Newly arrived Cuban couple is starting from scratch in Miami-Dade
BY ELAINE DE VALLE
edevalle@MiamiHerald.com
They're not sorry they came, even if it means living on the kindness of
strangers for now.
Darien Rosa and Yordania Torres already have a better life in Northwest
Miami-Dade with their 4-year-old son than the one they left behind in
Cuba in August.
Their tiny one-room efficiency in Hialeah is stifling. They sleep in the
one bed that takes up most of the room. Torres cooks in a kitchen the
size of a small, walk-in closet. And she walks 10 blocks each morning to
get their toddler to federally subsidized day care, and 10 blocks to
pick him up each afternoon.
In Cuba, they lived in a three-bedroom house -- with six other people --
and their toddler had more space to play. ``He had the whole
neighborhood to run in.''
But they had no dreams. Now, they have big plans: learning English,
working hard, owning a business, moving into a bigger place, taking
vacations and watching their son grow into a man who can do whatever he
sets his mind to.
These are all things they could never even imagine on the island.
''I'll do anything,'' said Torres, a housewife and stay-at-home mom in
Cuba. ``I don't have a degree. I know I don't have any experience. But I
learn fast. And I'll do anything anyone trusts me to do.
``The only thing I have is a desire to work and guarantee my future.''
She applied for work at several nearby businesses within walking
distance of their place next to the Palmetto Expressway, since they
don't have a car and she doesn't know how to drive. She hopes to hear
back from a factory that manufactures what she called plastic pipe.
Her husband works long days as a laborer for a plumbing company with one
of three brothers who came to Florida during the 1994 rafter crisis. He
has no experience. In Candelaria, the small town where they lived in
Pinar del Rio province, he repaired small appliances: irons, fans,
blenders. He was paid nine pesos a month by the government. To make ends
meet, he raised chickens and pigs illegally and sold them on the black
market.
He hopes to draw on his entrepreneurial skills in a year or two with his
own business.
''Who knows in what? Maybe plumbing,'' Rosa said.
GETTING BY
They get by with help from one of his brothers' in-laws, who rents them
the efficiency for $100, $150 per month -- whatever they can pay -- and
$346 in food stamps that end in January.
Before they got Medicaid, their son Randolt -- diagnosed with epilepsy
two years ago -- needed two prescriptions for a throat and ear infection
that cost $160. Since then, though, he has had tests done at Miami
Children's Hospital and received help from the Epilepsy Foundation,
which nominated the family for The Miami Herald's Wish Book.
''They were referred by their church because they don't have money to
pay for medicine and medical services,'' said Lisette Alvarez, their
caseworker at the foundation. She asks that readers buy the family a
Wal-Mart gift card.
''They need everything -- groceries, clothes, medicines and other
essentials. It's really sad,'' Alvarez said. ``They really have nothing.''
But that's not how the couple see it.
Rosa and Torres were surprised to find themselves nominated for Wish
Book. ''Aren't there people who need help more than us?'' Torres asked.
In their eyes, things are swell.
LEARNING ENGLISH
Randolt, who has not had another seizure since the first, plays outside
in a tiny yard space the family shares with the landlord. He already is
learning English in day care. He can count to nine and say his ABC's --
well, sort of.
''A, B, C, D, E, N, G,'' he starts, proud and loud, ``S, L, H, K, M, M,
M, O, P.''
He blushes when a visitor giggles.
''He's a normal child,'' Torres said as her only son becomes enthralled
again with a Nintendo Gameboy given to him by a cousin.
''If he takes his medicine, we should have no problem,'' Torres said.
Still, Yordania would like to buy some coats or jackets.
''We got some clothes but they are summer clothes and I know that the
cold weather is coming. We need something to keep us warm,'' she said.
If she could buy anything without worrying, her mind turned to just her son.
``He needs so much. I would love for him to have a VCR or DVD player and
some Disney movies or cartoons. He loves them. He gets all excited to
see them.
''This is the reason we came,'' Torres said of her son. She left her
parents, grandparents and sister in Cuba, and has no family here except
her husband's relatives.
``We do everything for him.''
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