Does hell exists on earth? YES, it does. The Khmer Rouge invasion during the 70s was hell for millions of innocent Khmers; including my family; I was five at the time. The savaged war put my family in a destitute situation. We encountered starvation, illnesses, and deaths.
First of all, my family was put in a destitute situation because the Khmer Rouge seized all of our valuable belongings and burnt our home to the ground. My parents didn't dare to disobeyed because our whole family would be executed. My parents rapidly gathered my siblings and I and fled with just the clothes on our backs, a few cooking utensils, and some food. We didn't have a clue where we were heading. We traveled on bare feet amongst thousands of other Khmer families towards the countryside like cows in a hurtle. The food that we brought quickly disappeared because my parents had eight children to feed, and my mother was pregnant with her ninth child (I was the seventh child). My parents were uneducated farmers. They sweat in the heated sun from dawn to dusk daily in the rice field to provide for the family. I can only imagined that they didn't have the time or the source to other recreations other than making babies...LOL...We began to starve and grew weaker and weaker every minute. The group got smaller and smaller day by day as some people starved to death, while some died due to illnesses.
The Khmer Rouge separated children from their parents. All adults were forced to do hard labour and given just a bit of rice with lots of water to eat. Children from the age of seven had to carry soil and work on the rice field. One of my older brother (ten) and sister (12)missed seeing my parents, they secretly escaped in the middle of the night. They had to swim across a strong flow of river hoping to see my parents. My brother and sister were already suffering from hunger, they were very weak. My brother ended up drowning to death; my sister barely made it alive. A few weeks after, the Khmer Rouge brutally executed my innocent father. Then, my grandmother, an older sister, and baby brother lost their lives due to illnesses and starvation as well. By this time most people in the group had left us. We continued to follow a small group of people who stayed with us.
A couple of months later my mother gave birth to her ninth child on her own by the river side without any help. My mother became very ill and weak. Her whole body began to swell up, she could barely walked. By this time, more people went ahead and left us behind. We were still striving in hope of salvation. We traveled through forests and jungles for months without sufficient food or drinking water. My siblings and I would try to catch crickets, grasshoppers, and took risks of eating what could of been poison wild berries. The sky was our roof, the hard ground was our bed, the stars were our lanterns, the rain was our drinking water (unless we came across rivers or streams). Of course it didn't rain every day, so we suffered from thirsts. My infant brother was starving because my mother couldn't produce breasts milk. Out of desperation, my mother cried out "Listen my beloved children, please follow those people, I can't really walk, I want you guys to have a chance of survival, leave me and your baby brother to die here." My mother's words made us numbed, crippled, and almost speechless. We all dropped to our knees with tears gushing out like crazy water falls. My older siblings exclaimed "We will not leave you and our brother, if you are giving up we will all die together right here." Which mother will just gave up and let the rest of her children die? Not my mother! My sister got a dead tree branch and let my mother used as a walking cane. Slowly but surely, we reached the Thai border. There were hundreds of other Khmers getting medical aid from Thai soldiers and doctors. My mother and baby brother were taken to a hospital in an ambulance. The rest of us were escorted onto a pickup truck and brought to the hospital in the refugee camp called Khao-I-Dang, my siblings and I reunited with our mother and baby brother, it was new year's eve of 1979. We were filled with mixed emotions. My three older sisters ran to my mother and cried "Mom, we made it, we are safe and alive".....We stayed in the camp for many years. We applied for sponsorship to countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada etc.
With the mercy of God, my whole family got sponsored by a very generous Canadian family who lived in Calgary, Alberta. My family and I touched the beautiful Canadian soil on July 21st, 1987. My mother told the translator that she wanted to meet our sponsors to thank them in person, but we were told that our sponsors wish to remain anonymous. My whole family is extremely grateful and pray to God to bless our sponsors the best that the world has to offer and more. Because of what I've been through, it made me appreciate everyone and everything, it also made me a stronger and better person. Thank you God for keeping us alive through all those hardship and for giving us a chance of a new beginning in a beautiful peaceful Canada.
