10 years old

I went ministering this weekend with the Relief Society president and visited three sisters in their home.  One lady spoke only Cambodian and I mostly smiled and watched her grandsons while a few snippets were translated. My heart was full when we visited another who had just lost her twins at five months gestation. They fit in her hand and she has one picture of holding them both though they were already gone. But it was Vanny that caused tears to fall.
We went to her house and visited a minute about cooking and the cooking show she had on. Some pictures caught my eye and either I or the Relief Society president asked about them.
Vanny's grandson had drawn some pictures for her because an outreach program had asked her to come tell her story. Her story of life that she hadn't shared with her children for 40 years.

As she started her story I realized we were about the same age. At 10 years old in 1969, I looked up in the sky to see if I could see the space capsule on the moon. As a family we watched the events on television and I felt the whole world was watching with us. For Vanny, American bombs fell out of the sky and destroyed her town. Luckily her immediate family was gone that day but they lost their grandparents and many of their relatives.

Bombs meant for communist Vietnamese from US military plans

But horror and troubles were just beginning. A few years later the Khmer Rouge took over the government, and trucks came into their town and ordered all the men to get on the trucks. Her father, uncles and others were driven out into the jungle and killed.

Vanny's father in the front with uncles and others from their town

Then life became extremely hard and difficult when they told they were going to go out to the countryside for three days. They took only a few clothes and a little food and then found they were actually being placed in work camps. She ended up with her younger sister about three years old to care for. Her mother and other younger sister were in a different camp. Everyday when she planted and worked in the rice fields, she would set her sister on a small patch of dry ground and work all day in the fields. She had no communication or knowledge of where any of the rest of her family were. She later learned her older sister who was 8 months pregnant and most of the rest of her relatives had gotten on a boat to sail to freedom. The boat was sunk with all her family except her mother and other sister.

Relatives trying to escape on a boat to Vietnam. 

goodbyes

When I was 16, I took care of my siblings as my mother was having more children. Vanny was the sole caregiver for her sister and had a hard time getting food herself. But the horrors didn't stop. The soldiers had a book of people they were going to kill and her name was in it. She watched terrible carnage all around as the soldiers would bring the people together, grab their hair slam them over the head and then slit their throats. She was holding a friend's hand when her friend shouting her name and telling her goodbye, was drug off by some soldiers to the forest. They later bragged to other men how they had cut her open then raped her before they left her body there.
Vanny's little sister about 4 years old still remembers the day when Vanny in a group of people being killed was grabbed by the hair with a club raised and the "boss" or man in charge said, "Don't kill that one." Vanny lived and so did her sister. When I asked what happened to the little children dependent on their sisters or mothers who were left, she said sometimes they slit them open and took their gall bladders that they hung in doorways - all these little green nibs hanging. And sometimes she explained that they swung them against a wall and bashed their head in.

Vanny was spared

After a shift in power, families frantically tried to find each other. Vanny's mom kept asking everyone she saw about her daughter who would be taking care of a little girl. Finally one lady told her what road to go down and Vanny met up with her mom and other sister again. They took a treacherous walk through the jungle to reach a camp on the Thai border. Vanny explained how different countries would let 100 people or so into each of their countries. Vanny, her mom and sisters came on a plane to Des Moines, Iowa and were introduced to their sponsor - who didn't speak Cambodian. After some sign signals and finally an interpreter, they were shown into an apartment where they had actual beds, pots, clothes and food!! Their gratitude was immense.
Vanny talked about seeing the Elders who would walk past them and then go to doors who would shut the door in their face. For about four years the Elders never came to their door. She said they would have followed the Elders to their church if they had come.
Because of the harsh winters, when they were able to move they came to Oakland sunny California. Vanny told about going to the ocean and kneeling at the ocean edge and putting her hands in the water and then jumping up with her hands to the sky calling to all her relatives, "I'm alive, I'm alive! I am here, I am alive!"