By Her Vang
June 30th, 2017
[aesop_content color=”#000000″ background=”#ffffff” width=”600px” columns=”1″ position=”none” imgrepeat=”no-repeat” floaterposition=”left” floaterdirection=”up” revealfx=”off”]”A few months had passed before I realized that
she was never coming back. She was gone
and I had lost my mom.”
Ι don’t know what it’s like to have a normal or a well-functioning family. I don’t know what it’s like to have a dad who loves and protects his children. But I know what it’s like to have a broken home. I know what it’s like to have a drug addict dad who abuses everyone in the family. I know what it’s like to live a life scared of my own dad.
a
In my whole life, I never really know where to start telling my story to people and most importantly I don’t know what they will make of my story. There have been many instances when people feel pity for me or feel like I’m a better person than they are, and that usually takes away our friendship. It is never my intention for anyone to feel pity or that I’m a better person than anyone, because I am not. I simply share my stories to find commonality and connections within you and me. So, here is my story and I hope there is something in my life that you can learn from.
a
My name is Her Vang and I was born when my mom was in her early 50s. After she gave birth to me, she got really sick and she couldn’t produce milk for me. People thought that I wasn’t going to survive because I only had powdered-rice soup to eat as an infant, but it was a miracle that I managed to survive. When I was around 4 or 5, my dad was addicted to opium and he would hurt my family, especially my mom if he doesn’t get any drug. I remember my dad hitting my mom with a wooden stick until she bled. She screamed and cried yet no one dared to help, because if they did, they’d get hurt too. I was scared myself so I hid under my bed crying silently so he wouldn’t see me. At first, it was just hitting (with wooden sticks) but it got worse to the extent that he threatened to kill my mom with guns. He wouldn’t let her eat, drink or sleep.
a
Everyone in my village agreed that the only way for my mom to survive was to escape from my dad and go to my uncle in a city around 100 km away. She couldn’t take all her children because it’d be too obvious and dad would find out about the journey and stop us. However, I was the youngest one and I couldn’t be parted from my mom and I was small enough for her to carry on her back. We didn’t want to get caught by dad so my mom only packed a few pieces of clothes for both of us and we escaped when he was busy.
a
Unfortunately, he found out after we had left so he came after us. My mom was afraid that he would come after us so we hid in the bushes near the road while waiting for our bus to come. Unluckily, I was so thirsty so we had to come out and ask people for water. My mom and I saw him while asking for water near the road. He was on his bicycle which is packed with four or five 2-meters-long wooden sticks prepared to hit my mom. She saw him coming so she left me and ran through a local market. Luckily, a kind lady saw what was happening and hid my mom on her bed and covered her with thick blankets. My dad came screaming at the lady but she denied seeing my mom. While he went looking for my mom somewhere, we managed to get on the bus. He could’ve killed her if the lady hadn’t helped.
a
My parents finally divorced and my mom was set free. However, my father wanted all the children so he wasn’t happy that I was with my mom. He kept asking me to go live with him, but I was scared of him after witnessing everything he did to my mom and my siblings. I was so scared of him that I would freak out if I saw a shirt like his hanging in front of someone’s house. I would lock myself in the bathroom and I wouldn’t talk to him when he visited. He was furious so he told me that he would kidnap me and sell me to the Chinese so that I wouldn’t have to see him again. I was even more horrified because many people, especially my mom, actually believed he wasn’t joking. There had been kids who were sold to China for child labor.
a
A few months after he had threatened to sell me, he remarried and everything got better for my mom and me. Now we could start a new life. Unfortunately, we barely had anything to eat so we started growing corn and sold it from door to door for just enough money for me to go to school. At that point we had hope again in life. Nonetheless, in my culture having a father is extremely crucial so I was bullied in school by the rich kids for not having a dad. They scared me with dead snails, they kicked me whenever they wanted to. They knew I had no one to protect. They knew my mom was uneducated so she couldn’t do anything to stop them. Luckily, I had my mom who worked hard and was both a dad and a mom to me and she was only person I had left.
a
At the age of 9, I walked out of school to find my mom on a bus. She told me she was going to the capital city for her visa to the US. I didn’t know what the US was, so I thought she was just visiting some relatives and would be back in a few days. I couldn’t go with her because I had school. A few months had passed before I realized that she was never coming back. She was gone and I had lost my mom. In school, people would bully me for not having a dad and a mom to protect me. My dad was never there for me when my mom left, so I wanted to become someone different from him. I promised myself that I would be a good father for my children and I won’t let them suffer like I did.
a
At 15, I was determined to study English so that I could someday study in the US and reunite with my mom. I moved from the countryside to a town where my oldest brother lived just to find out that the English centres in town were beyond my financial reach. So I took to the streets to ask foreigners to teach me. After school, I would go back to the streets to practice my English with foreigners until 10 or 11 pm. I did that every day and I met an American teacher who runs a non-profit project in the area called “the S.M.I.L.E Project”. He teaches English and other life skills to impoverished youth for free. He invited me to his class and my life changed forever. Many of my friends and I have been living with him for 5 years. He means so much to me. He is a friend, doctor, teacher and the dad that I always wanted. With his help and the hard work that I put into studying English, I was able to come to study in Europe on a full scholarship and bring my dream into reality. Recently, I got accepted to a university in the US with a full scholarship. This will allow me to see my mom again after 10 years.
a
Back home so many people would forbid their daughters from spending times with me. They said “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” They said that I would end up like my dad and achieve nothing in life. I didn’t let that determine who I am. Instead, I used it as my motivation to create my own future and I believe we all can create our own futures.
[/aesop_content]
If you would like to continue this debate, please do not hesitate to contact the author directly or The Flying Dutchman at [email protected]
