize (corn), beans, alfalfa, and wheat.
The farm belonged to my father so, we had to do as much of the work as
was possible. I like this kind of work when I was little but it just
didn’t help me make enough money to get the things that we needed
for the family.
I first came to Texas walking from the border to the city named Uvalde.
It was in November so the weather was cold. While I made the trek to
Austin, I felt scared some of the time because I was young. I must have
been only about eleven years old. I was with a group of people that knew
me and I knew but it was still an unknown experience. I have lived in
Texas since I first came here.
I feel proud of the work that I have done here. I started to work with
a contractor. I was responsible for cleaning and painting trailer houses.
I learned to use a spray gun to do the painting. After this I did lots
of other odd jobs. Now, the kind of work that I do is perforation of
land. The perforation is done to extract oil or gas for refineries. It
is dangerous. The hole can explode of the machine that I use can burn
and cause injury to me. I have leaned quite a bit more than what I use
to know when I was a small child and first living here.
The success that have had with work that I learned to do has also been
helped by learning to understand more and more English. The English that
I have been learning has been in schools. I started going to English
classes some time ago. I have been coming to classes at La Fuente School
for several months this year and the year before. I try to come as much
as I can but sometimes work makes me miss classes. Some of the palaces
that I have had to go do the work that I do are Bryan, Navasota,
Brenham, La Grange, Giddings and other places that require staying for
several days. The business provides trailers for the workers so that
is where I sleep when I have to work out of town.
I started classes at La Fuente last year and have been in classes some
of this year. I found out about these classes because the priest at the
church let us know that the classes were going to be offered here. I
want to keep coming to the classes because I want to keep learning English.
It is important to learn English because it helps you where ever you
go.
I have set a goal for myself to find a job that is not as hard. I think
that learning English will help me do that. I will continue to come to
the classes as often as I can because I know that this is one thing that
I can do that will permit me to reach my goals.
Manuel Orona
as told to the teacher… Tomas Rodriguez
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