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Tim | Martha
| Thomas | Maggie
| Cristina | Gabby
| Tim | Nico | Izzy
| Sarah M. | Benjamin
| Sara K. | Dylan
| Sarah M.
Imagine: you are Hmong and you just got
away from the Pathet (communist) Lao. You travel through the
Laotian jungles, your belongings and those of your family
on your back. You are often getting shot at by Pathet Lao
patrols. You reach the Mekong River and find it heavily guarded.
You are able to get across unharmed.
You stay at a Thai Hmong house. Meaning no harm, they give
you directions to the Ban Vinai refugee camp. At the gates,
you are forced to hand over everything you have hauled through
the jungle. They then let you in. They tell you to go find
a place to sleep. Maybe you get to a place where you can get
under the blankets they gave you. This is what it was like
in Ban Vinai's early stages.
–Tim
Some of the houses are traditional (bamboo,
mud, etc.) and some are not traditional (tin roof and wood
walls). Most houses are not traditional. Every house has a
concrete well.
–Martha
In 1975 roughly 50,000 people were crammed
into the small space of Ban Vinai. Sometimes there wasn't
enough food to go around. . . . for one day they give a family
a bag of rice and hog 3 bags for themselves. Or a rat bites
through a bag and the rice goes on the dirty floor then the
Thai officials sweep up all that and put it back in the bag
so all of the rice that they get is unhealthy. At Ban Vinai
people would normally get a bucket full of water a day.
–Thomas
Many people died of starvation,
sometimes dehydration, sickness, and lack of medicine. There
were hospitals, but they weren't very clean, and things like
needles were often shared.
–Maggie
The school in camp is not like our
schools because it has different style. Peng said that first
grade means something else. It means someone who needs to
know abc, 123. And there are only 5 grades in the refugee
camp. So refugee school is very different from our school.
–Cristina.
The kids had a better time than the adults
because they didn't have to worry about where they would end
up living.
–Gabby
Soccer was the dominant activity. Since
many had no job at camp, soccer was a great time-killer. The
field was so used, no grass grew there.
–Tim
The soccer games were played like so:
two teams come and play, one wins, the team that lost leaves
the field, the next challengers come and it starts again.
They played from 8 a.m to dusk.
But for kids not old enough to play, it was a drag. You had
nothing to do all day, every day, until some kids invented
some games like jacks except with a rock and sticks, or jump
rope, except with a long chain of rubber bands.
Kids had some other games like kow tow, which is kicking
a ball like volleyball, also tublub, which is a game where
there is a board and you spin big tops on and try to knock
the other person's top off. For the kids it was a lot of fun
if you didn't go to school, because you had lots and lots
of free time.
–Nico
Because no one had jobs and the Hmong
people had little or no money whatsoever they sometimes snuck
out. There was a metal fence with barbed wire on it to prevent
this and later a 3-ft. deep ditch to prevent this.
–Izzy
The women didn't have much to do. .
. . Later on the women got materials from the JVC . . . to
make Paj Ntaub [story cloths] and a new style was created.
Instead of just symbols and shapes they sewed people and buildings
and scenes of villages and the refugee camps onto the quilts.
–Sarah M.
The camps had a unique form of government.
First, there were the refugees (of course). Each family had
someone to represent them to the officials (usually the father).
Each apartment had a leader. He would go to the section leader
to get rations and report "misconduct." Then there's
the section leader. He is in charge of all the apartments
in his section and also has permission to go directly to the
government. Then there's the president of the camp. He's in
charge and settles almost everything. But what the Thai govenment
says, goes.
–Benjamin
Peng was one of the lucky ones because
he left the refugee camps early. He got to because his father
was a teacher and the Hmong wanted to send the smarter people
to America first to see if they would survive because if they
didn't, they figured no one else would be able to.
–Sara
Even today, there are still two refugee
camps in Thailand, but one is being shut down. In the 1990s,
the refugees couldn't come to America so some refugees went
back to Laos.
–Dylan
Quite a few Hmong people we have seen
haven't wanted to talk about the camps. Too painful. "There
was no freedom" Mr. Her said. That is why so many people
wanted to first escape Laos, and then escape Ban Vinai. Remember,
Being Hmong means Being Free.
–Sarah M.
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