Creating our American Dream

My Cambodian name is Sokhannah; I am the fifth of ten children. My family left Cambodia in 1979, after the loss of my two younger siblings to starvation and illness, and to flee the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. We settled in a Thai refugee camp – a grim and dangerous place – for almost two years. In August of 1981 my family received sponsorship to America through our relatives and friends at the River Road Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia.

Once in Richmond, my mother and sister worked as housekeepers at the Hyatt Hotel. My father got a job welding shopping carts making minimum wage. We lived in a three bedroom house with one bath; my two older sisters and I shared a room and a queen size bed.

In 1981, I was enrolled in school for the very first time at Crestview Elementary School. School was tough for me; the only class I felt comfortable in was “English as a Second Language” where I learned the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, and learned to read at a first-grade level. I was twelve-years old.
After our arrival my family frequently faced financial hardship and my parents worked two jobs to keep us going. At thirteen, I worked a part time job cleaning offices.

Thinking we might have greater financial success there, my family moved to California right after I finished at Tuckahoe Middle School. Before we left I wanted to honor my first American friend, Stephanie Price, by asking her to give me an American name for when I got my citizenship. She and her mother Vivian named me “Amanda.”

I graduated high school in Long Beach, California in 1990 and worked as a pharmaceutical technician while attending a city college. In 1992, my father’s health started to decline and he was unable to work. With my family facing financial hardship again, I chose to quit school and work full time to help out. California didn’t work out the way we had hoped and ultimately, the high cost of living and violence in Los Angeles convinced us to move back to Richmond.
In Virginia, I worked for Caremark Pharmacy and I married Thoeun Sam in 1994. Later I attended beauty school and owned a hair salon with my two sisters. Now, Thoeun and I have two sons, Matt and Alexander and we own Salon Magnolia in the west end of Richmond. Hard work, perseverance and risk taking have paid off for us – my family lives the American dream. But don’t think that I have forgotten the past.

Remembering the nightmare
My earliest memories of Cambodia date from when I was five with my parents putting us to bed in a bunker and warning us not to make a sound. At first we were excited when we got to sleep in the bunker, but that all quickly turned into a nightmare. The sounds of guns and bombs filled the air.

Early one morning in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge emptied our cities and towns. Firing guns and broadcasting over loud speakers they ordered all the citizens to leave their homes and possessions claiming we would be able to return in a few days. We were told that the Americans were going to bomb our city. In reality, the Khmer Rouge never did allow anyone to go back to their homes. In fact, they destroyed those homes, closed all schools and all temples. The streets became quiet as if Cambodia were a country of only crickets and toads.

The Khmer Rouge singled out intellectuals, professionals, artists, and anyone who had worked for the old government for especially cruel treatment. We went to live in a village where no one would know us and so we were able to stay alive and stay together for eighteen months before we were found, separated and sent to work camps.

I lived and worked in a camp with children mostly my age. We slept little; work started very early and ended very late. We were given almost nothing to eat. Many nights I prayed that I would die in my sleep to end all the suffering. I felt hopeless. Thankfully, in early 1979 I was sent to rejoin my parents and siblings. But my father, suspicious of a deadly fate, spirited us away in the middle of the night, depositing us with family in another town. My parents wanted us to have a chance to escape and survive while they went back home to face whatever was to come.

That month the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown by Vietnamese troops. My family was back together except for my father and everyday my younger sister Sokuntea and I would go to the main road and wait for our father to come back to us. Each day hundreds of strangers passed but there was no sight of our dad. Sokuntea never did get her chance to see him: she got sick and died just one month before he got back to us and after another brother died we made the decision to leave Cambodia forever.

In July 1979, we walked for three days and nights with nothing but a small sack with clothing, a sleeping mat, a couple of blankets, a mosquito net, a shovel, a water bucket, and very little food until we reached the Thai border. Our journey was through the jungle, filled with danger. We drank water with human bodies floating in it, ate food that had been long spoiled, and walked on grassy land infested with land mines and booby traps. We lived on the land for three months before we were moved to a refugee camp.

Creating a new dream for others
I got my second chance at living a good life in a new country and for this I am eternally grateful. But I am continually reminded of the sufferings of the Cambodian people who lack the simple things I now take for granted: food, shelter, clothing, clean water, schools, and medicine. Knowing myself what it is like to be scared and hungry, I have a strong passion to give back.

In April 2006, my husband and I started our first emergency relief mission to Cambodia with $1,700 in donations from family and friends and with this we bought locally produced rice, soy sauce, fish sauce, and noodles to help out 110 families. You cannot imagine the gratitude we received from the Cambodian poor, elderly, children and handicapped who accepted our help. We knew that we had to return and do more. The next year we were able to raise $3,800 and help even more families.

From these first experiences, we learned what we could accomplish in a short time period with limited resources. Did you know that for $18, a 100 pound sack of rice can sustain a family of 4 for a month? Engaging our friends with compassion and know-how, we established a non-profit corporation so that we could develop our support of the Cambodian poor into a sustainable program. We have future plans to help poor Cambodians become self-sustaining. That is the story of our organization “100 Ponds of Hope.”