By Adriana Dìaz Tirado / El Nuevo Día
The floor was always cold, and there was only one bed in the 20-foot trailer that housed the Fernández family for four months in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after they lost their home.
To turn on the heater—on some days—they had to buy two propane tanks, relying solely on their meager savings to cover the high costs of surgery for their daughter, who had been diagnosed with a tumor in her head.
“We were on the streets for four months. We sold the trailer for $500 to another homeless person. I only had a bed. That was all. If we had to go to the bathroom, we had to borrow someone else’s bathroom who was also living on the street,” said Ariel Fernández, in English, from the living room of his Puerto Rican mother’s house, which has become a space for a new opportunity for the family.
Three months ago, he and his family decided to leave the cold behind and warm up in Puerto Rico, at his parents’ farm, located in the mountains of Aguas Buenas.
With tears in his eyes and looking at his teenage children and his wife, Ariel said, “We lost everything.”
The rent for his apartment in Connecticut rose from $1,800 to $3,200 in the last year. They could no longer afford it, so they had to buy the small trailer for $700, which he described as “terrible.”
“My daughter got sick. She had a tumor in the back of her head and had to undergo surgery. In the midst of all this, we were evicted from our home because we couldn’t pay the rent. Both of us (his wife and he) were working and paying, but it was too much,” he said.
Amidst the difficulties they faced, his father, who lives in Cayey, told him about the farm in Aguas Buenas. It had not been inhabited since 2016, when his mother passed away, and was full of trash, but it was the closest alternative to having a safe roof over their heads.
“We moved here and left everything behind. We abandoned our cars and sold some of our belongings, and sent others away because we couldn’t afford to send everything. When we got here, we had nothing. Thank God for my dad, because he let us stay in a house down there for about a month while we started fixing up this house,” he shared, reliving the most difficult months of his life.
“I need my hands!”
Despite all the work he has managed to do with his ingenuity in a short time to rebuild the home, a few days ago, Ariel suffered serious injuries to four fingers. He said he had to have 26 stitches, two arteries repaired, and has severe damage to his nerves and tendons.
“It was a nightmare at the hospital. My fingers and hand were immobilized for a while. I need my hands to finish our house! I’m very sad right now, and I don’t know what to do,” he posted on his Facebook account, where he documents the work on the residence.
The terrible accident—with a machete he grabbed by mistake—occurred two weeks after El Nuevo Día visited the residence. Ariel told this newspaper that he will need several surgeries and a lot of therapy to recover, so work on the house will slow down.
“I’m in a lot of pain, but I’m getting better. I’m recovering from losing a lot of blood. I need surgery on my hand and fingers,” he said on Friday when asked about his health after the accident.
Ariel had lost his job in the United States. His children attended one of the best schools in Connecticut, but they had to leave so they wouldn’t “freeze to death.” The father said he cried all the time and was depressed.
“Always, always, always, my heart ached when I saw my family in that little trailer in the cold. It broke my heart. It broke everything in me. Then I lost my job and my wife was the sole breadwinner, which made me feel even worse,” he lamented during the visit.
When he suggested to his wife and children—who had never set foot in Puerto Rico—that they move to the island together, she—Wendi Fernández—replied, “Yes, let’s go!”
Opening up about his mental health, Ariel commented that the cold also froze and saddened his heart. “When I came back here, we no longer felt so much pain in our hearts. There’s something here that feels right, like they’re at home and they’re starting to feel it,” he said.
Legacy for his mother
In his youth, Ariel regularly visited the island to play in a baseball league and stayed with his aunt, uncle, and father. In 1987, his parents’ dream of owning a home in Puerto Rico began to take shape with the purchase of a vacant lot in Aguas Buenas.
In 1996, they began building the house that his mother, Miriam Esther López Vásquez, never saw completed, as she passed away in 2016. His father was unable to finish it, and then Hurricane María struck in 2017.
Ariel wants to rebuild the house in honor of his mother, whose ashes he still keeps on top of his refrigerator, and he plans to place them in a cassava plant, which was her favorite. He has already placed the furniture and other belongings they have acquired—through donations—where she told him she would put them, he shared.
“The house was full of trash, lots of old mattresses, piles of tires... Every room was filled with these things. There were about 50 doors everywhere for no reason,” Ariel described the state of the property when he arrived in March.
Along the way, he became a carpenter, electrician, plumber, painter, mechanic, and everything else his family needed to fix the old structure. The rainwater drainage system was broken, but that didn’t stop him from fixing it.
“I had never done plumbing before. I put the pipes together and glued them. I did everything. I kept testing it, and then another one exploded, and then I tried another PVC one, and I put in another new line. Boom! (he exclaimed) and another line exploded. It was a lot of work. For the lights, we put in new wires. I’m not an electrician. I had never done that before, but I did it,” he said.
He also repaired holes in some walls with concrete he bought and, together with his relatives, they filled them in. “I ask people about many things and they answer me. I love being here,” he said about consulting his neighbors, most of whom are contractors.
Electricity and drinking water services are also unstable. They don’t get water three days a week, they said. However, they insist that life here is better than in Connecticut, where electricity came when they found a plug in someone else’s house.
Wendi and Ariel are looking for work, but they haven’t had the opportunity to find any while they continue to renovate the farm. “We need help to finish the house,” said the man, who also repaired a vehicle that helps them get around town.
“We’re trying. We try every day, but it’s difficult,” he emphasized.
For his wife, the months living on the island have been “healing” for everyone in the family, and she highlighted the treatment they have received from Puerto Ricans.
“Everyone is very kind and generous, especially when I go to the stores. I usually say that I moved here and that my husband is from here, that he is Puerto Rican. People are happy to speak to me in English. It has been a great experience. I love the flowers and trees and everything. The biggest difference is the climate, and the attitude is better than in Connecticut. Everyone is happier here,” Wendi said.
Neither she nor her children, Drew and Arabella, aged 12 and 10 respectively, had ever set foot on the archipelago before embarking on this survival adventure. Her younger daughter is already much better after recovering from surgery.
“I have good kids, and that’s why I work so hard to keep them in a safe place. My children are very good. I taught them how to respect everyone, how to love school. They love learning,” said Ariel, who named his new property “Ari Land.”
“People are really nice. They always treat us kindly and say, ‘mucho gusto’ (’nice to meet you’,)” said Drew, who is teaching himself Spanish and hopes to find a school in Puerto Rico that will welcome him as his new home.
“It’s a new beginning,” replied his father, sitting on a mattress where they all rest for now and petting his dog, who also migrated to Puerto Rico.
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To assist the Fernández family, you can donate to Wendi Ellison’s PayPal account at (203) 343-6231.
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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.
