José "Pepe" Ávalo, a Cuban emigrant and sergeant in the United States Army, shared on TikTok the memory of his first job in the country: a day of gardening in Sarasota, Florida, during the summer of 2018, which left him with 100 dollars in hand and a life lesson that he still carries with him.
In the video, published under his profile @el_pepe9o, he shares that upon arriving in the United States, his cousin Ale —whom he says he is “eternally grateful” to— invited him to work with him doing “la yarda,” a term that in this context refers to gardening or landscaping.
"I arrived with the mindset to move forward and work on whatever came my way," he says in the video, although he admits he arrived without appropriate clothing or sunscreen, feeling confident after being in the country for just a few weeks.
Her previous experience in gardening was practically nonexistent. "My gardening experience was limited to a machete and a doodle, so it was zero," she admits with a laugh.
On that first day, he worked alongside his cousin, Don Eliseo, and Junior, Mexican workers whom he praises without reservations: "Those people process the sun as if they were solar panels; they are machines, my respect to the crew, man."
At the end of the day, the boss handed him a 100 dollar bill —a "Franklin," as it's colloquially known— and that moment left an indelible mark on him.
"I cried, I laughed, I cursed Fidel. The first God bless America that I released from my heart was that day, brother," he recounts with emotion.
Pepe connects that moment to something deeper than money: the dignity of honest work and the independence it provides.
"There is no better feeling than working and seeing the results, knowing that with your own efforts you can support your family, pay for your shelter, buy food, without having to rely on a relative living abroad or the charity of a friend," he reflects.
What started as an emergency job took an unexpected turn years later, when Pepe was already wearing the Army uniform.
“Interestingly, I ended up learning a skill that I later applied in my military career to teach the soldiers in my unit how to maintain the grass that surrounded our work area,” he recounts.
Before emigrating, Pepe worked in Cuba as a cook, baker, and waiter, and at the age of 16, he was part of the criticized program for emerging teachers of the Battle of Ideas, which placed untrained adolescents at the front of classrooms to alleviate the shortage of teachers, and which he himself described in a previous video as one of the many failed experiments of the dictatorship.
Already in the United States, he enlisted in the Army and was promoted to sergeant, being one of only two soldiers promoted that month in his specialty.
The video concludes with a direct message to other emigrants: "Sometimes you will end up finding a future you never imagined, or learning a skill that will stay with you for life. So dive in and trust the process."
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