by Susan Kuklin
Ours wasn’t the nicest house on the block, but it was big, and on stilts high off the ground. All the houses were on stilts because of the monsoons. Me and my friends played underneath the houses. My dad built an area outside for the purpose of cooking. We cooked on the ground, using firewood or charcoal. We had dishes and spoons but mostly we ate with our hands. He also built a bathroom outside the house — an outhouse.
The lights for the camp were turned off at nine p.m. We didn’t have electricity, but we had batteries and candles. At night, we slept under mosquito nets. In Thailand, especially during the monsoon season, bugs are part of everyday life.
Even though the camp was large, about 2.4 square kilometers, there was no ordinary transportation inside it. I mean, there were people who had bikes, but we couldn’t afford one. The only time we were allowed outside of the barbed-wire fence was to take a taxi that drove around the perimeter of the camp. We couldn’t afford to be driven from our area of the camp to the other side. We walked.
There were three hospitals for fifty thousand people. The hospitals were free but nowhere near the quality of the hospitals in a country like America. There were no operating rooms. If you needed an operation, you had to go to the nearest city. That was quite a drive. And also, the hospital was overcrowded. When I was little, I got sick. My dad carried me on his back to and from the hospital, almost an hour’s walk.
Our school had no windows. There weren’t even walls. We used natural light. The floor was mud. There was a long wooden board, like a table, with no chairs, just benches. That’s where we did our lessons. NGOs from other nations gave us books, paper, and pens. We all wore white uniforms. The camp didn’t have paved roads, just dirt roads, and during the monsoon season, it would get very muddy and slippery. School was about a twenty-minute walk from our house. We couldn’t afford rain boots or real shoes; we wore slippers or flip-flops. Once, when I was in the fourth grade, I slipped and fell and got very dirty. It was too late to go back and change my shirt. If I was late for school, I knew that I’d get a spanking. I went to a public water well and washed out the mud, then sat in school, soaked.
Students there showed much more respect to their teachers than they do here. When a teacher entered a room, we stood up and said, “Good morning, teacher.” Otherwise, school was just like it is here, with teachers, a principal, and an assistant principal. We learned English right from the start. We learned vocabulary. We did not learn to speak Thai until fifth grade. We studied Burmese, Karen, English, geography, science, and math. But the teachers were nowhere near as learned as here in America.
My parents were really keen on education. They wouldn’t let me out of the house unless I studied first. I’d come home from school, shower, eat something, and then study for one or two hours. After studying, they’d let me out to play marbles, tag, soccer — I loved soccer — with my friends. Students were ranked according to their test scores. If I wasn’t ranked in the top three, my parents would be really disappointed. I didn’t like to disappoint my parents.
One thing that was different there is that the teachers and the principal were allowed to hit you. Parents encouraged this. My parents told the teacher, “If he’s bad, if he’s misbehaving, make sure you hit him.” The teacher gave out twenty English vocabulary words. We had to memorize the words, the spelling and meaning. The next day, we were tested. If you missed one, you were hit one time. If you missed two words, you were hit twice. Once I missed two.
The one thing I was not allowed to do was go outside the barbed-wire fence. My parents explained to me over and over again that once a person was outside the camp, there was no security. It wasn’t a war zone, so we didn’t have to worry about land mines nearby, but we did have to worry about getting kidnapped. We could be snatched and sold into child slavery. It happened. That was my parents’ biggest worry, someone snatching me if I was outside the camp. Also, there were people from Bangkok who came to the camp and told parents about work opportunities for their children. They’d say, “Don’t worry about an ID. We’ll provide that for them.” Once the child was out of the camp, he was gone. He was never again seen. And there was nothing the parents could do, because they didn’t have identity cards to leave the camp and search for their child.
The thing is, I liked leaving the camp and going into the jungle. I liked to hunt for things with my slingshot, even though I was terrible at it. One day, my friends and I snuck out to hunt. It wasn’t that difficult for us kids to sneak out. I didn’t tell my mom, because I knew that I’d be in so much trouble. But I thought that if I brought back wood for the fire — because in the winter it was cold, and our family would sit around a bonfire in the morning — she would forgive me.
When I got home, my mom immediately knew where I had been. “Why did you go so far? Do you know how dangerous that is?” I presented the wood to her as a peace offering. She used a log to spank me.
During the monsoons, the kids loved to play in the mud. That was the most fun we had. We’d go up a muddy hilltop and slide down. When we went home all dirty and sticky with mud, our parents would get mad because they had to wash our clothes. We’d get yelled at and spanked, but it was worth it. Sometimes we slid down the hill so hard our pants ripped. That’s when our parents got really mad because they had to buy new clothes. We’d get spanked harder, but it was still worth it.
My happiest memory has got to be Christmastime. Christmas was a community thing rather than just a family thing. It wasn’t about one family giving each other presents; it was about many families celebrating together. There was caroling. Afterwards, the carolers came into our house for food that my mom had prepared. We didn’t have lights, Christmas lights, we used candles, beautiful candles, all around the house. There were no Christmas trees, but we watched free movies throughout the Christmas season. On Christmas Eve, there was a concert, and Santa Claus came out on the stage and gave us kids candies. At midnight, we ate chicken porridge. On Christmas Day, everybody went to church to worship.
Refugee camps were never intended to be a permanent solution for displaced persons, even when the people in the camp tried their best to create a sense of normalcy and community. It was clear from the start that living in Thailand was a minimal and temporary condition. The refugees there had little to no future. Returning to Myanmar was not an option; the Bamar were still in bloody conflict with the country’s ethnic minorities. The only viable alternative was to resettle in a third country. That process takes years. No one can be resettled without thorough vetting — an examination into the health and background of the refugee and family. Those who pass are eventually offered a permanent home in a third country.
After years of interviews, waiting, more interviews, more waiting, Nathan finally learned that he and his family would be resettled in the United States. For the first time in his life, Nathan would live in a country he could call his own. For the first time in his life, Nathan and his sisters and brothers had a future.
The year 2005 was a boom time for immigration. People were leaving the camp right and left, and going to Canada, Australia, the U.K., and America. The only sad part about it was that my friends left before me. Would I see them again? Would I be left behind? My parents applied to go to America and Australia. We waited. We waited.
In 2007, I was twelve years old and in the fifth grade. I had changed to a different school, Mission High School, that was known for providing a better education than the school I had been attending. It was expensive, and my parents gave up much of their savings to enroll me there. After about five months, my parents got a letter saying that we were accepted by the United States. My parents were very happy. They thought that life in America would be good for their kids. I was ecstatic. I knew about America because we read about it in books, newspapers, and magazines. We saw what it looked like in movies.
We had a few DVDs, but we didn’t own a DVD player. We’d go to a neighbor’s house to watch them. There was this movie where a snowman came to life. Frosty. Fro
sty the Snowman. Because of Frosty the Snowman, I always wanted to see snow, so I was very excited to come here.
Once I found out that we were leaving, I started skipping school. My parents didn’t know about this. Here they were, paying a lot of money to send me to this school, and I was skipping. I thought, I’m going to America; I don’t need to go to classes anymore. I played in a cave or at the soccer complex. I was going to America!
Before traveling to the United States, everyone in the family had to pass additional medical exams and attend orientation classes. The kids were put into three groups — called Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman — where they were taught about airplanes, superheroes, and the different appliances found in American homes. They learned about American foods, like burgers, hot dogs, and pizza. Nathan learned that in America it was illegal for a teacher to hit a student. “Really? Is this true? I was in heaven.”
The community center had papered the walls with pictures sent by people who had already emigrated. Nathan was amazed that people had TVs and ice in their own houses.
The kids in my orientation group were so excited about going to America. Sadly we were all assigned to different states and would no longer see each other every day. My family was assigned to the state of Texas, in a city called Houston.
For the journey, we went by bus to Mae Sot, an hour away from Bangkok. Escorts had been set up in advance to meet us at every stop along the way until we arrived in America. My dad had bought shoes for us back in the camp. Shoes were very expensive, so my parents only bought them for us kids; they wore their flip-flops. But once we reached Mae Sot, we were each given a new pair of shoes. My brother Hel was the only one whose shoes were the correct size. Mine were too big for me, but I wore them anyway. They gave us pants and T-shirts. They gave Mom and Dad jackets too. Other than that, we just wore our regular clothes.
We moved on to Bangkok, where we spent two days, one night, in a hotel. I was in awe of the tall buildings. I had seen tall buildings in the movies but never in person. There was a TV in the hotel bedroom. I never had a TV, much less in the bedroom, and I stayed up all night watching it. We also never had a bathroom in our house. We had an outhouse. “What? Why do we have a bathroom right near where we’re sleeping?” We thought that the idea of someone pooping near where you slept was weird.
At the Bangkok International Airport, my mom would not use the escalator. It was too scary. We had to use the stairs. We carried all our luggage. The twins were three years old, so my parents carried them and my other sister, Hei Blut Laura Paw, who was only six months old. Hel and I helped with the luggage.
Every time a helicopter had come to the camp, we kids would run outside and wave to the pilot, so I knew all about helicopters. But airplanes? I had never seen an airplane. Airplanes amazed me. How could something so big be lighter than air? Wouldn’t it fall down, carrying so many people? Once I got in and sat in my seat, it didn’t feel like I was on a plane flying through the sky. I was, like, in a chair someplace. The flight was long, and the food was strange. I think they gave us hot dogs; they smelled terrible. There were video games, but I didn’t know how to mess with the remote. I slept a lot.
We arrived in L.A., our first American stop. At an airport restaurant, we bought fried rice with chicken. I was really, really happy to finally eat rice. The special part for me was seeing all the people in the airports. Living in a refugee camp, I had never seen so many different-looking people in one place — different clothing, different skin color, different hair color. My mother thought that everybody was huge. In the camp, there might be two people who were six feet tall. It seemed that here everyone was a giant.
At this point, we were on our own. No more guides. We went to a video screen and just stood there staring at it. We had no idea what anything meant. A person who worked at the airport stopped and asked us where we were going. I said House-ton. “Oh, you mean Hyoooston?” And he escorted us to our terminal.
In Houston, our sponsor met us at the airport. He was a white male, and his wife was Burmese. They drove us to our new apartment and showed us how everything worked — the lights, the microwave, the fridge. “Okay, there’s food in the fridge. There’s food in the pantry. Here’s some dishes. Here’s how you turn on the stove.” And then they were, like, “All right, see you later,” or never.
I didn’t like this new place. This place was very small. Although we didn’t have as nice a house in Thailand, we had plenty of room. Here there were only two bedrooms, small for a family of seven. Everything was too different. I wanted to go home. But there was no way to go back. I cried. The twins wanted to go home too. They thought we were just on a trip. “Can we go home now?” they asked.
It was midnight when we reached Houston, but it was only twelve o’clock in the afternoon in Thailand, so we were wide awake. We didn’t sleep until morning.
The beds still had on their plastic covering. We didn’t know that you were supposed to take off the plastic. When we tried to sleep, the plastic made a lot of noise. My mom got a blanket and laid it on the floor. My dad tried to sleep on the bed, but it made too much noise, so he moved to the floor with us. The beds took a period of adjustment. We slept on the floor for the first couple of days.
Eventually we tried sleeping on the beds, but I fell off a few times. There was a carpet underneath, so it wasn’t a hard landing. The restroom was nice. I got used to the restroom pretty fast. I loved the shower.
We had been told that in America, there were mostly white people. But at our apartment complex, there were only a few white people, mostly Hispanics and African Americans. I was like, “Wait, where’re all the white people?” I never knew there was such a group as Mexicans, because they didn’t teach us about them in the orientation meeting. They spoke a weird-sounding language that I didn’t understand at all. I asked my dad about it. “Oh, they’re speaking Mexican because they are from a country called Mexico.” I don’t know how he knew this.
My mom and dad both cook, and there were lots of places to buy Asian food in Houston, so food was no big deal. What was a big deal was getting the food. Going grocery shopping was a twenty- to thirty-minute walk to Walmart. We were used to walking and Houston was flat, so that part wasn’t tough. What was tough was crossing the wide streets with all the little ones and a cart filled with groceries. Houston was such a big city, and there were so many cars. Yes, crossing streets was tough.
After the first night, when the sponsor dropped us off at the apartment, we never heard from him again. We were told that some agency would send a caseworker to help us get established. The caseworker never showed up. We didn’t have anybody to complain to. We didn’t know anything. I wanted to go to school because I didn’t have any friends. I’m a very social person, the extrovert in the family. I was used to having lots of friends, so I was lonely. I thought, maybe when I go to school, I might meet people my age. It was three months before I went to school.
Luckily there were four other Karen families already living in our apartment complex. They helped us the most. They told their caseworkers about us, and their agency sent us a Karen lady who signed me up for school. I liked going to school, but it was strange how the kids talked back to their teachers. At the refugee camp, the teachers had complete power over their students. You did not disrespect your teachers at all. Here, the teachers had little power over their students.
My dad immediately started looking for a job. It was hard to find work in Houston, because he didn’t speak English. There was a Karen community in Port Lavaca, two hours away, that hired workers for a big plastics factory. You didn’t need to know English to work there. My dad worked in the factory’s production line, working a twelve-hour shift, making nine dollars an hour. Not bad. He moved to Port Lavaca so that he could work, and we stayed in Houston. My mom stayed home, taking care of the younger kids.
I was put into the fifth grade. My English wasn’t very good, and sometimes the kids made fun of the way I talked, but it wasn’t anything
that crushed my spirit. School was the place where I could interact with people my age, so it was worth a little teasing. After school was the sad time for me. There wasn’t a playground where I could play with my friends like there was in Thailand. I couldn’t go to a friend’s house and say, “Hey, come out and play.” And there wasn’t as much homework to do as there was in the camp. I got that done real quick.
I’d go to the park and walk around by myself or just stay home. After my dad was working for a while, he bought us a TV. I was excited. I didn’t want to go out after that. In Thailand, you have to pay to see a movie. Now I could stay home and watch movies all day. We didn’t know the English well enough to understand what was happening, but it didn’t matter. We mostly watched a Hispanic channel that showed American movies with a Spanish voice-over. We couldn’t afford cable, and that was the only channel that showed movies all day.
My parents met other refugee families from Thailand camps. I became friends with their kids. I also made friends with a Pakistani kid who had also grown up in a refugee camp. Back in Thailand, we had heard rumors that people in the South and the Midwest didn’t like immigrants, but we met lots of nice, generous people wherever we stayed.
We only lived in Houston for five months. A large beef-packing company was short on employees. They heard about the refugees in Houston and offered jobs to a couple hundred families. But the company was eleven and a half hours away, in a town called Cactus. They sent buses to pick us up. U-Haul trucks took everyone’s stuff.
Cactus was a way too small town for us. There was not even a downtown, just two gas stations. The only available school in the town was an elementary school, no middle or high schools. But the meatpacking company was there. My dad was able to make enough to take care of us, send money back to relatives still in the camp, and buy a car, a Ford minivan. At first, he was the only one in the family who knew how to drive. He had to drive us to another town just to go to Walmart.