Borom Son:
Borom came to live with my family when I was two years old as a foster daughterand my older sister. This is her story:
Borom was born in the year of the monkey which would be 1968. Her father was a fisherman in a small village on the banks of the Tonle Sap river. She had 2 older brother and sisters and lots of little brothers and sisters. It was her job to take care of the younger children. The village was invaded by the Khmer Rouge in 1978 when she was 8 years old. The organized work groups that they put the farmers in were not that disruptive to everyday life because it had been a farming and fishing village before. One day the Khmer Rouge came and took her away because she stayed at home and helped with the babies when the elder children had already fled.
They took her to a Khmer Rouge training camp where they wanted her to be trained as a soldier. However, she was not strong enough to carry a gun and she was too scarred so they put her to work in the kitchen and the garden. The Khmer Rouge changed her name to Son Rom so as to be a more modern name. When the Vietnamese invaded the camp, the soldiers fled into the jungle where they moved from place to place for about a year. When they ran out of food, she was told to leave the group and flee to the Thai border. She and her friend set off. Her friend stepped on a mine and was killed. Borom, freighted, climbed into a tree and stayed there for seven days praying to Buddha to give her a sign. On the seventh morning, a snake slithered down the tree and headed north. Taking this as a sign from Buddha, Borom followed in the direction of the snake.
She arrived at the Thai border where she was taken to Mai Rut, a refugee camp under the protection of the queen of Thailand. This camp was controlled by the Khmer Rouge and international help was not permitted inside. She was put into a children's center. She was 13 years old. All the children were afraid to sleep by the door because the closest ones were always gone in the morning, taken by the Khmer Rouge to be soldiers. When the Vietnamese began to shell the camp, all was evacuated except for the children's center. UNHCR went into the camps and took the children's pictures and stories and removed them from Mai Rut. Borom went to Sakaeou where my mom was working under the pretense that an aunt claimed her. However, it turned out to be a mistake. In 1982, Borom came to America as an unaccompanied minor. In 1984, Borom came to live with us.
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