I live in Vietnam. I went to school in Saigon. I has one cat. I has four brother, no sister. My mother selling in her own store. My father was working for C.I.A. before 1975. After 1975 my father stop working for C.I.A. One night at eight o’clock in August 30, 1978, the Viet Cong come and caught my father to put in the jail. Because my father work for C.I.A. At 1979 my dad is dead. One night my mother put the clothes in the bag. I was ask my mother where are we go? My mom said, “I take your brother to visit your grandma.” I so small didn’t know my brother and my mom escape. I saw her sitting on the table with my aunt, and my mom was crying. I came next to her and she said, “You have to live with your aunt.” I don’t know why. My mom gone about a month and my aunt tell me, “Your mother escape.” At one time my cousin, my aunt, and me try to escape, but we can’t because they caught two of my cousin. And they let them out. One day after school, I went to my house. The Viet Cong came and tell me that they have to take my house, tell me to go live at my aunt house. I ask them why I have to live in my aunt house, they tell me that I under eighteen years old, that right now I have to live with my aunt. At April 7, 1982 I escape with my aunt and her daughter. When we went to Cambodia, we there for week. The half way to the camp my aunt and her daughter go another way, and I go another. We don’t see each other for week. I went to the camp name Nong Samet. I live there for three day and my aunt try got in there. We don’t see each other for ten day. I live with woman. She so nice to me. When I and aunt together in Nong Samet for one week we went to the camp name N.W. 82, which is half in Cambodia and half in Thailand. When we live there they don’t has anything much food. Every day they cook rice for us lunch and dinner. We has to cook our own food to eat with rice. Every day we only has eight liter of the water, every day in the hospital has people sick and almost dead. In our tent it so big we live with two hundred people in there. If the tent dirty the Thailand man call the tent people. They came out, stand there, another Thailand man get a stick to hit the Vietnamese, they don’t care about old people or young people. We live there for a year and we went to Pamatnikhom. Our family live there a week and we went to Philippines, we live in Philippines near the mountain. Every day I went to school there. We live there, we got a lot of water, every day they gave the food to us to cook and eat. We very happy. But I miss my grandparents and aunt. One day in Bataan, Philippines, has hurricane, some of the big tree was fall down, some of the ceiling was flying, we so scary, just for few minutes, then hurricane was gone. One day, our name was call to travel to America. On September 29, 1983 in the morning we drive the bus to Manila. We went to the airplane, we fly all the way to Los Angeles. We stay there for five hours and we fly all the way to Denver. And I see my mother and my brothers. Now we together. Originally published in the March/April 1986 issue of Stone Soup Magazine
My Story
I was born on October 31, 1972 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was very young when my country was in trouble in 1975. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge (the Communist leaders) came into town. They sent us and the other people out of town to other places to work on the rice fields. My family had to walk fifteen days to the new place. We took only things with us like clothes and so on. I didn’t carry anything because I was little. I walked like everybody else in the hot sun in April. The new place where I lived was a flooded region. The natives of that place lived by fishing rather than by farming. We started having our rations because in this new regime people had to eat very little and work very hard. Young children stayed home. They didn’t go to work. But the adults had to go to look for some fish. I lived in that place for five months. Then they sent us to another place. We found that we had to work more than we did in the first place. The people there worked on the corn. Our family life was harder than the first place because we ate only corn. Three months later they moved us to another place. We had to travel by ship to another unknown destination. Our family and my three uncles’ families had to wait for about two weeks to travel. On the ship day my family and my uncle’s family were left behind while the two others had to go on. A week later we had to travel for four days. We arrived at a province and we had to stay for a few days before we rode the train to another place. On the day we travelled the train was crowded with people and their belongings. The train went northwest and discharged us to stay overnight at a railroad station. The place was so dark and deserted. We had to eat the rest of our lunch for dinner. The night was so cold and had a lot of mosquitoes. The night was terrible for us. In the morning, they told us to leave the place for a village about three days’ walk away. Everybody had to carry his or her own belongings. For my family we had a big problem. I had two sisters. My big sister was very sick. A cousin of mine helped us by carrying her on his shoulders. The journey seemed very long for us because we had a lot of stops along the way. We reached a deserted village. Other people had to go farther than we did. That night we slept in a roofless house. The next day they gave us a portion of land to build our house on. My father went to gather some lumber from a temple far away from our place. It took him many days to get enough boards for the house. We used thatches for the roof. Half a month later our small house was finished. My granduncle’s house was next to mine. We started working on the farms. We traded some clothes with the natives for some food. Our condition was getting poorer and poorer. The food ration was scarce. The new people had to work on the road and the ditches to get some food. My sister was getting sicker and sicker. We had no way to cure her illness. She died seven months later. My mom was sick too. She was having chills and fever because we had no food. My father went to work and came back late at night. Three months later my mom was better and she could go to work with my dad on the ditches. We all moved to the work place. My sister and I went to work too. At first, we had enough food, but a month later the food was scarcer and scarcer and the work was still hard. The second month, fortunately, my dad heard of a plan to go away with some friends. The departure day was set. We all knew about it. We pretended that we knew nothing. Some neighbors of ours seemed to leave us alone. That night was so dark. At eight P.M. sixteen of us from four families were ready to leave. We sneaked out of the place and walked very fast with fear in our hearts. I walked with my dad’s friend. He held my hand because my parents had to carry their belongings. My sister walked with my mom. The journey seemed safe for us. We always walked at night. At two A.M. a danger came. Four men armed with long knives walked toward us. We lay down flat on the grass. We were so afraid that we would get caught. We watched them coming in our direction. No one spoke because each of us acted like a dead person. We knew we had no way of fighting with them. As they came nearer, luckily they turned away a little bit and walked away from us. We waited until they were gone far away from us. We continued on our escape and at five-thirty we came to a bushy swamp. We walked into it and stayed for the day. We expected to go on our walk when the night came. Some people slept and some others cooked something for breakfast. We had no food. My dad got some fish from the swamp. We made some soup with some leaves we could pick up from the trees around us. At eight A.M. a man came and we were afraid again. He told us to go to a village quite near the swamp. He said that the village was safe for us. We were a little bit happy. We worked with other people on the farm. I lived away from my parents. My sister did too. We children worked by gathering leaves for fertilizer. During the rainy
The Escape
I have been through an experience that I will never forget. When I was about six years old, my family and I escaped looking for freedom in America, because the Viet Cong took over my country. The country is Viet Nam. The first time we escaped we didn’t make it. I didn’t feel scared or anything; but I felt very uncomfortable sitting in a small boat breathing other people’s breath, hearing babies’ cries, and smelling the dirty fumes from the boat. The second time we tried to escape the Viet Cong caught us and put us into jail. I was really scared when they all pointed their guns at us. After they put us in jail, I began to know what prison was like. Life in prison was very terrible. We didn’t have enough to eat, nor enough clothing, and the little children didn’t get a single decent meal. They didn’t care if the people lying there starved to death. All they fed us was two meals a day, and that’s it. The food that they gave to us was like leftover foods, but we were so hungry we didn’t notice. After spending a month in jail, they let us out. About two months later, my father made another plan. He bought a small passenger boat, then gathered people who wanted to escape. In a few days we took off. This time we made it. We landed on a seashore off Malaysia. We stayed there for two months and many other people like us were there also. Later the Malaysian soldiers put us in a wrecked boat and pulled it out to the international water. We stayed out there for ten days. Whenever an airplane or a boat passed by, the people in the boat tried to signal for help; but it was no use. Finally, a ship saw us and towed the boat to the nearest island, called Air Raya. It was located in Indonesia. We stayed there for nine months. At the beginning of those months, it was horrible. Every day people got sick and died because of the air and foods that they breathed and ate. Later there was a hospital built on the island. After we stayed there, we were all on board a big ship. We sailed to Singapore. From there we flew by plane to America! Originally published in Stone Soup Magazine May/June 1985
