Meeting with an Amazing Khmer American Woman

I meant to post this a long time ago. Putsata was one of our first contacts in Cambodia. She is an amazing story teller and I wish that we had more time to just sit and listen to all her amazing tales.

A Reporter Returns Home

Teaching in Cambodia, and learning some tough lessons

By Putsata Reang

Just one month after I helped launch a pioneer project training Khmer journalists in investigative reporting, Cambodia's repressive government cracked down on dissent, arresting at least five human rights activists and journalists. In spite of the risks, I urged the reporters to continue their dangerous but critical work. They lashed back.

"It's easy for you to say," one journalist told me. "You can get on a plane and go back home. We have to stay."

I wanted to say: "But this is my home. I'm Khmer, just like you," until I realized the hollowness of those words. The shameful truth was that if Cambodia's political instability worsened, I would leave again. Only this time, by choice. Thirty-two years before, my family and I fled the Khmer Rouge.

Growing up in Corvallis, Oregon, I listened to my Ma spin stories about Cambodia, tales of climbing coconut trees and riding water buffalo through sun-smeared rice paddies. She said little about the war, only that we were lucky to be alive.

"When you are old enough," she'd say, "go help Cambodia."

I finally did, two years ago. Supported by an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, I was going to spend a year researching Cambodia's intractable problem of land grabbing. At Portland International Airport, my mother dabbed at big watery eyes. "Good luck, gohn ma [mother's child]," she said. "Be careful."

When I moved there in February 2005, Cambodia was volatile. The year before, popular labor rights activist Chea Vichea was gunned down while reading a newspaper. Garment workers and farmers alternately protested in front of the National Assembly. One month after I arrived, military police shot and killed five farmers during a forced eviction. Few Khmer journalists had the skills or resources to get beyond basic facts and dig deeper into such stories.

As my fellowship came to a close and I prepared to head home, Internews, an international media development organization, posted a job advising journalists in Cambodia. I read the description and knew it was made for me. I took a buyout from the San Jose Mercury News and then called my Ma to tell her I wasn't coming home. I was already there.

I thought I was the ideal candidate to push for media development in Cambodia. I had solid professional credentials and was qualified like no other candidate. I'm Khmer. I speak the language and understand the culture. The benefits were clear. The drawbacks were not.

Being able to communicate with journalists during training and one-on-one mentoring sessions meant greater efficiency. Understanding the culture meant there were things they did not need to explain, such as why stories never included ages (it's rude to ask) and few were infused with direct quotes (it's an affront to directly question authority).

I wasn't prepared for the more nuanced challenges that working in media development in my homeland would present — challenges that invariably pitted me against the journalists I was trying to help.

Forging trust and extracting respect from them would be my first obstacle. I was working in a field with few women, in a program where all the participants were male and mostly older than I. No one in Cambodia's male-dominated society wants to answer to a woman, much less a younger one. I had no credibility and a lot to prove. I was also what the journalists called "Khmer pordadeh ," or "Cambodian from abroad," a foreigner. A fraud. In America, I never felt truly American. Now in Cambodia, I was told I wasn't really Cambodian.

I soon started to appreciate the distinction. Nariddh, the assistant journalism adviser, and I habitually urged good ethics. Cambodian journalists routinely practice "reporting by envelope," where getting paid to attend press conferences by the people holding them was not the exception but the rule.

One afternoon, a few reporters from our group strolled into our office and joked loudly about a press conference they covered that morning, where journalists jostled afterward as government officials distributed envelopes stuffed with R10,000 (roughly $5).

"Did you take one?" I asked Sem Saroeun, a journalist who earns about $50 monthly.

He paused, then said: "Of course I did. What can I do? My children are hungry."

"How can we write about corruption if we are corrupt?" I asked the other reporters during one training session on objectivity, balance and fairness.

Averted eyes. Silence. Then one weighed in.

"How much do you make on your NGO salary?" Eng Mengleng asked.

My answer mimicked theirs. Averted eyes. Silence. We shared shame, but for different reasons.

That night, I cried. In a country where some journalists make in one month what I might spend on a good Cabernet, and where my international job paid international wages and extras, like housing and health insurance, my condemnation of their bribe-taking felt disingenuous. In Cambodia, depending upon who you were, professional ethics was either a sacrifice or a luxury.

Beyond their lack of writing and reporting experience, the journalists were operating in a country with no freedom of information law, a place where telling the truth meant risking their lives. The end result: stories populated by anonymous sources and rumors that reporters tried to pass off as fact. Ban Chandararith ("Rith") investigated generous tax breaks on farmland for wealthy and politically connected businessmen. He refused to name names.

"It kills credibility," I said.

"I don't want to get killed," Rith replied.

I dropped the matter.

The biggest challenge arrived quickly. Just as the program tottered to its feet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen began targeting journalists who criticized his border treaty with Vietnam. The string of arrests left our reporters shaken. Some of them — even those who worked for pro-government newspapers — wanted to leave the program, while others threatened to drop out of journalism altogether. A few talked privately about fleeing to Thailand.

Now was not the time to quit, Nariddh and I pleaded, but rather to stay and fight. When the journalists pointed out that I had something they did not — freedom to leave — I felt betrayed, confused, guilty as charged. I had already prepared for my own escape, withdrawing several thousand dollars in cash and wedging it inside my passport. Just in case.

By virtue of escaping from Cambodia in 1975 — and the Khmer Rouge genocide these journalists had survived — I possessed a dark blue passport emblazoned with a bald eagle seal that was my golden ticket to safety.

There were no more arrests that year. The journalists' stories led to major changes, including an overhaul of hiring practices within the Ministry of Education, long overdue pension payments for demobilized soldiers and the firing of the Minister of Labor accused in a human trafficking scandal. The program grew. The guys and I did, too.

Throughout the year, I walked a fine line between nudging them to fight for a free press and being complicit in their self-censorship for safety's sake.

When my contract with Internews ended, I knew that for all the reasons I was right for the job, I was also wrong for it. I declined a promotion, even as the guys were asking me to stay.

It was time for me to go home.

Putsata Reang (Putsata@gmail.com) is a journalist and author of the true crime novel "Deadly Secrets." She is currently at work on a family biography.

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4409

Deported! Surprising Details on Who Can Get the Boot

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER
http://www.iexaminer.org/archives/?cat=3

Category/Issue: News, Volume 34 No. 24

Deported! Surprising details on who can get the boot
What’s considered a “deportable crime” is widening — at the expense of families and people’s rights
BY DIEM LY
Examiner Assistant Editor

It’s a one-way ticket no one wants.

Recent incidents of deportation and the protests against them have once again shed light on this bitter struggle over rights, home, and family.

On Dec. 7, a young man committed suicide a year after he was deported back to Cambodia. “Chan” had been suffering from depression and psychotic episodes for years before his deportation. Without proper medication in Cambodia, he relapsed and hung himself. Korsang Khmer, an organization in Cambodia that hires deportees and performs drug prevention outreach, reported other similar instances of attempted suicides, which included jumping off buildings and self-poisoning.

On Dec. 10, thousands of protesters at Canada’s Vancouver International Airport delayed a paralyzed man’s deportation flight back to India. Immigration officials charged Laibar Singh for entering the country on improper documents and attempted to deport him for the crime. Singh had suffered a stroke while in the country.

In Pennsylvania, a Filipino American couple is facing deportation because of a “misrepresentation” in their marital status during their visa-application process more than 20 years ago — a deportable crime. Dr. Pedro Servano and his wife, Salvacion, are defending their rights to stay in America and have four U.S.-born children, a medical practice, and a grocery business.

Why all the fuss?
In the last 10 years, U.S. immigration officials have been deporting Asian Pacific American (APA) immigrants with a zeal and cunning not seen since the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s.

The catalyst was the new immigration legislation in 1996 that greatly expanded what’s considered a “deportable crime.” As a result, relatively minor offenses, like shoplifting or “joy-riding,” can lead to removal from the United States.

Here’s another kicker — the 1996 immigration changes are retroactive. Therefore, offenses committed long before the 1996 changes — are subject to review, detention, and expulsion. For example, a now law-abiding 50-year-old immigrant man is susceptible to deportation for a crime he committed — and served time for — as a teen 20 years ago, at an age when he could not grasp the severe consequences of his actions. But even for those who committed a crime post-1996, advocates like Many Uch, 31, say deportation is still an unjust and cruel punishment.

Uch, a Cambodian American activist in Seattle, was detained in an immigration jail for two-and-a-half years after completing a sentence of 40 months for a 1994 burglary. Uch told the IE in an interview that his experience in detention felt like “I was doing life in immigration jail.”

Then once detained, the “illegal alien” has to endure a frustrating uphill battle with the system. Those who have been detained, like Uch, reported their rights were stripped away, access to a public defender was not offered nor provided, and detainees were expected to wait indefinitely in immigration prison for a possible release, for their country of origin to accept them — whenever that would be — or for banishment.

Background
Prior to 1996, immigrants were permitted to go before an immigration judge, who could exercise his discretion in imposing penalties, case-by-case. In this way, the judge could consider the immigrant’s family, children, community ties, U.S. military service, or possibility of persecution in the home country, and determine whether deportation is an excessively harsh punishment for that situation.

The 1996 changes stripped away this power from the judges, and instead, sweeping deportation procedures were implemented.

“Immigration judges’ hand are tied in the U.S.,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Alison Parker on the organization’s Web site. “There’s nothing they can do to protect families or to acknowledge the many contributions non-citizens have made to their communities or the nation.”

But that seemed to matter little because in 2003, the United States reached a decision to hold deportable aliens indefinitely. Indefinitely. The Bush administration continues to hold this position that any non-U.S. citizen convicted of an aggravated felony or sentenced to more than 365 days for certain crimes must be deportable to their country of origin.

And, it doesn’t matter if the person has served their criminal sentence or that the sentence was suspended — deportation is as real as the sentence they just served.

Uch said he instigated prison riots and was involved in two hunger strikes, because, as he explains, “there was nothing to lose” as you languish in jail with multiple barriers to justice and no power or knowledge of when you will be released or deported.

So is anyone deportable? Pretty much — non-citizens with a criminal conviction, lawful permanent residents (green card holders), and legal immigrants such as refugees, students, business people, and those who had been involved in war or a humanitarian disaster — are considered deportable if the crime fits. And, immigration officials said being married to a U.S. citizen doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’re safe.

Surely then, only hardened criminals and violent felons are deported, right? Actually, any violation of your status in the United States can potentially lead to deportation proceedings. This includes staying beyond the period authorized, as in student visas, or entering without proper documents.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data in a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, 65 percent of immigrants deported for crimes in 2005 had been convicted of non-violent offenses, including non-violent theft offenses such as shoplifting; 21 percent were deported for offenses involving violence against people; and 15 percent were deported for “other” crimes. Currently, 2,000 Cambodians are detained in the United States, while 5,000 Vietnamese are imprisoned until the government of Vietnam accepts deportees, which it currently does not, or until they are released through a waiver or appeal. To date, over half a million people have been deported from American shores.

As reported by Human Rights Watch, many of those deported arrived in the United States as children and were lawful permanent residents who lived legally in the country for decades. The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) confirms this in an earlier 2002 report (the year the Cambodian government declared its repatriation agreement with the United States, which stated it would now accept deportees) which reported the immigrants were an average of nine years old when they entered America and had lived in the country for an average of 20 years.

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. deportation policy didn’t become more severe after Sept. 11, instead, the drastic changes made in 1996 have been at work for more than a decade.

The issues of “booting” someone out
Yes, people can be deported for minor offenses. Yes, the law is retroactive. But, there are other concerns — very human concerns that advocates against deportation are worried about most. The concerns greatly outweigh any “danger to society” immigration officials or the government will assert regarding deportable immigrants. With information from SEARAC, the main issues are:

1. Deportees receive double or triple punishment: They served their original sentence, then were detained, sometimes, for as long or longer than their sentence, and then punished again by deportation.

2. People fighting deportation lack due process: People have few, if any, opportunities to argue their case, seek good legal representation, and immigration judges have few opportunities to save them from deportation.

3. Deportation hurts and separates families: This is a biggie, as deportation is essentially banishment from all you know and love. Reports said more than half of the time deportation removes the individual who is the family’s sole breadwinner.

4. Deportees usually lack support once in their country of origin: Those deported have few, if any, relationships in the country of origin, no job skills, and often do not speak, read, or write the languages well. Some Cambodians, like “Chan,” were sent away without the treatment they need for health issues like mental illness or diabetes.

5. People fear human rights violations in Southeast Asia: Many immigrants could face persecution due to their flight from the homeland and personal or family histories.

6. Acts resulting in deportation can stem from educational and economic hardships common to resettled refugees: The refugee experience can illicit many social, educational, and economic challenges.

What to do
The issue of deportation is complex and will require a creative solution. The Asian American community is especially impacted by the 1996 law as a significant number of its population is made up of immigrants and refugees. Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch reported that a reformation of the 1996 laws were not included in the immigration legislation Congress considered this year. Former INS General Counsel David Martin told Human Rights Watch that “Congress didn’t anticipate what would happen,” but didn’t want to seem soft on immigration.

So, the fight continues.
Some might ask, “Why don’t they just become U.S. citizens?” This has challenges of its own. Before, a dual citizenship wasn’t available and immigrants didn’t want to lose the citizenship of their home country where family members may still be. Also, for some, there was ignorance of the legal steps to become a citizen and many did not understand that “permanent resident” status means anything but permanent, as it doesn’t shield you from expulsion.

SEARAC suggests educating community members about deportation so they will be able to avoid it and support organizations that work with deportees and their families in the United States and Asia. Also, demand Congress to amend harsh laws and return judicial discretion to immigration judges; in this way, officials can take into consideration the person’s family relationships in the United States, the hardship they may experience in the country of origin, the length of time spent in America, the period of time after the conviction of the crime, and the person’s investment in the community.

To address the impact of deportation and its repercussions on deportees and families, Many Uch is coordinating a press conference and rally on Jan. 8, 2008 in downtown Seattle in an effort to raise awareness around these issues. He wanted to use his deportation experience as a catalyst to change the laws and save families from separation. Uch helped free himself and others from detention (but not from the possibility of expulsion) when he and other detainees won a case in the U.S. Supreme Court — an unprecedented and rare win for detainees, but reflects a common hope for all immigrants and those detained to be free from the cloud of deportation hanging forever over their heads.

When asked how he’s taking his possible deportation, Uch sums it up: “I just live day by day. I don’t make long-term plans. It’s too hard to think about. It comes down to things you have control over and things you can’t. I can work, go out and do outreach and educate people, but as to deportation, I have no control over it … but I’m not gonna go without a fight, I know that.”

My Night in a Cambodian Clinic

this isn't a picture that i took at the hospital. i'm sorry if it's misleading. i just don't feel like posting a picture of my sister in her semi-conscious state with a busted lip and black and blue arms is appropriate.

My sister V has been seizing all day. She goes through spells like this--where she can seize up to 13 times in one day. Each seizure that V has suffocates her brain and kills thousands of brain cells. V is only 34 years old, but has over 70% brain damage. Everyday she takes two different types of medication, three times a day to keep her from seizing. She's been doing this for as long as I remember. V doesn't like taking her meds because they make her feel like she's sleep walking but she knows that if she doesn't, she'll keep on seizing and that her condition will only get worse.

My sister wasn't born disabled. She was, in fact, born perfectly healthy and able-bodied. When she was a baby, the car that she was in was thrown from a bomb that fell from the sky, emptying its passengers and killing every person except for my sister and mom. She went into a coma that lasted for 2 weeks and had a fever so high that it should have killed her. When she came out of the trauma, she immediately had a grand mal seizure that started in one part of her brain and then traveled and took over the rest of her, causing her whole body to convulse and shake like a rag doll in a rabid dog's mouth.

We had just gotten to my mom's house when she fell into another seizure. I remember hearing glass shattering, seeing her body keel forward in slow motion. The crack of her mouth hitting the concrete floor, the sound of flesh splitting and the burst of blood that splattered against the tiles and bled out in all directions underneath her face. Afraid that she would choke on her own blood, we sat her up and stabilized her, cleaned up the broken glass so that she wouldn't get cut up even more and grabbed some ice to hold up to her rapidly swelling mouth. We walk her down the block to a clinic that is luckily on the corner of the street that my mom's house is on and was instructed to bring her to the surgical unit.

As I walk into the room with my sister's arm slung over my shoulder, I look up at the one hanging light in the room, my eyes slowly adjust and notice the worn down and ripped hospital bed and the plastic tarp that is on it. Before laying her down, I ask the nurse to get a new tarp and she tells me that it is the only one they have. I ask her to spray down the tarp with alcohol and wipe the blood off. When they wheel in a tray full of medical supplies, I tell my cousin to inspect the equipment to make sure that it's not used and dirty.

Welcome to a clinic in a third world country.

The doctor comes in and injects some local anesthetic into her lip. When he pulls out the needles, he accidentally spills some of it into her eye. He quickly threads a hook and starts sewing her lip together. Throughout the procedure, V goes in and out of consciousness and has three more seizures. Every time she goes into a seizure, she rips out the stitches, her teeth biting down hard on her tongue and her lip.

The doctor finishes stitching up the outside of her lip, peels back her bottom lip to take a look at the inside--it's bleeding dark red blood, mashed and mangled from glass and teeth. Her eyelids flutter open, only the whites of her eyes showing. I ask the doctor to wait for a few seconds because I know that she's going into another seizure. When her eyes start to focus and I know that she's becoming slightly aware of what's going on, I call out V's name so that she can hear my voice and maybe feel a little safer, maybe a little less scared.

In these moments I feel like I am 8 years old again. All the collected and stored memories I have of V, her seizures and countless visits to the emergency room, merge together. I relive holding ice to my sister's swollen and bleeding eye after she fell out of bed and gashed her eye open on the corner of an end table, I break the bathroom door to grab her after she fell in the shower, I yell for my mom when I hear her breathing pattern change and I know she's about to seize, I explain to the doctor, every single doctor that helps her, that she has had epilepsy for most of her life.

I am abruptly pulled away from my thoughts when I notice that there are people coming in and out of the room and standing around and looking. A medical assistant makes a joke about how incredibly swollen my sister's lip is and then tries to get a better look by nudging me out of the way and reaching for her lip with a gloveless hand. I grab his hand, look him straight in the face and tell him to leave before I beat him so bad that the only way they'll recognize him is his dental imprints.

After the doctor is finished stitching her up, V falls into a deep sleep. I ask the doctor about V's meds and ask him when I can have her take her next dose. Not quite understanding me, he replies that whatever meds she takes isn't available in Cambodia. But before I can clarify my question, another patient is rushed in. Her head is bleeding and I overhear another person saying that she was run over by a motorcycle. The doctor shoots her up with anesthesia and starts examining her wounds. I notice that he's using the same medical tools that he just used on my sister...


The hospital visit ended up costing us $70 US. That doesn't seem like a lot of money but that is what a Cambodian person makes in almost 4 months. When I left the hospital with my sister I couldn't help but think about the lack of infrastructure in Cambodia. Though Cambodia's landscape is rapidly changing from all the urban development that is going on (there are new high rises and skyscrapers being built every day) the infrastructure of the country is comparatively very underdeveloped. There is no health insurance that exists in Cambodia and a lack of funding for hospitals and clinics. Most families will only go to the clinic when they absolutely have to because they cannot afford it. I was told that the most common reason for land and asset loss in Cambodia is due to debt from health related treatment.

When V was finally settled, I sat down next to her to give her her meds. As terrifying as her experience was, I'm grateful for the fact that we have access to the meds that she needs and the funds to pay for her medical treatment. And though she'll have a gnarly scar from the accident, at least she'll have a pretty awesome story that she can tell to go along with it.

Phoenix Rising from the Flames

No more AIDS! My mom helps us pack a donation of over 10,000 condoms

“Meep sua. Meep sua. Bhat. Bhat.”

I’m staring face to face with a tiny bird that can speak Khmai. I am told that the bird was originally kept in a small cage and not treated well. I watch it fly from branch to branch in its newest home, a spacious glass enclosed terrarium. I don’t know it yet, but this bird will become metaphorical to almost everything I experience with my time with Korsang—perseverance through the hard times, survival through adaptation, growth from being nurtured properly, and finally the ability to be awe-inspiring after being given a safe space to exist. I move away from staring at bird and sit down to dinner. Tonight I am meeting with Holly Bradford, the founder of Korsang.

Korsang, which means “to rebuild” is an organization that is dedicated to bringing high quality services to some of Cambodia’s most stigmatized populations: sex workers, injection drug users, and incarcerated persons. Through the philosophy of harm reduction, Korsang not only provides quality services through their street-based outreach but also by providing programs, education, medical services and real leadership developing economic opportunities to their clients. Korsang’s reputation for treating every participant with the highest level of respect and compassion has won them recognition from national officials, international health workers and most impressive, an ever growing list of registered participants. Up to date, Korsang works with over 3300 registered participants.

As we sit around Holly’s dining room table, a crew of her friends and colleagues come through: Marcus, a documentary film maker from the states, Wendy, an Aussie ex-pat who runs a bar called Talking to a Stranger, Holly’s daughter Sara, a consultant to the UN, and Holly’s beautiful grandson Teak. There is one more person that sits with us at the table, Wicked, a spirited Khmer American that now lives in Cambodia and has helped Holly develop Korsang into the organization that it is now.

Wic was born in Cambodia but spent most of his life in America. During the late 70s and early 80s, the US granted refugee status to Cambodian Americans because of its indirect involvement with the Khmer Rouge’s radical take over. During the Vietnam war, the US illegally dropped over 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, three times the explosives dropped on Japan during World War II, despite the fact that the country had declared itself neutral during the conflict. After the bombing, the US supported a military coup to overthrow Cambodia’s monarch Sihanouk, providing the perfect breeding grounds for a radical take over that would eventually lead to Cambodia’s genocide. With the support of China and North Vietnam, coupled with anger over US bombardment, the Khmer Rouge were able to develop their once powerless armed forces to a well-organized force of over 40,000 soldiers. In 1973, the Khmer Rouge controlled most of Cambodia’s countryside and on April 17, 1975 took over Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

What came to power was one of the most brutal radical Maoist regimes in history, Democratic Kampuchea, whose political and social politics devastated Cambodia. All Khmers were forced to evacuate out of cities and into rural areas where they were forced to work all day and night in the rice fields. Past government officials, those that were highly educated, doctors, professors and artists were systematically executed. Children, brainwashed by the new government, were taught to spy and tell on their parents that did not work hard enough, who were then taken to the fields and strangled to death with plastic bags. And the country, lain with more landmines than any other country, killed the majority of Cambodians that tried to flee to Thailand and Vietnam for refuge. During Cambodia’s genocide, 1 out of every 6 Cambodians died.

I look across the table at Wic and try to imagine him, only a few years old, being held tightly by his mother as they escaped the nightmare that consumed our country and finally found peace at the hands of the people who had unknowingly set that series of events into motion. Wic was raised in San Diego, CA and was the only Cambodian person, other than his immediate family, in his town. One of only five Asians in his school, he did not find the community and support that he craved as a young person. He eventually joined a gang to fill that void in his life, something that many young Cambodian American men do. The gang’s encouragement of criminal behavior landed him in a correctional institution where he was instructed to serve community service hours to a youth organization. Even after his mandatory community service hours were completed, he stayed on as a volunteer with the youth organization for several years.

After 9/11, the US put pressure on Cambodia to accept Cambodian American deportees into the country. I was told that one of the pressures that the US used on Cambodia was putting a hold on granted visas into the US. On May 3, 2002, American and Cambodian officials announced plans to forcibly deport Cambodian Americans to Cambodia. Cambodian Americans that were not yet naturalized and had committed aggravated felonies (this includes shoplifting and driving while intoxicated) were eligible for deportation.

At the age of 22, Wic was called in to INS under pretenses of having to refill out “lost paperwork” and was immediately arrested, sent to a deportation detention center and forcibly removed and banned from America, where all of his immediate relatives still live. When he arrived in Cambodia, he was sent to Cambodia’s assimilation program –the only in the country – where he was given a sarong and $3 US. Though the program was riddled with embezzlement and a complete lack of comprehensive support services for detainees, it was where Wic met Holly, a therapist who moved to Cambodia to provide mental health services for Cambodian deportees. It was there that Holly and Wic developed plans to create an organization that would provide a meaningful community and economic opportunity to other Cambodian deportees who would then in turn work with peer leaders to outreach to the populations that Korsang now serves.

I asked Wic, “What’s it like being a Khmer American who now lives in Cambodia?”

He tells me that when he was in America he never felt American and here in Cambodia, people try to look down on him. But Korsang is his home now, his community, and his livelihood. The respect that he garners now from the incredible work that he does provides him with a sense of freedom and purpose that he never felt in the States.

The passion and devotion in his voice whenever he talks about Korsang is infectious and I immediately ask if it is possible to visit their drop in center. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. We start to pack up our stuff, tonight Wic is taking us clubbing.

On the way out, I say goodbye one last time to the Khmai talking bird. I steal a glance at Wic. Having survived two displacements—one at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the other by those that had welcomed him only to cast him far away, scars his kind face. I am amazed by how charming he is despite how incredibly bitter he could be, awed by the fact that he, once a gang member, now writes grants and develops programs for one of Cambodia’s most successful and innovative programs.

I come to realize that Wic is not the American Dream, he is something beyond that. His wealth does not come from being able to completely assimilate into American life and cultivate financial success, but rather from his ability to rise above the two life damning sentences he was given to create an organization that does not just empower himself but every single person that is involved.

“Ja meep lia ai, ja meep lia ai,” I tell the bird. Bye for now.

In my dreams she is running through the jungles...

In respect of the children at Rappha House, I cannot post any photographs of them.

This is a photograph of two children I saw making a sand Angkor Wat at Ta Prohm.

It’s 5 in the morning. I haven’t been able to sleep that well tonight. After my failed attempts at sleeping for the past few hours, I’ve finally decided to enclose myself in the bathroom so that Ican try and write in order to find a bit of peace.

My dreams are haunted by a 13 year old girl who is running through the jungles looking for her mother. She is small from malnourishment, ragged from homelessness, and dirty from the earth that clings to her skin as she tries to hide from people who are hunting her down. Her eyes—red and swollen from crying, are not the eyes of a 13 year old but rather the eyes of a person that wants to die but still clings to a desperate attempt to live because she does not know what else to do. The jungle, swollen with the hot humid heat, swallows her into its safety. She hides behind the strong trunk of a banana tree. Her mind and body, focused on surviving has forgotten for a merciful minute how she ended up in the jungle…

If this were but a dream I would be able to fall back asleep. But this is not a dream. This is the story of Ng (name has been changed), a 16 year old girl that I met yesterday at Rappha House, a safe house for trafficked and sexually abused children.

We sat in a circle in the teacher’s room upstairs from the shelter when the heavy wooden door was pushed open. Ng, a Cambodian girl with a beauty mark on her right cheek, black curly hair that was tied back and a smile with upturned corners that showed slight signs of her mischievous nature, walked in and sat down across from me. I had met her last night when she shyly asked me to sit down next to her during the night’s program and asked me if I would be her bong srei (older sister).

The room, decorated with drawings that the girls at Rappha house made crisscrossed the top of the ceiling and lined parts of the wall. The room, chosen for it’s safe and nurturing feeling, was where I had been granted permission to interview Ng as well as some other girls.

I remember looking down at the page full of questions in my hand, trying to hide my nervousness. I looked up and smiled at her and began the interview.

When Ng was 6 years old she watched as her step-father ripped the gold necklace from her mother’s neck and grabbed a knife to slit her throat. Ng screamed as she threw herself towards her mother to instinctively protect her. Her step-father then ripped her from her mother’s body and beat her until she was unconscious, then took all the money and jewelry from the house and left. Forced to find money in order to eat and feed her four children, Ng’s mother took all of her kids and moved into the city to find a job.

Barely making more than $1 US a day and finding it harder to provide for her children as they grew, Ng’s mother sold her daughter to an elder man so that she would be able to work in his house as a servant. Ng was 7 when she left her family.

When Ng arrived at the elder man’s house, she was scolded by the other servants, slapped around by others living in the house, told that she was worthless and immediately put to work. Her small hands grasped a towel that she dipped into a bucket of soapy water over and over again as she cleaned the floor on her hands and knees. The other servants, unhappy with the amount of time she was taking to mop the floor, came by and hit her over the head whenever they passed by. That first day, she washed the dishes, dried and put them away, swept and mopped the floor again, helped to do the laundry and was told to massage the elder man’s feet.

As I watched Ng tell her story, I noticed that her demeanor had completely changed. She was no longer the happy and mischievous child I had seen walk in the door. Her head, hanging so low that I couldn’t see her face, focused on her hands as she scraped the chipped nail polish off of her fingers. She paused and looked up at me for a second, then averted her eyes and looked back down at her hands and continued to tell us her story.

Later that night, she was woken up and told to go to the elder’s room. She remembers hearing the crickets outside. She remembers the yawn gathering in her mouth and lungs. And then she remembers him grabbing her roughly and tearing her clothes off.

She doesn’t look up. She focuses on her hands and she says, “Koat tva bhap.” He was bad to me.

I notice that I am also staring hard at my hands, ripping the hangnails at my thumbs, stealing glances at her but afraid to make any eye contact. The therapist, breaks me out of my focused silence and tells me, “she was repeatedly raped by this man over a long period of time.”

I look at Ng, 16 but smaller than most 16 year olds I’ve seen. And then try to imagine her being only 7. The image of a much older man forcing himself upon her makes me instantly nauseous and I force the image from my mind so that I can stay present.

Day after day she was beaten and treated like an unwanted dog. Night after night, he raped her, ripping her insides and causing her so much pain that she passed out. I ask her how long she stayed.

“6 years.”

She paused to take a deep breath and rushed through the next part of her story. Someone in the house told her that her mother had moved. Desperate, she ran only with the clothes on her back to the jungle to get away from the man. An older woman took her in and fed her. This woman knew her mom. When Ng asked this woman where her mom was, she told her that her mother had met another man and had moved away with him. When she asked her where she went, the woman said that she did not know. Ng was 13.

Ng told us that she left the woman’s house after a couple of days because she did not want to be a burden. She slept on the jungle ground, ate food from the trash and begged for money. When she had diarrhea, they would not allow her into any restroom, so she went in the river or on the road. Several days later, two young men grabbed her as she was passing them by, pushed her behind a house and raped her.

With another heavy sigh, she told us, “I ran when they were done and I saw a police man. When I ran up to him he told me at first to stop begging. Then he saw that my pants were ripped and there was blood.”

Ng was taken to an emergency shelter and transferred to a NGO in Phnom Penh, where from there she was transferred to Rappha House (the location of Rappha House cannot be disclosed for safety reasons). When she was finished telling her story, a long silence followed. The fan quietly spinning above us now seemed to roar. And again, I noticed that I pulled at the hangnails on my thumbs.

“Tell me what living at Rappha House has been like,” I asked, trying to make a transition from her past to her present.

“La ah.” Good.

When Ng first arrived, she was incredibly small, skin darkened from constant exposure to the elements, and hopelessly depressed. According to the staff, she raised hell, was the unruliest of all and would fall into long periods of deep and utter sadness. At some point during her stay, when she starting making friends with the other 63 girls, started going to school for the first time to read and write Khmer and English, and started trusting adults, she became more stable and felt safe. Ng has been at Rappha House for over a year now and has started vocational training in Rappha’s beauty school program.

When I ask her, “What do you want for your future,” I know that what she wants most is to see the mother and brother and two sisters that she will never see again.

And she, looking at me, knows that I know this, so she smartly says, “I want you to be my bong srei and to become a good hairdresser so that I can do your hair next time you come here.”

Ng has a long way to go. When talking to the director, I found out that because she has no family to go home to (the shelter works with the families of the girls to make sure that the home is safe to return to, often times, Rappha house also works with the family to teach them about sustainable mushroom farming as an economic development project for them) she will stay with Rappha House until they can find a safe and permanent solution for her.

Before I left Rappha House, I gave my San Francisco address to Ng and asked her to be my penpal. She came up to me later on and gave me her favorite piece of jewelry that she had made. The necklace, made of beautiful crystal clear beads and sea shells is in my bag, safely tucked away.

Though I think of her and feel an immense sadness weighing so heavy on my heart that it is difficult to breathe, I know that is because I left Rappha House just half a day ago. Overall, I know that the hardest part is over for her. And that as much as she has gone through, her ability to continually fight to survive and the fact that she can now have a smile on her face, makes me know that she is an incredible survivor.

I hope that Ng writes me. And I know that within the next couple of years, I will make that journey back again to Rappha House in order to see her, with her beautiful necklace around my neck, so that at least she knows, I have not forgotten her.

I don’t think anybody knows what her exit strategy will be when she is ready to leave Rappha House. The organization has only existed since 2003 and has kept every single girl that they’ve been referred to work with who has wanted to stay (almost all the girls who go to Rappha House choose to stay there). They have yet to find a permanent solution for those who have no family.

Whatever ends up happening though, I know that I will stay in touch with her until that point not of return but of new beginnings, and probably afterwards. And I know that the more time I have with her to build a more meaningful relationship, I will no longer be haunted by images of her running through the jungles, but rather by memories of her being happy, healthy and whole.

In my dreams, she is running through the jungle. But I hope that one day she will stop running away from the demons that haunt her and instead, towards the hope that will guide her.

One Perfect Day—or rather the series of events and disasters that occur in order to prepare for that day

Ok. See that Demon? That's how I felt throughout parts of the day.

Day 1—I don’t know what this fabric is exactly (because I don't know the Cambodian word for silk organza) but it’s perfect!

Days have been flying by faster than the amount of time it takes locusts to descend upon a season’s crop to consume and decimate a village’s livelihood. The early morning hours, before everyone else is awake, is the only time I find enough peace and quiet for myself. This trip has been all about figuring out how to balance the expectations, needs and desires of several different people, all wanting different things and unable to communicate with one another directly. It’s been difficult to carve out time for myself but this morning, before our sight visits and meetings with individuals, is going to be all about me. I’m going to go shopping for the material that I will be using for my wedding dress.

Today Eng, a second cousin of mine, is taking the day off from her business—making and cooking pro hut trei, a delicious and salty fish paste that when friend is a yummy fish cake, in order to help us navigate through Olympic’s labyrinth of a textile warehouse. Yesterday, our failed attempt to shop in Olympic on our own made me break down and cry in frustration. The thousands of shopper, hot heat and entourage of 15 people (including my 77 year old mother and two disabled siblings) also contributed to the breakdown. Today will be different because I’ll only be going with Momo, Sakura and Eng as opposed to my whole family (that was my mom’s idea) and today is Monday (peaceful) and not Sunday (totally not peaceful).

Olympic is 3 stories of outlets, textiles, motorcycle parts, noodle shops and a fresh local market. It is a city block wide and long and is filled with stalls that are about 4’x6’ stuffed with reams upon reams of fabric and one or two people waiting to strike a deal with you. In one section you can find stacks of beautiful hand dyed Khmer silks, in others intricate batik designs on cool cotton, cashmere Burberry and Chanel prints and occasionally creamy satin organza. It is really easy to get lost here because the sight of so many beautiful textiles, all at a fraction of what you would pay in any US store, steals and holds all of my attention. I can't answer Sakura's questions because I'm so focused, I don't hear all the whispered comments about my tattoos because I am touching everything I can get my hands on.

I don’t know the Khmai words for silk organza or sateen, so instead I walk or jump into stalls (some are elevated), to feel and touch. The dress I want, a 40’s inspired wedding dress is remake of a vintage dress that I was given this past summer in Wisconsin during my first bicycle tour. The dress, not traditionally like any other wedding dress, though worn around the shoulders and faded in some areas from wear, is more significant and perfect to me than any impersonal commercial wedding dress that I could ever find.

An hour into wandering around Olympic I find a beautiful champagne colored satin like fabric, it’s perfect. I buy 5 meters of it, enough for the dress, a skinny belt, and a short-cropped jacket—all for $7.50 US. It’s time to go.

After spending the past couple of hours slowly wandering through Olympic’s textile wing, we pick up the pace to snake through it’s market place. The sun is heating up the wet ground and the smells coming from the food and animals that the vendors are selling fill the air. We pass by a noodle stand, steam carrying the scent of freshly fried garlic, green onion, rice noodles, pork and fishsauce. Then we duck around stalls full of somewhat live mud fish where women delicately perched on small pads, skillfully hack off head from tail and separate filet from bone. To the right are freshly plucked and slaughtered chickens, rows of rubbery looking carcasses with heads still intact. And directly to the left of that are live chickens waiting for their fate as each customer carefully examines them to pick out the game that will feed a family of 8 tonight. It’s starting to rain again so we quickly hail a TukTuk to take us back to my mom’s house so that we can gather radio equipment and other materials for our meetings today.

Riding a TukTuk is not as romantic as it sounds. Though the benches are comfortable enough, most of the time you’re sitting in gridlock traffic inhaling the exhaust fumes of motor vehicles that wouldn’t pass any smog test if there was such a regulation that existed here. And remember that game frogger? Well, it’s like real time frogger times ten thousand in Phnom Penh—almost comical, almost surreal, definitely hectic and crazy.

Tomorrow Sew Yin, my cousin Hun’s mother, will help us make our way through the maze of another market. It’s stalls, shielded by alternating blue tarp and thin sheet metal, are made of plywood, all elevated two feet above ground in case of flooding from the monsoon season, and all much smaller than 4’x6’.

Day 2—the making of two dresses

This morning has been full of tears, yelling and wanting to ram my head against a concrete wall repeatedly. It’s 8 in the morning and I can’t find the material I bought yesterday for the wedding dress. Everyone is frantically searching through everyone else’s stuff and yelling at my sister who has this terrible habit of needing to put everybody else’s stuff away and in the process, accidentally misplacing things. My mom who becomes more and more angry with each passing minute of futile searching, looks at me and see’s that I have given up and am sitting on her bed and crying.

“Forget it, it’s not worth it. It’s just a dress any way,” I try to say in between the snot and tears of my hysterically sobbing.

“We are NOT going anywhere until we find that damn material!” my mom yells at everyone, refusing to give up.

I suddenly hate having to make a wedding dress. Who would have thought that doing such a simple thing could have turned into such a fiasco. And again, I think about all the research I’ve done about wedding culture, all the conversations that Liam (my amazing partner) and I have had in order to create a meaningful wedding that wasn’t about consumerism and whatever other bullcrap that the wedding industry pushes on us—I just can’t believe I’m having this moment where I can’t find this damn material, where I’m laying on my mom’s bed sobbing, and where I just want to say screw the wedding! What was the point of reading, "One Perfect Day--the Selling of the American Wedding"?! We should just elope! Or have permanent partner status dammit!

And then Momoko walks in. And says, “Oh, sorry. I’ve had your material this whole time with me.”

A series of we found it, we found it! echoes throughout the house in English and Khmer. My mom, relieved, looks up and laughs. I am part stunned and relieved but mostly embarrassed. So this is what it’s like to be a Bridezilla.

Sew Yin guides us through the marketplace. We meet up with a skilled seamstress tucked away behind an industrial sewing machine that sits among stalls of traditional Khmer wedding textiles. The glint of a deep teal bordered by a traditional Khmer motif catches my eye—I find the perfect material for my Khmai wedding dress. I get measured while explaining what I want.

And then I ask, “How much is it going to be to make my wedding dress?”

$15 US.

On the way back in the TukTuk, Momoko squeezes my leg, “it wouldn’t be a wedding dress without the tears.”

And I am grateful for having a good friend that can see how embarrassed I am, is still supportive and there for me even in my worst moments. I realize all of the hyper emotional traps that I’ve been trying to avoid in order to be “above it all” well, maybe wasn't so bad to go through; afterall, when else can you justify throwing temper tantrums in your adult life? I realize that instead of trying to be calm and cool about everything for the sake of trying to be calm and cool, I should just enjoy the process regardless of it’s ups and it’s downs.

And getting a wedding dress made for under $25? Well shoot, throw in the misplaced fabrics fiasco, I'll take the stress on to gladly save $1500.

and we're here!

Mom and Sew Hun meeting us at the Airport

After picking us up at the airport, we dropped off our bags and took off to check out Phsat Tmei. Wow, I think I just completely butchered the spelling on that and I'm definitely not going to check out how to properly spell it on the internet because the connection here is sllooowww. Apologies for those that are offended. Phsat Tmei translates to 'New Market' and is basically any flea market lovers dream. Set in an old historical building, the market is chock full of $2 t-shirts, beautiful flowers, amazing street vendor food, copy cat designer bags and second hand designer shoes and luggage. Oh and it's also filled with this:

yum. We bought a bag of crickets and ate some but after the novelty wore off, gave away the rest of the bag to some friends. Fried crickets taste kinda like a cross between fried prawn heads and shrimp chips. Delicious but really rich.



Another thing that markets are great for is people watching. I couldn't help but notice subtle changes since the last time I've been here, which was two years ago. I noticed the differences in the handbag designs that they were selling (not too crazy), that the market was full of trendy clothing that I could find in the US (mildy crazy because Cambodia has never been on the cutting edge of fashion trends) and that there was a complete absence of land mine victims that were begging for money (this is totally crazy).

I've been thinking a lot about changes. Before leaving on this trip, I found an old journal that I had started writing in during my first trip to Cambodia, back from 2000. I know it doesn't sound that long ago but for a 25 year old, seven years ago is a long time ago, especially when you consider the fact that I was definitely in a different developmental stage and life style time than I am now. But beyond just the changes that I've been thinking about of myself, I've been really noticing and theorizing about the changes that I've observed in Cambodia.

I'm not talking about stupid Louis V bags or hip fashion trends, I'm talking about the noticeable decrease in visibility of really really poor kids everywhere, the growing amount of heavier women and children and the crazy amount of construction that is going on. At one point, I was afraid that we'd turn a corner to find a McDonald's. Oh FYI there's no McDonald's here (yet).

Are these changes due to some systematic change that has happened? Are NGO's doing really great work? Are there more economic opportunities because of the urban development that's being funded by foreign money? Is it because Cambodia is really starting to move on and rebuild after the shock, obliteration and complete devastation from the Khmer Rouge? Or is it something completely lame like me just noticing things more because I don't have my head up my ass anymore?

Ah! Only 2 weeks left here! So many questions!

I'll have to investigate a bit further and ask some questions with people that I'll be meeting with. But until then, toodles, I've got a swarm of mosquitoes feasting on my flesh and some really good homemade fish curry and veggies waiting at my mom's house with my name on it.