IN HER OWN WORDS

BY MAI CHONG VANG YOUTH REPORTER

Editor’s Note: Fresno is home to the second largest Hmong population in the United States.The Hmong in America originate from Laos and fled that country because they assisted the United States army in the Secret War. Hmong refugees fleeing Laos stayed in refugee camps in Thailand before they were relocated to America and other Western countries. Zoua Vang, 39, grew up in a Thailand camp and moved to Fresno in 1994 with her husband,

As a child, the first thing I knew was that I had no father. He died in Laos during the Vietnam War, when I was little. My mom explained to me that my father was a soldier for General Vang Pao. In the beginning of the war, a bomb exploded, and shrapnel hit my father in the chest and back.

The doctors successfully removed the shrapnel from his chest, but before they could get to his back, communist Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers took over the Hmong villages, where the major hospital was located. My father went on the run with my family into the mountains of Laos. With no doctors around to remove the remaining shrapnel, he passed away from that injury, hiding from our enemies.

After this, my family went to the refugee camp of Ban Vinai in Thailand in order to be safe.

My mom was a great mother. She cared for my three brothers, my sister and me, and gave us lots of love, but she made the decision to remarry, leaving us with my grandma and uncles. After she left, I would [often] cry myself to sleep. My grandma would always say, “Stop crying! If your mother loved you then your mother would never have left you to live with another man.” Sometimes my grandma would hit me because I was crying too much. I missed my mom so much that one day I ran away to stay with her, but the next day my grandma and uncles took me back.

When I lived with my grandma I really wanted to go to school but my grandma said, “You are a girl. Going to school is not worth anything and won’t benefit your future. Only boys go.” Instead I cooked all the meals, carried water home from the river, sewed cloth designs, cleaned the house, farmed -- anything that is consider a woman’s duty. Sewing clothing designs was the only way to earn money. I wasn’t able to spend time with my friends and close cousins unless we were sewing clothes.

Kids with parents could have an education because their parents would support them. With no parents, I could do nothing. No matter how much hard work I did for my grandma and uncles, I received no thanks or reward. As an orphan, I would look at the children who had parents and imagine my life if I had parents. Would I be treated with respect? Would I be going to school?