May 7, 2009

Their Story:
These Laos are Mong Hill tribe people that their families helped the US during the Vietnam war. Once Laos turned communist the army wanted to exterminate all of these people so they fled to Thailand. But are considered illegal so the thai gov rounded up all these people and stuck them in a camp because they can’t go back to Laos because they will be killed so they are stuck. Most of these Laos living in the camp have been living there for 2 years with no hopes of leaving. They are only allowed outside for 2 hours a day and so we visited when they were able to be outside. We weren’t allowed inside at all. They are grateful for anything they have and were all very happy to see that we brought things that they needed and visited them. Everyone including the children wei every time they received something we gave them.

So, you know those tours that you take at Angel Island of the detainee camp for the Chinese. They were interesting to see but they were kinda creepy. Well a bunch of us went to a functioning detainee camp for Laos people in Nong Khai. The day I went was the second day that people went, so I’ve heard all the stories before and I didn’t think that I was going to be freaking out, but I did.

We started the day off by going to Tesco (a Walmart type store) and got men’s underwear, towels, various fruit, note pads, and colored pencils. We then walked over to the detainee camp. Once I got there there was just a bunch of kids and adults outside. So, we set up shop and started passing out fruit. All of them were very grateful and waited till someone got around to them to give them fruit but all of the older kids and adults pretty much refused to get the fruit so the little kids could get some. The number of children was overwhelming. We had a lot of fruit so the cutting of fruit and handing out fruit lasted for a long time. But mean while Katie decided to pass out notebooks and colored pencils so I helped by passing out colored pencils. And that’s where it got crazy like what u see in movies about people scrambling for any type of food. Once the children saw that there was something new that they didn’t have all the kids crowed around me and Katie until they almost pushed me and Katie over and I had to step back.

Another moment that hit me pretty hard was finding out that one of the girls at the camp doesn’t have parents anymore and just has another brother at the camp. Another moment was when I found out that the 3 older boys actually were at Bangkok University until the police found out that they were there and arrested them to come to the camp.