Birth on the border

Nhan motions for me to get off the bus.  No one else is getting off,  The driver pulls my suitcase out and leaves it in the dirt.   Nhan pulls me and the suitcase to a bench.  I look around for anyone who might speak English to find out why I am here and where I am going.  

A van pulls up that has "Luxury Resort" painted on the side.  I am pulled and urged inside for a short ride to a hotel.  The van and the hotel do not quite match.  We walk up a set of stairs and pass open doors where young girls in sports t-shirts sit with older men.

My room looks out on an aging Casino.  A woman comes and sit son the bed.  She smiles, an excited toothless giggle.  She knows some English, she explains because she worked at the US Embassy in Saigo and was there when the helicopters took everyone.  They wanted to take her but she didn't go.

"Tomorrow you go to Vietnam.  Tonight Casino. "  Her English is limited but I am thankful."  Nhan hangs her clothes, takes a shower and put son a dress.  I consider that this is my new home.

The embassy woman leaves to go cook and Kim, a distant cousin arrives.  She is from Virginia and is to be my translator.

She takes me out on the road to a night market that sits amongst towers of large, modern Casinos.  The Cssinos are everywhere.   "Las Vegas."  she sweep her hand over the landscape with excitement.

I watch young women dressed for Casino work, fed their children at the market before going to work.

I sit near her, eating some fred bread with chilli sauce amongst the blinking lights of generators and motorcycles.

She had come to Cambodia from Vietnam with her sister.  They had walked on a path that a friedn had described to them; a way to cross the border without papers.  They were told there was work to do there. Their family could not feed them any longer and there were no marriage proposals in their poor hamlet.   They had hoped ot earn money and start a small business that would help their family to prosper.   Soon, after they arrived they began to ash the sheets and make beds.   They slept in a plastic tent with the other girls and saved their money in a pocket they sewed to their clothes.   Once in a while they snuck back across the border to give the money to their family.   Their mother as to save it for them.  One day when they had saved enough to start a business, they went home but when they got there the house was empty and no one knew where they had gone.  All their savings and their only family were gone.  They slept in the empty house but when the hunger was too much they walked back over the border and tried to get the old job back.  The boss said he needed a person to give massages and let them watch the other girls who did massage.   It was not hard.  Their grandmother had massaged them as children as they lay on the floor beside her fighting sleep.    The men were mostly Korean or japanese or Chinese and went to sleep.

In time the one sister went back to washing sheets and the other became a sought after massage worker.  Her boss said he loved her and in time she found herself with a baby growing inside her.  She tried many ways ot end this pregancy but they did not work.  The Mother of Buddh, visited her and told her to have the baby so she did.   She ate very little so she would not show but in time her boyfriend found out and beat her.   She had the baby in the plastic tents with her sister.  They did not dare to go the health center as they were Vietnamese and had no papers.   They had no home.  The baby ws born small and did not breathe.  She was grateful for this silence. She looked up a the the orange tarp.  It was just getting light.  There wold be no  baby after all. She had not killed it.  It simply never lived.  The afterbirth came and the girls offered her some tea adn washed the blood from her.  Maybe now her boyfriend would forgive and love her again. She would work even harder and sleep with the men who wanted her.  She would save.  Her sister and her would go back to Vietnam and start a business.  They would find their family.  But then the baby cried.  Her sister picked up the baby; a boy and handed him to her.  He looked up and then she knew she would always care for him.  Her sister sat beside her.  "Don't worry. I 'll work mornings and you can work at night.  We can raise him together."

The boss, who was the baby's father, had her checked for tears and when there were none set her back to work the next day.  The baby grew in the orange tent community on the border of Vietnam and Cambodia.  She holds his small hand and lets him pick out what he wants from the carts.  They are still saving but now he goes to a pre school and they pay for that.   "I am neither Vietnamese or Cambodian. All I am is my son's mother."  

She wipes his mouth and hurries him to eat.  "We have moved into a room so it is better.  We work hard and still hope to make a business.  I have to work now.  Bye - bye."

She leads him onto a path that leads to her room.  The cousin is impatient with me and hurries me.  Tomorrow we will be in Vietnam.  I stand and look at all the Casinos and all the girsl who have come to work there and no one cares what country it is. It belongs to the night.

Children form Vietnam and Cambodia

Nhan has come to pick me in Phnom Penh and take me to Ho Chi Minh City.  Neither of us speak each other's language though I suspect she understands more English than I do Vietnamese.  I have just returned from a workshop for the midwives at the Russian Friendship Hospital and am both tired and pleased.  

I am to go with Nhan ( sister number 5 ) on a tuck tuck to the bus that will take us to the border crossing.  At the hospital, I no longer tell anyone I am going to Vietnam.    The Rescue Party is uniting its followers around an anti-Vietnam platform.   I ask a young man what Vietnam looks like.  "Like Cambodia because it is Cambodia.  All of Vietnam belongs to Cambodia."   "Really." I ask.  "All of it."   He nods with certainty.

They tell me that thousands of Vietnamese are being told to come to Cambodia, to marry their women and to vote against the Rescue Party in the elections.

My Cambodian family offers Nhan some rice and chicken that she picks through. They stare at her.

The doctor says,  "Why would you give anything to Vietnam.  They already have enough. '

Nhan and I climb into the tuck-tuck as I wave good-bye to my daughtes family and begin life with my son's Vietnamese family.  At home, in Oregon, we are all one family with grandchildren who played together and loved each other since they were young.   In the schools of the United States they are Asian and few faculty take the time to distinguish between the borders of Southeast Asia.   They large Asian grocery stores sell anything Asian;  Chinese, Korean, Cambodian, Phillipino, Japanese, Cambodian.  The aisles are felled with customers of every race.

I do not see any signs of Vietnamese taking over Phnom Penh.   There are no signs, no schools or places to eat.  They say I cannot see them but a trained eye can.  They are everywhere and they vote for the party in power which is really a puppet government for Vietnam.

As we settle into our bus seats and I watch the city streets turn to rice fields, I feel like I am a traitor going into enemy territory.

My daughter's sister tells me life was worst under the Vietnamese than Phal Pot.  I squint my eyes in disbelief.  My daughter hesitates.  "Well, the killing stopped."  Later she explains that it is better to be killed by other Khmer people than be ruled by outsiders.

I suggest that no matter the past,  the Rescue Party might want to focus on some common goals than creating a common enemy.  I say it is never okay to call anyone a racial slur like the ones they use for Cambodians.

They say, "We know Vietnamese people. We like them. We just don't want them to live here."   I tell them that this is what people use to say about African-Ameicans in the United States.  They protest.  This is different.

"The Vietnamese took our land?"
"When?"
"I am not sure.  The kingdom of Funan."
"That was thousands of years ago."
"It is ours and the Rescue party will get it back."

"The Khmer Rogue slaughtered thousands of Vietnamese and the King killed the Vietnamese boat people."

"That isn't true."
"It seems like it was true.  I can read it everywhere."
"It isn't true.  The Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and stole everything.  Now they are rich and we are still poor."

I say, " I have children and great grandchildren from Vietnam and Cambodia and I have to spend time in both places.  It is never a good idea to raise a new generation to have a common enemy; a hisorical enemy.  No good ever comes of it."

They shake their heads.  Everything I read is a lie. I am being tricked.   With this is my mind I sit in a bus. I look around.  Wh is Vietnamese and who is Cambodian anyway.  The Chinese ruled Vietnam for over a thousand years and most everyone I know in Cambodia, is so proud to be Chinese.

I close my eyes and sleep.   I hear John Lennon sing. "Imagine theres no countries.  Its easy if you try."