My trip to Honduras was a real learning experience. My translator, Jorge Flores and I went to meet the family of a man named Juan Carlos. Joy and I met him in Mexico City, as he was preparing to jump a train to the US border. Back in his hometown of Campo Dos in Honduras, we met his wife, Kenia, and three children, his mother, his neighbors, his uncle and cousins. I think we spoke with just about everyone in this tiny town that’s deep in the mountains.

We drank the best cup of coffee I have ever had (Kenia grew and roasted the beans herself). She told us that this is actually Juan Carlos’ fourth trip to the US. She went in 1997 for a while. When she returned, she told me, her children called her auntie.

They are incredibly poor, but something that struck me was how much more they had than I expected. They had a big TV, a DVD player, a refrigerator (though it was on the fritz), a computer, a stereo and even a video game console. They didn’t seem to really use any of them that much though. The rest of the house was a mud-brick and tin-roofed shack with dirt floors.

After talking about Juan Carlos’ absence and what life is like in Honduras, we went to visit the family’s coffee farm that they bought with money Juan Carlos earned in the US. The family wasn’t just using the money Juan Carlos sent home to survive; they were investing it, and making a way to support themselves.

On my last day in Honduras, I met neighbors, and other family members, many of whom had husbands, sons or grandsons in the US. One of the highlights was going to vaccinate a herd of cows against this insect that bites them, and lays eggs under their skin…which eventually grow into worms that eat the cows from the inside out. Gross.

As Kenia led us out of town, we got stuck behind a long caravan of people piled into the backs of pickup trucks. Kenia told me later that it was a funeral for a woman who had two in the United States with Juan Carlos. They hadn’t been able to get back before she died, and they wouldn’t be there for the burial either.

— Matt Largey