Brigid+'Faye'

=Brigid 'Faye'=

Interview with Brigid 'Faye'
media type="custom" key="8171400"

Geography/Biography
Faye Bingaman came from Trinidad. She lived in a fishing town where she grew up with her family. When she was old enough to get a job she worked as a schoolteacher. in Trinidad many kids come from tens of miles around. Trinidad is 5000 sq miles in area. It is in the Caribbean Sea and near the North Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Venezuela. Beaches surround it. It was first colonized by the Spanish then went to British control in the early 19th century. It was most known for the sugar industry. It manly exported sugar production as well as cocoa. The discovery of oil in Trinidad in 1910 added another export. They became Independent in 1962. The country is one of the most prosperous in the Caribbean because of its petroleum and natural gas production and processing. Tourism is mostly in Tobago.

The Questions
By: Matthew Wilson

I had just gotten home from the Trinidad embassy. It in a little building in which hundreds of people go to get a visa for America. Me and my fierce Clive have been trying to get a visa for a few weeks now. We have been going to the embassy for a few weeks now because they make sure immigrants are healthy. They have been taking blood tests taking chest x-rays tests for aids and to make sure I was never exposed and making sure that I had no viruses to spread. The worst part was that we had to pay for each x-ray blood test and it added up to about $1,000 out of our reserves. The reason I am going to America is so that I can go with my fiancé to get married in America. I am afraid that I might not be able to go to America. I am afraid that they might find something wrong with me and say I cannot go with my fiancé. They have been prodding me asking me questions like what did you eat last night. The kind of questions you would only know if you where with your fiancé. They have been giving us papers which have been very confusing. “So how are you doing?” said Clive “I have been having a hard time on my questions.” said Faye “Witch part of it is hard?” “All of it.” “Can you give me some examples?” “Well they keep asking me these questions like what side I have been sleeping on and what have I been eating.” “Well those are personal. I think they are asking these questions because I have heard that some people say that they are engaged but they are living apart and are just trying to get to the United States,” he said. “But still they are still pretty personal and embarrassing.” “Well it helps keep it equal and fair.” “It would be hard enough to get in without having people lie to get to America.” “Well I know if we try we will get in somehow”

Transcript
Matthew: what troubles if any did you face when you arrived?

Faye Benjamin: When I arrived in America that was in September 1991, the most trouble I had was I couldn’t work. When you immigrate you can not legally until you have your green card you are restricted as to of being able to find employment and that was hard. You had to get a new Drivers Licenses. You can drive for up to a year on your foreign Drivers Licenses. You have to take a new test all over again to get an American Drivers Licenses. So that for me was the biggest difficulty.

Matthew: What kind of fun things in your home country?

Faye Benjamin: Things that I could do there that I can’t do here is that Trinidad is an island so that beaches are regularly available and that there is only two main seasons, wet and dry. It is warm year round no snow so one of the things that is different is in the tropics is that you can plant a garden anytime and if you neglect it a little bit it will survive. You have to remember that in-between April and September is all the time you have so you have to be very focused. So that was a big change and not being able to go to the sea. I tried lakes the water is vary very cold. So there was nothing like the same thing. I didn’t like that. So just being change of climates is a big difference. Here you have to go hundreds of miles to get to a beach here in the mid west. In Trinidad you must drive for an hour to find one.

Matthew: What were some of the games did you play when you where a kid?

Faye Benjamin: That we don’t play here cricket is a game we play soccer well we play that here but we call it football games like some thing that I’ve never seen here called rounder’s. It’s a game kinda like baseball but you have bases but you play with your hands. You actually hit the ball with your hands no bat or anything like that and the games are different. I think that’s pretty much it that I can think of. We play marbles, which is an old fashioned game I don’t think I’ve ever seen American children do. I haven’t met any marble players in the U.S. I think rounder’s and cricket Would be the ones that stuck in my mind that’s most distinct compared to American culture.

Matthew: Do you have any family back home?

Faye Benjamin: pretty much all my family is back home. My parents still live they’re my siblings I have one sister I have one sister who lives in Holland. But all my other siblings live in Trinidad.

Matthew: Do you ever go back to Trinidad to see your family sometimes?

Faye Benjamin: Yes I do.

Matthew: Is it hard to change back to a different Language?

Faye Benjamin: Well Trinidad is A English speaking country so we mostly speak a English dialect. But it’s not hard to switch back and forth, not at all and I am a Trinidadian we can speak to each other and understand but we tend to forget so no its not hard switching back and forth and I think that even my children who like it in America have big problems because a few words sound different and when they go to visit there cosines in Trinidad say hmm it sounds like a American so but besides the accent and the few words that we tend to use differently it not hard for us no.

Matthew: What was the toughest part of moving.

Faye Benjamin: Leaving my family behind. I’m close to them I miss my brothers and sisters and I still miss them that was the hardest for me.

Matthew: What was your reaction to life in the United States?

Faye Benjamin: I had visited before. When I migrated it wasn’t like I had never been here before. I have a aunt in Texas so I had visited Dallas, Texas before and I had visited the husband to be twice before I came so at least I was a little filmier and I had gone to school in Canada. Canada is not part of America but it has very similar culture so it was a difference I was still walking everywhere things seemed to be much closer and here when I walked on the road I thought the cars were going to run me over because they don’t pay much notice to pedestrians so that was for me a big eye opener. Transportation, I didn’t own a car in Trinidad we had buses and taxies here at least in the west it was hard to get around if you didn’t have a car and my family only had one car so I found myself feeling very restricted between not being able to walk and not being able to walk safely and then finding out that everything is so far away from home so that was the hardest thing.

Matthew: Was the United States different from what you expected?

Faye Benjamin: I had some surprises. These are the things that I found surprising, one was how persistent I was for example I was a teacher in Trinidad because when I came to Ohio I had to train to be a teacher again because they wouldn’t recognize my qualifications and when I went into collage. Here I went to Wright State many of the students seemed ill prepared to go to college. So that was a big surprise to me I remember talking to people about that and they said that they have open enrollment so as long as they got through high school they could get in to go to collage. And I was really taken back by how many people started and didn’t finish because in Trinidad there were limited colleges and expensive so the people that go in are expecting to graduate. They don’t go in to see if they are going to like it. One thing that I found very strange was that you could not go to any school that you wanted. In Trinidad you had open enrollment in college but not in elementary school. In Trinidad which is about 50 by 50 you can go to school anywhere on the island. If they lived an hour and a half from the building the parents would pay for transportation. They did not say you do not attend this neighborhood so you can not go to this school. It surprised me that there was a vast difference between one school district and another.

Matthew: What was your favorite food in your home country

Faye Benjamin: there is something we call pa le (looks like beans and rice and meat cooked together) it was Spanish and paella which looks like rice and seafood. There is something like plantain it looks like a giant sized banana but you don't eat it raw it has to be fried or baked or boiled and its one of my favorite vegetables. Fish is readily able and we have all kinds of fish and seafood that is hard to get in the Midwest because it is expensive. There is also a sweet potato but its not orange and not floury but is firm and purple when it is cooked which I have not eaten in a long time it feels like now that I think about it.

Matthew: If you had a choice would you move back to your home country?

Faye Benjamin: Yes, because my family is there.

Matthew: What brought you to the U.S.?

Faye Benjamin: I got married to my husband because my husband lived here.

Matthew: What was one thing that was better here and one thing that was better in Trinidad?

Faye Benjamin: You could go to the beach easily in Trinidad. I think things are more easy here. I think you can get things done faster here, more efficiently, a lot of red tape to go through in Trinidad. We tend to have a lot of waiting. That has to do with not having a lot of technology when I left we had only gotten machine readable pass ports in that last 5 years or so. There is also a wider range of educational chances in the US. Trinidad still struggles with what are called limited chances, more people want to go to college that can. In only the last few years have you been able to say all kids could graduate high school. You had to compete to go to a public high school, otherwise you had to pay for private school and it was very expensive. Here there are more classes available than people wanting to take them.

Matthew: Describe a typical day in your home country.

Faye Benjamin: When I was a teacher I would get up around 5 a.m. Have a shower and would take a bus or taxi to school, or walk if it was close enough. Kids played outside unsupervised as the teacher would go in and prepare for the day. I taught reading, math and agricultural science, whatever needed to get done and ready to start school. My last job was working in a rural fishing village. I could look out the door and see the ocean. Kids would come over a wooden bridge coming to school. All school children in Trinidad wore uniforms. All kids wore yellow shirts and gray pants. Wrote on black boards with chalk and had textbooks. We had 7 tiers in a day, doing math and science throughout the day. I would go home for lunch walking home a short distance to go back and finish teaching the other four tiers in the day. Go home, grade papers, do laundry by hand go to bed early by 9 and get up in the morning and to it all over again. I went home only once a month and it was nice to be away from our family of 6 and it was quiet.

I taught in a Catholic school. In Trinidad we do not have a separation of church and state and most schools were religious schools. Essentially so that to give the students an education the country asked the churches if they could send students to their school and they would pay teacher salaries and student tuition instead of having to build all new schools. We would have prayer, and the priest would come every 6 weeks. Nuns would do a normal mass otherwise.

I would go to the beach. We didn’t have electricity so when fishermen would give me (Miss as teachers are called) shark, fish etc. I would have to clean, season or cook the fish by lunch time otherwise it would spoil. You had to be efficient and it had to be taken care of right then a there. That was my typical day.

Matthew: How hard was it to immigrate to the US (process)?

Faye Benjamin: Very hard and very expensive. My reason was to get married almost 20 years ago. At that time there were very limited visas for Trinidadians. What was required was that Clive (husband) had to apply for a foreign fiancé. Once that process started I had to pay for a bunch of medical tests to prove that I was healthy. I had to get a criminal record to prove that I was not a felon, drug tests. I had chest X-rays, blood tests, test for AIDS and that I was never exposed. All this had to be paid for by yourself, only by certain doctors, specific labs aprox. $1300. You had to be fingerprinted and 2 or 3 letters of recommendation (police officer, particular groups of people) You had to go to an interview at the US embassy. All of that passed and went through they would sent you a letter stating that you were approved and got a I 19-5 number that you have been approved. Leaving Trinidad you couldn’t or entering the US you couldn’t get married because then you would become a foreign spouse and there were people that would get married just to come in the US. When the paperwork was done you traveled to America and you passed immigration in Aruba and put me in a room and asked a bunch of questions. Stapled the original form to my passport and I think I came through Florida.

When I came here I had to be married in 6 weeks of coming to America. I got married on the 23rd of September at the courthouse and then I had an appointment date in Cincinnati. Then we had interviews separately so that they could ask questions to verify and prove they were actually married, only questions you could answer if you were living intimately like what did you have for dinner. Questions are very personal and almost demeaning, like don’t you trust me. Once that was approved you had the approved to get another I form then I could work, until then I couldn’t work, and could apply for a SSN and apply for a green card (that is not green at all) that says you are a resident alien and you have legal rights to stay as long as the government said you could stay, pay taxes and social security. If the government knocked on my door and said I’m no longer welcome and I have to leave, I have no legal recourse because I am not a citizen and I have to leave. Immigrants have to pay your way. Clive had to prove he could financially able to support me.

Analysis
My interview is the same as in history class. We learned that it is hard for many immigrants to find jobs and it is hard for them to get to the U.S. We learned that it’s hard work to be able to get to America.

Many people came over from many places. I learned that some people even lied to be able to get to the United States. Over the past few years many immigrants have tried to get to the U.S. and many have made it. But some over the years have not. In Trinidad there was a small supply of spouse visas. There have been a lot of emigrations over the years that many people were not able to go because of not enough money or not enough visas.