I was ten years old in Cambodia when the Khmer
Rouge government took
control of the country. The Khmer Rouge forced the people out
of the
city to work in the rice fields and to live in small houses at
the rice
fields. My two brothers were separated from my family. My father
went to
look around and asked people about my two brothers. They said
they
didn't see them. My mom and I stayed in one place. I couldn't
go
anywhere because I was afraid of getting lost. I saw a lot of
people,
families, kids and babies, and bags of clothes.
My mom took a
bag of rice and a big pack of clothes for all of us from
our house. She didn't take all the stuff in our house. We left
our
animals. The Khmer Rouge didn't let people go back home or
to the city,
and they closed all the streets.
My father and my mother made
a small tent. I saw other families start to
make small tents. Four people lived in a small tent. Then it
started to
rain. The ground was wet and muddy and messy. My father dug
a small hole
in the ground for me to pee in.
Two days later, my father had
five men friends. They rode their bikes to
buy weeds to make their houses. Someone asked him if he was
Han's son,
and he said yes. Then he went back to find his older brother.
Han wasn't
there, but my brother Paul came back with them. My parents
were happy to
see Paul. The next day, Paul went to find my older brother,
named Ghia.
He didn't find him. I never saw Ghia again. Then Paul came
back to be
with us.
Two weeks later, Khmer Rouge decided to put
everyone into groups of 20
families with one leader. They gave them a small piece of land
and told
them to build houses in a line. The leader had to do what Khmer
Rouge
told him. He told the families what to do. He gave everyone
tools for
work.
 The families were told to grow their own food
to live on. The food we
brought with us ran out, so my mom and I took some clothes
and walked 20
miles to trade it for 25 pounds of rice. It took us all night
to go
there. We slept in a temple, and at 4 a.m. we walked back.
The rice
lasted for three months.
The group leader made the people get
up early and go to work in the rice
fields. Khmer Rouge gave every family 10 pounds of rice once
a month.
They had to work hard to get that. My mom made rice soup with
8 ounces
of rice and 2 gallons of water. It cooked for half an hour
to get soft.
We had sweet potato leaf and crabs with it. Every day we ate
the same
food. Sometimes we picked pumpkins, corn and sweet potatoes
from our
garden.
My mother died in Cambodia. One day my father,
my younger brother and I
escaped to Thailand. Later we came to the U.S.
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