Visiting the Past: Life in the Jungles of Laos
How do you remember the story of how the Hmong fled to the jungles? The war and Vietnam came to pass the Laos country to fight Cambodia and the Americans need our people to protect the border of Laos from Vietnam. They don’t want the Vietnam soldier to pass Laos country to fight Cambodia and then our people they volunteer to help because the American they say they have to help the Laos country for the freedom. They don’t want us to be communists anymore because Laos kill the Laos king and our people to help protect the king too. After the war, the Laos people put everyone in prison and those who got away fled to the forest.
Did you think the Hmong were right to help? We Hmong, we don’t really know what’s right or wrong. We just know that if someone needs help, we just help them. So, since the Americans were the first ones to ask us to help them, we just helped them.
How long did you live in the jungle and what did you have with you? I live in the jungle like 17 year. We don’t have anything just run with the body.
What did you eat in order to survive? Because I don’t know I just follow my parents say “come leave right now” when we need to be careful of the soldier when they come here. We have to follow them [our parents] then I know I have to help them set the food like potato or something we can eat. Because we don’t have food to eat in the jungle or make farms. My life is difficult. We lived off roots and bananas. Whatever we could find the jungle, honestly.
How many people were a part of your community? Like maybe 50 people or 100? In the central we have a lot but we live in the north so there’s very little people like 200.
Some of you died? How? They have to kill all the people that help the Americans. They kill all people because they say “You help the American people we don’t need you in our country. If you live in our country, we have to kill you. We look at you like animals,” they said.
How often did you have to move and how did you evade soldiers? One year we move like more than 100 places to live. Just stay 2 nights or 1 night and move to other places because we have the people to protect from soldiers so we move to all places. If we don’t move is not safe for us.
If the soldiers found you, what would have happened? Yeah. If they see you they have to shoot. So many friends died when they came to buy something from the market because they can speak Laos and they wear the clothes that are different than the people in the city. Because we have the mountain, right? So, we saw when they came there (Vietnam soldiers) then we say “leave right now.”
How did they view the Hmong people? They say you look like animals not look like people. We say, “What?” We look the same. What are you thinking? Haha. They thought that we didn’t look like hard workers, like we wanted the easy way out.