Values & Memories
“I don’t like conflict” Me, personally, I don’t like conflict. You know, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the worst part of it. For example, I’ve seen people who die and literally float by. I remember one evening or one night, we got woken up by all these gunshots, and I popped up and went to the window at my house to look towards those hills behind our house where the post…well…the army post was on those hills. And I would see storms of bullets, because bullets glow at night, you can literally see it – there’re just storms of bullets, you know? And people were fighting back there. My parents said, “No, no, you can’t stand there. Get down. We are trying to protect ourselves.”
And I’ve seen how it changed people’s life. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want to be in the military. I remember that recruiters came to school and told us how we needed to join the service. I didn’t want to be part of that. Two of my nephews actually joined – one joined the U.S. Marines for eight years, and the other joined the U.S. Army for six years. In fact, they went to the Gulf War in the early 90s. Not too long after high school, both my nephews went there and fought, and they are both veterans. They have a different perspective, but for me, in general for our older siblings. We didn’t like conflicts – the nature of ‘we need to fight for something.’
The other thing that I think affected my family, and including myself, was we were always afraid of the authoritative figures. You know how governments change and we were kind of afraid of new governments. And we escaped – coming to Thailand to refugee camp – we were being watched 24/7, by a guard and things like that. And they were they could be very rough. You can be mistreated. And the consciousness of you not being able to say what you really feel because other people might take it the wrong way and you might end up where you don’t want to go. So authority figures, especially someone in a uniform, are very intimidating to us.
Did your parents tell you any story about the war? And how the memories were remembered? …And it is very usual for refugee family not to talk about it. And we don’t talk much about it unless there is some kind of funny story behind it. We really like to remember the funny stuff, right? Something that would make us happy. They do talk about how life was different before the war. You know before when they were still owning businesses and being able to have the freedom to travel, and you know to go to the other countries on vacation and things like that, versus [when] all the borders were closed and you don’t even get to communicate you know with your neighbor countries, or you [cannot] do exchange or business with them, right. So that’s the big difference and they do talk about the way we lived our [lives] differently.
Did you feel you were stripped away from your home? At the beginning I was. Before I graduated from high school, I didn’t like it. I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t feel that people wanted me here, and not just me but my kind of people. The refugees, the southeast Asians, we didn’t feel like we belong because others judged us. I am not saying that’s everyone but there are these little incidents that will make you remember.
“I was born at home but not in the hospital” This is actually the house that I was born in. So, many people they don’t give birth in the hospital and they give birth at home with the midwife. I was actually born somewhere up here. “We got baptized” when we’re in the U.S. And majority of Southeast Asians: Laos, Thai, Cambodia were predominately Buddhists who practice Buddhism. And we were sponsored by the church. So every Sunday we get picked up by the church van to go to church and we were baptized. Sit at the front row of the church and watching the whole ceremony thing. And we were being baptized. I don’t know why we, you know, we get to do that.
We’re Never Poor in “Love” One of the things that I know in our own family even though we’re poor with value, with currency, with money, [and] with possession, we were never poor with love. My parents always love us, and support us and encourage us like we’re going to make it. And I think that that’s probably one of the key factors for us to be able to make it, to have that hope is that we’re still family.
“I am very proud to be who I am today” I am today very proud to be who I am, a U.S. citizen. I’m also proud to call myself a Laotian American. No matter where I go, where I end up, that was always going to be a part of me. In fact, I went home with my son who was born and raised here to Laos in 2004 so that he could know and learn where his dad came from, where his ancestors came from. I will always have that tie, in a bittersweet kind of way.