Latest / Centrally Speaking / Fleeing the Khmer Rouge: the Tha Family and Refugees from Cambodia

Transcript

Fleeing the Khmer Rouge: the Tha Family and Refugees from Cambodia · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the Central Schreinfeller Churches podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: Our podcast today is called Fleeing the Cameroon, the Ta Family and Refugees from Cambodium.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm very fortunate to be joined today by Lot Tuma, who at the age of 10 came from Cambodia to the United States along with her family of eight.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: She came to Lansdale, Pennsylvania and grew up in this suburb of Philadelphia.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Did her high school in the Lansdale area.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Tuma went on to Quin and Mercy College for two years and majored in business, where she made the dean's list several times.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: She was then offered a job in Georgia and ultimately earned her Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration from Shorter University.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Now she works at a Fortune 500 company working with information technology.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: She and her two boys now live in Atlanta.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: And Lot, we're very glad to have you as part of Centrally Speaking.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for coming and being willing to share about your journey from so many years ago.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me, Drake.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: We have a number of questions to ask you about your journey from Cambodia, but many of our listeners won't know where Cambodia is.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe you could help by saying where it is in Asia, what countries it's near, and maybe just a little bit about the country of Cambodia.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Cambodia is a country that is in southeastern Asia.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: It borders Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: The climate there is typically really warm all year long, and we do have two seasons that is a rainy season and a dry season.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: And in Cambodia, what are the languages that are spoken there?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: Just so that our listeners have an idea.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: The language spoken in Cambodia is Khmer, and Thai and Lao or Liaoshan are also spoken there.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Most people grow up speaking uh two, three languages, I would assume.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is that correct?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is correct.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Where did your family live in Cambodia before they fled to America?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: My family and I lived in a small village outside of the city of Patambong, Cambodia.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's about 280 kilometers from the capital of Cambodia, which is Phnom Penh.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: And what was the occupation of your father before he fled with the family back in the 70s?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mom and dad were farmers.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: They had several rice patties that they owned and worked on, where they planted, cultivated, and harvested rice crops.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Once the rice is harvested or cleaned, it's then put into a silo inside the barn.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: We also had a mini market in the village, but we never had any money to go buy anything there.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So everything that we consumed comes from the farm.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: We raised chickens, duck, pigs, cows, and water buffaloes.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the water buffaloes were used on the right patty fields or farm to help with the tilling and other really hard manual labor.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So mom and dad worked really long hours, typically from the crack of dawn until dusk, just to provide for us.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't really get to see them that much except for dinner time and then spend a little bit of time together in the evening.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then it just starts all over again the next day.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that was just part of life.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then in America, when we were here, dad worked at a poultry factory until he retired.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then mom also worked at a paper printing company as well as Hatfield quality meat for a couple of years before her retirement.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: And were you working out in the fields as well?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would go with mom and dad sometime to help pull the weeds from the rice patty, or just go and pick vegetables when you know they're ready for picking, or go collect eggs from the chicken and just whatever they needed to help around the house.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: We would help out.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: We were as young as four or five, you know, we would have chores.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then things were fairly peaceful until the Khmer Rouge came along.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: Many people that are listening may not know about the Khmer Rouge.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: Who were they and what made them so mean?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, under the Khmer Rouge regime, which is under the leadership of Pol Pot, they were just ruthless and cruel people that took over and ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to create Cambodia as a communist country, and their aim was to really have a classless and agriculture society.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they used force and any means of torture to control the people.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: They banned family life.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't own any property or land and anyone believed to be intellectuals, such as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or those that were in the military were killed.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And in addition to that, any minority groups, such as Vietnamese, Chinese, or Muslims were killed as well.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Early on, the Khmer Rouge led people to believe that cities were going to be attacked by American forces and that they were there to help the people evacuate.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the Khmer Rouge ordered the people to go with them to the countryside, and that's where the rice patties and like any kind of farming that the Khmer Rouge needed the people to do were there.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: The people couldn't take any belongings.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: They were just ordered to leave, and people just left with just the clothes on their back.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, no one really suspected anything was happening or that they were under attack by the Khmer Rouge.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they did hold.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when people found out about Pol Pot's regime, some people resisted and started to escape.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so those that resisted them or tried to escape were automatically shot to death.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_03: And approximately one million people died during this time, and one million people were refugees.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's the correct number, is that about right?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right around there, yes.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: And they killed so many people because of the desire to have communist principles in the land.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely right.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_03: Can you remember uh seeing any of the the Khmer Rouge in your time before you left uh Cambodia?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we've seen them.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, the clothes that they wear is typically just black clothing with a red scarf around their necks, and that's how we know that they're the Khmer Rouge.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe uh we should then talk about your journey as uh refugees.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: How did this begin?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Before the Khmer Rouge took over, we lived in a quiet village in a modest home.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Our house sits on stilts because it was near the river, and dad wanted to make sure that if there was a monsoon, that we weren't flooded.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was just a normal day.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So mom and dad went to the rice patty, and us little ones either played or helped our big sisters, Rashana and Zamoon, took care of the animals on the farms.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And as I mentioned earlier, we raised chickens, pigs, ducks, cows, and water buffaloes.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so one night my dad and the neighbors were talking, and the neighbors told my dad that the Khmer Rouge were killing people and invading cities and villages, and that ours could be knacked.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of the families that were around us left as a result of hearing that news.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the reason why we didn't leave with them, but we stayed.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that night, I think it was it was already dark, but it was before midnight, we heard gunshots.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the village was already under siege and they were just getting closer to us.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: My dad woke everybody up.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: We left our house and we relocated to the riverbank, just ran down to the riverbank, and we made sure that we went deeper into the riverbank instead of where the path coming to and from the river.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: If we stayed there, then the Khmer Rouge would have spotted us from the village.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So deep inside the riverbank, mom and dad decided that we must swim across the river to the other side.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they feared the Khmer Rouge would scour the area and find us.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So by this time, it was, I guess it was after midnight, and the river was calm, but it would still be a challenge to swim across because the distance between one side to the other was pretty wide.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So my two older sisters, Rashana and Simboon, were okay to swim across.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were older.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: My older brother, Sam, couldn't swim.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: So my dad threw him on his shoulder and was gonna swim him across.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mom was carrying my toddler brother, Johnny.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was maybe two and a half or three at that time.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So she carried him and was gonna swim there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So mom told me to grab on tight to her hair because she had long hair and don't let go.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: She kept telling me, and I was four.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I did what she said, and she kept saying, just grab tight and don't let go.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Don't let go, grab tight.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I did.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we we made it across to the other side.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: We were soaked and we were cold.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Dad found a dense wooded area for us to hide in on the other side of the riverbank.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It would have been too dangerous to build a fire for warmth because the smoke could lead the Khmer Rouge to us.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a good idea to go anywhere either.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we stayed put and we slept there that night with our wet clothes.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: The next morning we woke up.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was quiet, no gunshots, nothing was just quiet.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: So mom and dad decided we should swim back to our village.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we did.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: When we got there, most structures were burnt to the ground, including our home.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And there were remnants of smoke among some of the structures.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it was unusually calm and quiet.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: There was just no birds chirping, singing, nothing.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Mom and dad decided that we couldn't live there.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: It might not be safe.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so we decided that we should go and stay with Uncle Pope in La Villa, which is about three and a half miles one way to walk there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we did.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And luckily he was he's still there.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so we stayed with him for a couple of months.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in between, there, mom and dad traveled between La Via and our village to go find food.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was getting scarcer, and we couldn't stay in La Villa any longer.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: So leaving there was necessary.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we left La Villa and that took us north.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we walked for days trying to reach the Thai border.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: We hadn't gotten there yet.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: We did go to a ditch banku.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: We were there for a very short time and just trying to gower for food and anything that mom and dad could find.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what we ate.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And some days we didn't get to eat or drink any water.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it was taking a toll on everybody.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Can you remember if you felt that the Cameroon was in the area?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: Were they chasing you during this time?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: Did you feel a sense of fear or danger?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, we didn't, mom and dad didn't lead us to believe that they were still around.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: The way that we walked, it's just through jungles.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't be out in the open for fear that we would be seen and shot.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so we typically walked inside the jungle.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So when we were in Bangkoop, mom and dad said we were there for a very short time.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was quiet and it felt normal, other than the scarcity of food.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So one day there was a public service announcement in Bangou.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: They were saying, go back to your home, but go back to your village.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: The war is over.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: That led my parents to believe that the war was really over.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so we walked from Bangou back to our village.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere between that distance was when we were ambushed by the Khmer Rouge.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: They took us to the village.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And after we were captured, we were separated into groups based on our age.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So my brothers and I stayed with our parents because we were toddlers and we lived in a hut that was made of palm leaves.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just the roof with the palm leaves and kind of like a shack.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: My two older sisters were in another group.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were separated.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: All of us were separated, but we were close to each other.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: The camps were, if you go outside the camp, you could see to the other camp.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I could see my siblings.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: We could see each other, but we cannot talk to each other.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We cannot go near each other.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was put to work right away.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was a welder.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: He worked as a welder.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: He made weapons and other tools that was instructed by the Khmer Rouge, whatever they need, many kind of tools, that's where they would go, is to have my dad build it.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: My mom with us little ones worked to peel the rice once they've been harvested.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, or anything that you know she was ordered to do, but we were always within arm's reach of her.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we didn't go very far from her.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that was about maybe a year and a half, maybe two.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: We lived there under the Khmer Rouge and worked for them.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, a year and a half or two later, obviously I'm a couple of years older.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the unexpected and terrifying thing happened.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So by this time, since we were a couple of years older, the Khmer Rouge came and got me and my brother.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: They just said that we were old enough to go and work.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to leave your parents and you have to come with us.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I resisted.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I resisted so much that if I didn't listen to them, that they would they were going to kill me and my parents.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom and dad said to go get our sisters.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So my older sisters came and talked some sense into me and just kind of made me understand.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, at five years old, how do you understand that your mom and dad will be shot if you don't go with these bad men?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: My sister said, you have to go.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't go with them, they're going to kill you and mom and dad.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want that?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I eventually listened to their command.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when soldiers, like I was told by my sisters, when we got to the camp, they threw us into a shelter that's again made from palm leaves.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we slept on a bench with bamboo mats, with very little else.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have any blankets or pillows.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: We were given a shirt and a pair of pants, and they wanted us to dye that black.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so they gave us a box of black dye, and older people helped me with that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: On top of the living arrangement, there was also a communal dining room where people go there to eat meals.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: If we were lucky enough to have meals, that's where we would go, is to the communal hall.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: So again, the type of work that we did depended on our age.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: With five years old, maybe six, they make you work in the rice patty to pool wheat.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, the rice patty, there's water.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you're just being so small and young, you're you're just knee-deep in water all day.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the older people were forced to build dams and harvested rice or peel rice or anything that they needed done.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: After each workday, long work day, we had a mandatory meeting.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to brainwash us.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were stolen our wet and dirty clothes from working.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were tired and hungry.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't care.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: We'd sit on the dirt on the ground and listen to the Khmer Rouge lecture us about how we must not run away.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: We must listen to their order.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: We must not sneak out at night to see our family at other camps.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we must not steal from them.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: If we broke their rules, we will be killed.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the so-called meeting occurred every single night and served as a reminder that we must obey their rules if we wanted to live.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: In addition to manual labors and being barely fed any food and working long hours and tortured, we were only allowed to speak Khmer.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Any other languages that we speak was a huge risk, or it must be done very quietly.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if we were caught speaking any other languages other than Khmer, it killed us.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: No questions asked.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: So years after years of living at the camp, my siblings and I got chickenpox around the same time, all six of us.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a sheer coincidence that we all got chicken pox.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this happened before the Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And although we were in different campsites, we were not too far from one another, as I mentioned earlier.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we were taken to the same medical center where we were treated.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: After treatments, we were taken to another building where they kept all the sick people.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So all six of us were under one roof by this time.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the medical site was near where my mom and dad lived and worked.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so they weren't able to come see us or anything, but they know that we were there.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Once Vietnamese troops invaded our camp, some of the Vietnamese troops spoke Khmer.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they told us to run.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just run, just run, run, um, go get out of here.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was pretty chaotic and there were bullets flying everywhere because at this time the Vietnamese troops and the Khmer Rouge were just fighting each other, you know, with guns.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were just scrambling around.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my parents were trying to find us.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: They knew where we were at.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just trying to get there was not safe because of flying bullets.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they finally found us at the medical site and they grabbed us and they took us and we left all together.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't grab anything, obviously, because of what was going on.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so my mom did manage to grab a um pouch of um grains uh to take with, and that's all she could grab.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that little bit of grains lasted us for a little while with no time to think to strategy to as to where we would go.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: My dad threw my brother, Sam, who was severely wounded over his shoulder, and then he led us into the woods where we were able to seek shelter from the flying bullets.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were not safe after literally dodging the bullets because there were landmines now that we have to worry about, even though we got away from the gunfires.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the landmines was a huge problem, unfortunately.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was something that we had to overcome.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And my dad had a strategy, and he came up with that pretty quickly.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he just told us that where he put his foot is where each one of us I won, we follow him, we step in his footsteps.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: It slowed us down quite a bit.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: That was like the safest way to navigate around the landmines.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: And he probably had no idea if his next step was his last.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, he he didn't.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And there were obviously dead people everywhere.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so he may have used that as a guide as to where you know, when people got blown up, maybe that's where he should stop.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was an amazing to have come up with that.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So at this point, we walked forever, uh, I mean, days, and we were running out of food.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: The little bit of grains that my mom brought, and she found a pot, cooking pot, somewhere along the journey.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so she made porridge for us.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Porridge is basically a lot of water with very few grains.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so we just kind of drank that.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what kept us going.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: How long were you in the minefield?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Was that for days also?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: Several days walking through the minefield.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was it was inside the jungle.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were there for a few days, and there again, you know, we were running out of food and we didn't have any water.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: The water that we found were kind of like chocolate milk.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: We made do with it.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: We put it in our clothes and kind of wring it and whatever drops get.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: We get water from the tree barks, from tree leaves, um, like the dew, like early in the morning.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we collected water.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were walking, and then we there was an older gentleman that was carrying two sacks on the pulse stick.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, the pulse stick was over his shoulder.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So he came up behind our family and he told my mom and dad, come with me.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: My parents didn't know him.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: He seemed pretty legitimate.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't gonna take us anywhere, you know, other than to safety.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we, my parents and I and family decided to follow him.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know where we were going, but the old man said, I'm gonna take you to the Thai border.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we walked pretty much all day, and we got to not the Thai border yet, but it was closed.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was several miles from Thai border, and we there was a little camp there with other families there.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where we went and stayed for a little while.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then that old man left.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what happened to him, but he left.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in hindsight, it seems like it was just an angel that was sent down to kind of guide us and lead us to another destination, you know, that is safe.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just it was totally unexpected.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we slept there and mom made us a meal and we stayed at that camp maybe for one or two nights, and the next day, someone came, was looking for us and calling my parents' name.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, what had happened was my brother Tin, who had left because he was in the military, who had left years before to go to Thailand, hired someone to come look for his parents, hired someone to come look for us.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: At this time, we were living in a camp in Aranjakrate.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: For about four years.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, after my brother rescued us, we lived with him for about four years.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And my brother had hired some guy to get us paperwork.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Before all of this happened, the guy that came and rescued us in that camp had to sneak in and out.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he snuck out and got all eight of us.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine how how scary that was to have been caught and pretty much shot to death.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: He came and got eight of us, and through the barbed wire, he snuck us in one by one.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're on the other side of Thailand.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Other side of the border from Cambodia to Thailand.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're in inside Thailand.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So after that, my brother paid the guy, and then my brother took us to his house, and we were in hiding there.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't go outside or anywhere in the vicinity.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: He kept telling us we cannot speak Khmer.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: We can only speak Thai.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So at this time, the Thai soldiers were just kind of manning the streets and capture or take anyone that speaks any other language other than Thai andor just kill them.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: If we got caught, then you know we'd be dead.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: So while we weren't hiding, my brother hired the guy to file some paperwork to be refugees of Thailand.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So once the paperwork was completed and approved, they gave my parents a voucher.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: The voucher is a paper that you go and collect food.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: So if we didn't have that, then you wouldn't be able to get any food.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we lived in Thailand for about two and a half years.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then there were announcements about applying to go to another country.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: So my mom heard that news and she decided to talk to my dad and said we should apply to go to America because you know my aunt is there.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: They applied and they got accepted, and then we're here.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: And um being accepted while from a Thailand refugee camp, correct?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: Then making the connections through uh was it a was it a Lutheran charity?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: You might you might be right.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: There was a maybe it was a Lutheran group and then connected with Central Schwankfelder Church eventually.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, eventually.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean it was a long process, you know, but it was worth the wait, which is truly blessed.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_03: And then you came from Thailand through to was it Singapore and then to South Korea?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Once everything got approved, we were flown from Thailand to the Philippines.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: To the Philippines, okay.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of the other families didn't stay that long because you know they had a small family, because I'm one of eight, it was hard to find someone that would accept and sponsor a family of eight.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: We we we waited a while.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you remember Ken Weber, Presbyterian Church in Lansdale.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: So his church sponsored several refugees, including my sister and her family, my my older sister and her family.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: So Ken Weber at that time reached out to Central and basically saying that there's a family of eight that's currently living in the Philippines.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: And since Ken and his church sponsored several families already, that he wanted to see if Central could help out.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think your mom was on the board of deacon, and so she and maybe Ken Clemens has facilitated you know a lot of what you know had happened.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I can't imagine what it would be like to go from Cambodia to Thailand to the Philippines through Japan to Alaska to Chicago to Philadelphia.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: That must have been some journey.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Korea.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Once we were formally sponsored, we flew from the Philippines to Korea to refuel.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't get off the plane there.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And from Korea, and my you know, my mom said that we didn't we didn't go to Japan to refuel or anything, but so while she recalled that we went from Korea, we refueled in Korea.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: From Korea, we flew to Chicago.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: We got off the plane in Chicago and we got in line to get winter coats.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they passed out winter coats, and once we got ours, we went back on the plane, and then from Chicago, we came to Philadelphia.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: And really that being your first taste of a North American winter, too, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was very strange.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think there were snow on the ground and and ice, and I'm not sure if your mom and I'm not sure who else went to receive us.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know Dr.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Jack went for sure, and I'm not sure about Sell Written House and Lowell, who was the driver.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And Dr.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Jack asked what it was like and how you feel.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: My sister said that it feels like we're in heaven.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's good after everything that you had gone through beforehand.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_03: Today there are over 82 million refugees in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and there are already some 3.3 million that have been added just recently because of the war in Ukraine.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: Many people don't understand what a refugee experience is like, and there are a lot of misconceptions.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: If you were to share one or two things that would help people understand what a refugee experience is really like, what might you share?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the misconceptions about refugees is that we all lived in camps, and that's not true.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are refugees because they had to leave their hometown or, you know, or they once lived in a really nice house.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of some regime, they are now living in a camp.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the other misconceptions is that the refugees left their country to seek better opportunity.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Although that might be true for some people, that's not the case uh with my family.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: We left because of the Khmer Rouge regime, you know, taking over and controlling every aspect of the people.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, that's one of the reasons that we left, is because we weren't safe there.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: We left to seek freedom elsewhere.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_03: You were to talk to somebody about uh the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the plight of uh refugees.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: Would you recommend any films or any books that might help them understand?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there was a book that was published.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's called First They Killed My Father.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I did read the book, you know, every page is like, that's me, that's me, that was me.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it got made into a movie.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's on Netflix.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can watch it on Netflix.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I tried watching it, I couldn't do it.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, after 10 minutes, I I had to turn it off.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was just too much.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: The other movie that I would recommend is called The Killing Fields.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Those, you know, two movies depict what we went through.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: It might not be exactly the same situation, but you know, we were still under the Khmer Rouge regime.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we went through something very similar.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: What a trying thing it must have been to come from the Khmer Rouge and then through so many different countries to settle here in America.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: But one last question I guess I'd ask you is how long did it take you to feel acclimated to life in America after all that traumatic experience?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: It took a while.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: We were very welcomed when we were sponsored by Central the first year.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Different family invited us over to celebrate holidays.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: One year we went to Mary Louise and Jack Graham's house for Thanksgiving.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very interesting.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't used to it, and I think the welcoming factor was enough to make us feel, you know, a sense of belonging.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then going to church and being around other Christians was also a big help.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say a couple of years for the younger ones.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then the, you know, my parents, it took them longer because they were older.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just it was just a shock to the system in a good way.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you know, we we weren't living in poverty anymore.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, now that we're here in in America, there's just a lot more opportunity that we have.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just really blessed and so thankful for Central, your mom, who, you know, was a mastermind behind all of this, to, you know, give us another chance.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, and we still talk about it, you know, to these days, my family and I, about how with the bullets flying everywhere, how how did we manage to escape that?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's just, you know, I can only think of one thing that, you know, God was pushing over us every step of the way.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, divine providence.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you came from Cambodia all the way here to America through very trying things, much more trying than most of us experience here in the States.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_03: Might you have something to share to a younger generation that might seem dissatisfied or bored, upset with life?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sure, Drake.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just wanted to say that what my family and I went through, it was horrendous.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I wouldn't want to, you know, put anybody in in our shoes.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just very thankful and grateful for the opportunity to be here and that, you know, for the young ones, yes, some days you might be sad, some days you might be happy, and you may get bored, you know, with life in general.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So don't give up.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to see, a lot to do, and a lot to share.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: And also just because you don't have the latest version of technology doesn't mean it's the end of the world.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, life will go on and live your best life, live life to the fullest because it's not guaranteed for uh, you know, to us the next day.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Those are great words and wise words.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm glad that uh you took the time to have a conversation with us, essentially speaking about this.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: You are doing a little bit of writing about this.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Is this correct, Slot?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: I yes, I am doing a little bit of writing and also just kind of gathering information.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I have been doing this for quite some time.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want to spread the work or you know, the history of what my family and I went through with my kids and other family members.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, when you get something printed, certainly let us know at the church.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely will.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for uh sitting this interview, and we wish you all the very best.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Drake.