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Diego Coello Luna

Ryan Abt

Individuals & Societies

21 September 2018

Dear Coellos,

I am writing to you guys half way across the world from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I have

migrated 14,204 km away from our city of San Pedro Sula and it is really different from home.

Here in Tanzania I have been on many Safaris which are really different and new from what we

had in Honduras. I could never imagine that I was going to be in a car going around looking for

wild animals in their natural habitats. I have also been to Arusha, Moshi, Iringa, and Zanzibar

which are all different places with different cultures and lifestyles. These trips have helped me

learn a lot more from Tanzania. I don’t have any family members or friends here which is hard

and it makes it harder to adapt. Leaving the people that are close to me behind is probably the

thing I miss the most about Honduras. In Honduras the people that I hung out with and most of

the people from my school were Honduran so there wasn’t much diversity. Here in Dar es

Salaam and in IST there are people from many different countries and this is a new experience

that let’s me learn more about the world. This is an opportunity that I didn’t have where I came

from and I do have here. A downside that I have noticed from being an immigrant here are the

locals. From my experience some of the locals here call immigrants “Mzungu” or “Muzungu”

and/or they mock you saying things in Swahili that you don’t understand.
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There are different push and pull factors that influence the decision of migrating from Honduras

to Tanzania. One of the push factors is the violence that Honduras has. Honduras, more

specifically San Pedro Sula, has been named the most dangerous country/city in past recent

years. In 2009 Honduras held the highest homicide rate and San Pedro Sula was the city in

Honduras with the most homicides having 137.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. I have also

witnessed this first hand because I have been robbed twice, both with people that had guns and

you can’t live in fear not knowing when something is going to happen to you. Another push

factor that helped made the decision to emigrate from Honduras were the government issues that

the country was having. In 2009 Manuel Zelaya, Honduras’ president at the time, had to be taken

by the country’s military and was taken out of the presidency. This is because he wanted to make

a new law about re-election which is illegal in the country and so the National Congress and

military took action. A more recent case of this is in 2017 when Juan Orlando Hernandez went

for re-election. This time Juan Orlando had a close battle to presidency against Salvador
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Nasralla. Nasralla was winning in the elections until suddenly there was a blackout and the

system went down. When the system came back up, Juan Orlando was winning and in the end

Juan Orlando won the election. This cause riots and violence and it made the elections take over

a month too solve but in the end Juan Orlando became the first re-elected president. These two

example cause many violent riots and protests which had people killed, places burned, and made

the economy drop significantly.

This is a picture of what used to be the place where you pay the toll to go through San Pedro

Sula and La Lima. This damage was caused by the riots in the 2017 elections and this place was

later burned down.

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The things listed above were the things that pushed me away from Honduras and made me want

to immigrate to another country. These are the things that made my family make the decision of

coming to live specifically in Tanzania. First of all, Tanzania is the 5th safest country in Africa

and the safest country in East Africa. Tanzania’s homicide count in 2015 was 3746 and the

population at the time was 55.88 million making the homicide rate around 6.7 per 100,000

inhabitants. This shows that Tanzania is a lot safer than Honduras according to homicide rates.

Another pull factor was a contract that my father’s company offered him if he moved to

Tanzania. This contract offered really good benefits that would help my whole family. The

company offered a good income, health care, education in a good school, housing, and even trips

to go visit the family. This opportunity was too good for us to let down so we took it and we all

moved to Tanzania.

Now that I have moved to Dar, I can see some of the advantages and disadvantages from both

countries. In Honduras, I had all my friends and family that I had had for my whole life and now

I can’t see them everyday like it used to be. I was also the number one mathlete in my

Mathcounts team in E.I.S. and I was in Team A in Knowledge Bowl so me leaving makes a huge

impact on the teams’ outcome in the competitions. An advantage of leaving though, is that I get

to experience the lifestyle in another continent that is a lot different than mine and more diverse.

Emigrating from Honduras also gives me pretty much a reset on the decisions I make. For

example: I choose new friends to be with, new activities to be in, and new likes and hobbies than

the ones I had before. Now the advantages and disadvantages from immigrating to Tanzania. As

I said earlier, Tanzania is a much safer place than Honduras with much less crime happening.
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Here in Dar es Salaam I can walk to school or walk to my friend’s house or take a Bajaj

somewhere which I couldn’t even dream of doing in San Pedro Sula. This makes a huge

difference on all of our family members because now we are less worried about being

somewhere that’s not safe. The disadvantages are that here you can’t shop. There are a limited

amount of stores that sell good clothing and a lot of it is fake. So we have to shop everytime we

go out of the country and then we come back with a lot of luggage. I miss a lot about Honduras:

my family, my friends, my school, and the food. The worst part about migrating is leaving it all

behind.

This is my family in Honduras.

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Word Count: 1034

Works Cited

Distance Calculator Find Distance Between Cities​, 20 Sept. 2018,

www.distancecalculator.net/.

"Juan Orlando Hernández Looks Headed for Re-election in Honduras." ​The Economist​, 25

Nov. 2017,

www.economist.com/the-americas/2017/11/25/juan-orlando-hernandez-looks-headed-

for-re-election-in-honduras.

"Manuel Zelaya | Biography & Facts." ​Encyclopedia Britannica,​

www.britannica.com/biography/Manuel-Zelaya.

"Tasa De Homicidios En Honduras Es Ocho Veces Superior a La Media Mundial |

AméricaEconomía - El Sitio De Los Negocios Globales De América Latina."

Wayback Machine,​

web.archive.org/web/20110928041625/www.americaeconomia.com/politica-sociedad

/politica/tasa-de-homicidios-en-honduras-es-ocho-veces-superior-la-mundial.
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"Top 10 Safest Countries in Africa." ​Answers Africa,​ 3 May 2018,

answersafrica.com/safest-countries-africa.html.

"United Republic of Tanzania Homicides, 2000-2017 - Knoema.com." ​Knoema​,

knoema.com/atlas/United-Republic-of-Tanzania/topics/Crime-Statistics/Homicides/H

omicides.