yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Escaping a Venezuelan Prison | Locked Up Abroad


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Enjoy your first day release.

As I walked through the doors, I couldn't believe it. It wasn't just some crazy dream. I might actually get away with this. My stomach's churning over, tying itself up in knots.

I got on the bus. I'm praying that I'm never going to see this place ever again. The bus starts moving. It felt amazing. It felt great. I'm feeling more and more free and less and less like a prisoner.

But the closer we get to the border, I'm getting so nervous. The last bit of the journey is the most dangerous. The bus drives up to the checkpoint. There's guardia everywhere. Not every car gets stopped, so when we got pulled over, my heart literally dropped into my stomach.

I stand out in Venezuela with blue eyes. I can't have the guardia seeing my eyes. If it's the guardia that's worked in the prisons, he's going to recognize me. [bleep] myself.

So I pretend to be asleep. I'm praying that they don't ask to see my passport.

NARRATOR: They scan it. It's going to pop up that I'm a prisoner. When the guard asked the guy next to me, I'm thinking this is it. I'm [bleep]

NARRATOR: And then he asks me for my passport. Before I've had time to think, the bus driver says there's no point in talking to the gringa. She can't speak a word of Spanish.

OK.

NARRATOR: And the guardia doesn't question it. I literally cannot believe what has just happened. I feel like I've got guardian angels around me. I've just escaped prison. I deserved my sentence. But I'm getting closer to Nikita. It was the best feeling in the world.

I can't believe that was my daughter in front of my eyes. She's five years older. And she looks so different. I said, you know what my name is? She said, no. And I said, my name is Natalie. And she said, are you my mummy? I said, yes, I am your mummy. And I always will be.

More Articles

View All
Everest Biology - Life is on the Rise | National Geographic
[Music] Mountainous environments are living laboratories to study environmental change. We’re up here to document whether species are moving upward. What we’re finding in mountainous environments is that species, from plants to animals to insects, are ac…
The Making of Jane - Trailer | National Geographic
JANE GOODALL: My mission was to get close to the chimpanzees and live among them, to be accepted. When I was 10 and I said, “I’m going to grow up, go to Africa, and live with wild animals and write books about them,” everybody laughed. I wanted to do thin…
15 Reasons Why Growing Up Rich is a Liability
If you grew up poor like we did, you certainly experienced firsthand what it’s like to never ask for anything, to be self-sufficient. But every single one of us, deep down, wished our family was rich. But you know how when you were little, you didn’t know…
Beat frequency | Physics | Khan Academy
What’s up, everybody? I want to talk to you about beat frequency, and to do so, let me talk to you about this air displacement versus time graph. So this is going to give you the displacement of the air molecules for any time at a particular location. So…
McDonald v. Chicago | National Constitution Center | Khan Academy
Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy, and today we’re learning more about McDonald v. Chicago, a 2010 Supreme Court case challenging a handgun ban in the city of Chicago. The question at issue was whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process or Immunities …
Read What You Love Until You Love to Read
Before we go and talk about accountability and leverage and judgment, you’ve got a few tweets further down the line that I would put in the category of continuous learning. They’re essentially: there is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines …