Boni
I came to the United States in 1980, when I was 16 years old.
In Cambodia, my friends and I played hide and seek, especially late at night. In the summertime, we would go to the factory that makes crackers, and we would buy the broken ones and all eat together. We also jumped rope.
There, you start in 12th grade and count down until you graduate high school. It's in reverse of how they name the grades here. At school, we all dressed up in uniform. Each school had different colors, so when we went to the market, they knew exactly which school we belonged to. I didn't really like wearing uniforms because you always had to make sure your uniform was clean, and they didn’t give you a lot of options. The teachers could beat us up. If you told your mom about it, she would beat you up more because they assume that you must be a bad kid if you're getting hit in school.
Every house in Cambodia has a garden where people grow jasmine and gardenias. Whenever I walked by, it smelled nice and made me smile. That's something I miss the most about living there. Life moves at a very slow pace there. People enjoy life. Schools and shops close between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm so you can go home and take a nap. The streets are quiet.
The war started in 1970. I lived in a city, so I didn't see a lot of violence until after Vietnam took over in 1975. We suddenly lived under the rule of another government, and they didn't treat us the same. They measured out the food we were given to eat, and there was a lot of starvation. We were forced to work in the fields. There was no money, no schools, and no hospitals. Everything started over.
My father was a spy for the United States. When he was found out, my father and my siblings were killed in front of my mom, two of my sisters, and me. We were taken to two different concentration camps - I went to one, and my sisters and mom went to the other. I was only able to bring clothes, jewelry, and some pictures.
We were separated for four years from 1975 to 1979. In the camp, we had two meals a day which consisted of rice and water. My camp had many kids my age. We had to get our hair cut short. We slept in six-foot cubic crates that were more like cages. They were stacked three high and twenty cages long.
To rotate camps, they made us march. One day, I found my mom and sisters, and we escaped together. We went to a town on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. My mom paid a man to take us out of Cambodia since we had to cross a minefield and he knew the way. I was shot in my right arm while trying to escape. The bullet was in my arm for about two weeks when I got sick from the infection. One of my friends took the bullet out, and I still have the scar from it.
It took three days to arrive in Thailand, and we stayed there for a year and a half. Life in Thailand was similar to Cambodia. We went to school to learn English. I went to the market one day in Thailand, and I heard a guy talking with people standing around him. At that time I was 13 or 14. I heard him speaking in my language. He said that Jesus came and healed the blind and the crippled and that he was making sick people healthy. He said that Jesus is going to come back again, but this time he can only take believers. I followed him and went to the church on my own. My mom didn't know until the next day. Then we all went to church. I'm a Christian now.
My mom wrote a letter to the embassy to help us get out. They found a sponsor who belonged to Catholic Church. He was a judge from the area we were moving to, and he sponsored us to come here. We flew to the Philippines and stayed there for three months, and they taught us the norms of American life, what was acceptable and what was frowned upon.
We entered the Port of San Francisco and stayed there for one night. We traveled to Denver, then to Fargo, and next to Grand Forks. Once we got to Grand Forks, our sponsor came and got us to bring us to Grafton. He found us a place to stay and helped me enroll in school. I had to graduate from high school when I turned 21. I took two years of English and two years of Spanish, which gave me four years total. I had math, but I was short for American history, so one summer, my teacher got the book, and we studied together and took the test.
Because I learned English in school, it is easy for me to understand, but it is harder to speak. Sometimes when I talk, people get quiet and want to hear my accent, and that embarrasses me. When we came here, my mom took classes to learn English. She also worked part-time at a restaurant chopping up vegetables because you don't have to speak the language to do that.
The one time I remember facing discrimination is when a kid called our home phone using a lot of foul language and told us to go back to our country. We got scared and told our sponsor that we'd been getting those calls, and he found the kid, reported it to his parents, and then it didn't happen anymore.
I made a lot of friends when I moved here. I found a lot of very nice people, especially from our church. They took us under their wing, bought us food, and even bought us our first Christmas tree. My sponsor organized events for us refugees to get to know each other for New Year's or Christmas. People would gather from Fargo, Grafton, Devil's Lake, Grand Forks, and Bismarck. We also went to school together, and we have bonded together over that.
A lot of things Cambodians do for holidays relate to Buddhism, but I don't go to the temple. I’ve been a Christian since I lived in Thailand, so I celebrate Christmas. We still practice our other Cambodian traditions, though. When we give a gift to old people, we give it to them with two hands. If we cook food and our mom says that she's not hungry yet, we dish some out and set it aside for her - we don't leave it in the pan. I still eat and cook Cambodian food here. It is very similar to Thai and Vietnamese food.
In 1984, we found out that my aunt also came to the United States, and she settled in Seattle, Washington. My family lived in Grafton for about eight years before I got married and moved to Detroit Lakes with my husband. After my sister graduated from high school, around 1990, she and my mom moved to Seattle. After two years, my husband wanted to go back to school for engineering, so we moved to Fargo. I stayed here because I was married and had children. My first daughter was born in 1989.
My oldest daughter passed away when she was 17. I have a son who is now 26, and he lives in Seattle. My youngest is 21, and she's in her third year at the University of St. Thomas.
If I had the choice of living in the States or living in Cambodia, I would pick Cambodia. I had my friends there, I spoke my own language, and I ate my own food. One thing that I like in the States is that people are nice. You can also travel to see many places.
I have found a community of people from Cambodia in Fargo-Moorhead, and one of my good friends owns Lotus Blossom International Market on Main Avenue in Fargo. American stores don't sell a lot of Asian food, but Lotus Blossom orders seafood and other things used to make Asian dishes. I speak Cambodian with them there. It is nice to speak my native language. When I'm at home with my mom and sister, I also get to speak Cambodian. My mom doesn't know how to speak English very well, but she knows enough to understand it.
I tell my friends about my story. They're curious and ask questions. Now, I am okay sharing my story, but before, sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and think I'm back in Cambodia, and when I woke up and saw the white walls in the bedroom, I knew I wasn't there anymore. It's getting better.
I haven’t been back to Cambodia, but my mom has been there many times. I don't think I want to go now. The ruler of Cambodia is a dictator. When election time comes, there is a lot of corruption. I don't know if it's safe to be there, but even if it is, I'm just not ready yet.
I had to learn all about American history to pass the citizenship test. I did a written and verbal test. They ask about the meaning of the stars and stripes on the flag and the jobs of the three branches of government. If I had to do it again, I don't think I could. At the time I took it, I was younger and studying was easier.
Being called a refugee makes me feel like I’m a piece of garbage, but that's the way it is. I wish people who were born here understood the tough life that some people go through to come here.
I always say that Cambodia is my old country and this is my new country. The United States is my home now.
In Cambodia, my friends and I played hide and seek, especially late at night. In the summertime, we would go to the factory that makes crackers, and we would buy the broken ones and all eat together. We also jumped rope.
There, you start in 12th grade and count down until you graduate high school. It's in reverse of how they name the grades here. At school, we all dressed up in uniform. Each school had different colors, so when we went to the market, they knew exactly which school we belonged to. I didn't really like wearing uniforms because you always had to make sure your uniform was clean, and they didn’t give you a lot of options. The teachers could beat us up. If you told your mom about it, she would beat you up more because they assume that you must be a bad kid if you're getting hit in school.
Every house in Cambodia has a garden where people grow jasmine and gardenias. Whenever I walked by, it smelled nice and made me smile. That's something I miss the most about living there. Life moves at a very slow pace there. People enjoy life. Schools and shops close between 11:00 am and 1:00 pm so you can go home and take a nap. The streets are quiet.
The war started in 1970. I lived in a city, so I didn't see a lot of violence until after Vietnam took over in 1975. We suddenly lived under the rule of another government, and they didn't treat us the same. They measured out the food we were given to eat, and there was a lot of starvation. We were forced to work in the fields. There was no money, no schools, and no hospitals. Everything started over.
My father was a spy for the United States. When he was found out, my father and my siblings were killed in front of my mom, two of my sisters, and me. We were taken to two different concentration camps - I went to one, and my sisters and mom went to the other. I was only able to bring clothes, jewelry, and some pictures.
We were separated for four years from 1975 to 1979. In the camp, we had two meals a day which consisted of rice and water. My camp had many kids my age. We had to get our hair cut short. We slept in six-foot cubic crates that were more like cages. They were stacked three high and twenty cages long.
To rotate camps, they made us march. One day, I found my mom and sisters, and we escaped together. We went to a town on the border of Cambodia and Thailand. My mom paid a man to take us out of Cambodia since we had to cross a minefield and he knew the way. I was shot in my right arm while trying to escape. The bullet was in my arm for about two weeks when I got sick from the infection. One of my friends took the bullet out, and I still have the scar from it.
It took three days to arrive in Thailand, and we stayed there for a year and a half. Life in Thailand was similar to Cambodia. We went to school to learn English. I went to the market one day in Thailand, and I heard a guy talking with people standing around him. At that time I was 13 or 14. I heard him speaking in my language. He said that Jesus came and healed the blind and the crippled and that he was making sick people healthy. He said that Jesus is going to come back again, but this time he can only take believers. I followed him and went to the church on my own. My mom didn't know until the next day. Then we all went to church. I'm a Christian now.
My mom wrote a letter to the embassy to help us get out. They found a sponsor who belonged to Catholic Church. He was a judge from the area we were moving to, and he sponsored us to come here. We flew to the Philippines and stayed there for three months, and they taught us the norms of American life, what was acceptable and what was frowned upon.
We entered the Port of San Francisco and stayed there for one night. We traveled to Denver, then to Fargo, and next to Grand Forks. Once we got to Grand Forks, our sponsor came and got us to bring us to Grafton. He found us a place to stay and helped me enroll in school. I had to graduate from high school when I turned 21. I took two years of English and two years of Spanish, which gave me four years total. I had math, but I was short for American history, so one summer, my teacher got the book, and we studied together and took the test.
Because I learned English in school, it is easy for me to understand, but it is harder to speak. Sometimes when I talk, people get quiet and want to hear my accent, and that embarrasses me. When we came here, my mom took classes to learn English. She also worked part-time at a restaurant chopping up vegetables because you don't have to speak the language to do that.
The one time I remember facing discrimination is when a kid called our home phone using a lot of foul language and told us to go back to our country. We got scared and told our sponsor that we'd been getting those calls, and he found the kid, reported it to his parents, and then it didn't happen anymore.
I made a lot of friends when I moved here. I found a lot of very nice people, especially from our church. They took us under their wing, bought us food, and even bought us our first Christmas tree. My sponsor organized events for us refugees to get to know each other for New Year's or Christmas. People would gather from Fargo, Grafton, Devil's Lake, Grand Forks, and Bismarck. We also went to school together, and we have bonded together over that.
A lot of things Cambodians do for holidays relate to Buddhism, but I don't go to the temple. I’ve been a Christian since I lived in Thailand, so I celebrate Christmas. We still practice our other Cambodian traditions, though. When we give a gift to old people, we give it to them with two hands. If we cook food and our mom says that she's not hungry yet, we dish some out and set it aside for her - we don't leave it in the pan. I still eat and cook Cambodian food here. It is very similar to Thai and Vietnamese food.
In 1984, we found out that my aunt also came to the United States, and she settled in Seattle, Washington. My family lived in Grafton for about eight years before I got married and moved to Detroit Lakes with my husband. After my sister graduated from high school, around 1990, she and my mom moved to Seattle. After two years, my husband wanted to go back to school for engineering, so we moved to Fargo. I stayed here because I was married and had children. My first daughter was born in 1989.
My oldest daughter passed away when she was 17. I have a son who is now 26, and he lives in Seattle. My youngest is 21, and she's in her third year at the University of St. Thomas.
If I had the choice of living in the States or living in Cambodia, I would pick Cambodia. I had my friends there, I spoke my own language, and I ate my own food. One thing that I like in the States is that people are nice. You can also travel to see many places.
I have found a community of people from Cambodia in Fargo-Moorhead, and one of my good friends owns Lotus Blossom International Market on Main Avenue in Fargo. American stores don't sell a lot of Asian food, but Lotus Blossom orders seafood and other things used to make Asian dishes. I speak Cambodian with them there. It is nice to speak my native language. When I'm at home with my mom and sister, I also get to speak Cambodian. My mom doesn't know how to speak English very well, but she knows enough to understand it.
I tell my friends about my story. They're curious and ask questions. Now, I am okay sharing my story, but before, sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and think I'm back in Cambodia, and when I woke up and saw the white walls in the bedroom, I knew I wasn't there anymore. It's getting better.
I haven’t been back to Cambodia, but my mom has been there many times. I don't think I want to go now. The ruler of Cambodia is a dictator. When election time comes, there is a lot of corruption. I don't know if it's safe to be there, but even if it is, I'm just not ready yet.
I had to learn all about American history to pass the citizenship test. I did a written and verbal test. They ask about the meaning of the stars and stripes on the flag and the jobs of the three branches of government. If I had to do it again, I don't think I could. At the time I took it, I was younger and studying was easier.
Being called a refugee makes me feel like I’m a piece of garbage, but that's the way it is. I wish people who were born here understood the tough life that some people go through to come here.
I always say that Cambodia is my old country and this is my new country. The United States is my home now.