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.
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