Somaly Mam: Means Justifying an End

 If you keep up with current events, you've probably seen one or two articles on Somaly Mam, the founder and former CEO of the eponymous charitable foundation.  This organization addresses women's rights in Cambodia, specifically in terms of sex trafficking and exploitation.

I've been putting off this post because, in truth, I have no idea what to make of the new revelations about the Somaly Mam Foundation.  Here's the controversy's gist:

• Mam claimed to be a survivor of child sexual exploitation, which is untrue.  She grew up with both parents and graduated high school.
• The women in Somaly Mam's videos were not trafficked and were coached to say they were forced into sex slavery for the sake of donations.
• Some of the women were "willing prostitutes" who were rounded up during a police raid of a brothel and sent to a vocational training school where they were instructed to tell foreigners they were trafficked.

The knee-jerk reaction to this is, simply, outrage.  This has provided fodder for the anti-NGO crowd to continue their crusade in convincing the world that NGOs are inherently evil and profit-driven. Those who are less-invested in tearing down all privately-funded social services simply think lying is very bad.  Mam lied.  Therefore, she is very bad.

I have a slightly different view.  

The media isn't doing any favors for survivors by pointing out a phony.  Rather, they're portraying the image of a "happy hooker";  someone who, by their own free will, decided to sell their body for sex.  Even that idea is shrouded in an apologetic misogyny that might comfort men when they're paying for sex.  But, I'm willing to admit there may be at least one prostitute on Earth who, if given every opportunity on the planet, would choose prostitution. 

I'm absolutely, 100% positive there are no "happy hookers" in Cambodia. Without realizing, news outlets are using the idea as reason for scorning Mam. Al Jazeera wrote about a prostitute, Srey Mao:

Srey Mao said she became a prostitute because she believed it was the best option to support her aging parents and young daughter. . . Seven months into her stay at the shelter, Srey Mao ran away and returned to life as a prostitute.

When I interviewed with Senhoa, who works with victims of sexual assault and exploitation, the country director told me it's really difficult to retain clients because they can't make as much money working in hospitality as they can "lying on their backs for a few hours."

This isn't just a problem about choice.  This is a problem of empowerment.  In a country where everything boils down to monetary worth, how can we expect women to leave a job that can pay a week's salary in a single night?  One could argue that I'm viewing this through a privileged gaze (which I am), and maybe women don't view their bodies as sacred in Cambodia like they do in the United States (which is false), but no one can argue with the health ramifications of prostitution.  Cambodian brothels and red light districts are not the Mustang Ranch.  Health studies rarely account for the higher prevalence of HIV and other venereal diseases among men and women who are immersed in this lifestyle.  How long will Srey Mao be around for her little girl?

Knowing what it's like to beg donors for money, I can't blame Mam for using trendy buzzwords like "sex trafficking" to solicit donations to give women better lives with vocational training.  Here's another excerpt from that Al Jazeera article:

One of these girls was Pros, who, according to Newsweek, actually lost her eye to a tumor and was sent to Afesip for vocational training. The same was reportedly true of Meas Ratha, a teenager allegedly coached by Mam to say she had been trafficked when in fact she was sent to Afesip by an impoverished farming family, desperate to give their daughter a better start in life.

In my experience, donors -- especially Americans -- don't like preventative methods as much as reactionary. Helping someone who has hit rock bottom is more impressive then making sure they never hit rock bottom in the first place.

Newsweek, who broke the story, talked to a girl who was coached by Mam to speak in front of cameras:

Late last year, Ratha finally confessed that her story was fabricated and carefully rehearsed for the cameras under Mam's instruction, and only after she was chosen from a group of girls who had been put through an audition. Now in her early 30s and living a modest life on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Ratha says she reluctantly allowed herself to be depicted as a child prostitute: "Somaly said that…if I want to help another woman I have to do [the interview] very well."

My first thought was how damaging it would be for a survivor to be interviewed on camera about something that's traumatizing beyond imagination.  If we give Mam the benefit of the doubt and there was "another woman," then I would've acted exactly the same.  NGOs pander to donors, and donors like stories and pictures.  Rarely do they think about how difficult it is to recall horrific events.

But, don't put me on team Somaly Mam.  Little tit bits in different articles makes me think they're too big to have a proper impact.  Let's go back to Srey Mao:

Months in the Afesip shelter did not change her mind. She claims that after she arrived at the shelter, she was not given access to anti-retroviral drugs for five days or allowed to see her family. Instead, she was enrolled in a yearlong sewing course, entailing eight hours a day of study or garment work. 

"I was not happy to be there ... Very often, during our short break for lunch, Afesip staff and sometimes Mam Somaly came to us and told us to tell donors and foreigners who would come to visit shelters that we were victims of human trafficking.

For lack of a better term, there's a certain je ne sais quoi that comes with case management, especially with survivors of sexual abuse. I went to AFESIP Shelter's website and downloaded their 2012 annual report.  They received $600,000 (about half of their annual budget) from the Somaly Mam Foundation, so it's no wonder they've come under fire along with their main funder.

Among the plethora of facts that come with these reports, one is that their 100 person staff is 50% male.  Men in this country -- I'll go ahead and say it: Cambodian men -- aren't exactly the most empathetic population.  There is a strong cultural precedence of superiority that makes women second-class citizens. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but I have never seen a women's shelter have such a high number of men, because their presence could be triggers for women who have survived domestic violence, gang rape, incest, and all other violent sex crimes.

That statistic does, however, explain why AFESIP could come off as a bit "cold" to the media. Eloquence is not a strong suit of people who work in a second language.  Also, speaking from personal experience, I gave birth in a room of six male Cambodian doctors.  You will never, EVER, convince me that Cambodian men are top candidates for working with vulnerable women.  They do not have the je ne sais quoi.

Other than that, I can't find anything about this shelter that is "outrageous."  Here's one of the personal anecdotes in the report:

Champey - has worked for 6 years in the sex trade. She cannot afford to leave because her family are poor and she will always to seen as a prostitute in her community now. It would bring shame on her family if she returned home. She knows the dangers of the streets. She has been beaten, gang raped and threatened with guns many times. When you are poor your own safety comes second to the welfare of your family. Champey uses AFESIP's outreach services to stay as safe as she can.

That could easily be a continuation of Srey Mao's story. The story might be embellished (maybe she only visits them once per year), but they are openly admitting they couldn't "save" someone from prostitution.  In fact, they work with survivors of sexual abuse, which is the umbrella sex trafficking falls under.  If anyone bothered to look into the organizations the Somaly Mam Foundation fund, maybe they would've seen what a small number of women were actually trafficked.

So what about Mam? There's no doubt in my mind her foundation is, in part, a vanity project.  Who, in their right mind, would romanticize a life of sex slavery to write a book is beyond my comprehension.  She reminds me of a certain CEO of a prominent London-based charity who Let Us Create used to work with, who put aside what the children actually needed for what would appease donors and make her look like a hero.

But, alas, I don't think the problem is that she lied.  The problem is that we (the Western world) need to stop focusing on trendy charitable causes, or in this case, the lack thereof.  This Somaly Mam song and dance could cost AFESIP a fair chunk of their budget and why? Because the rhetoric around their clients' backgrounds was embellished? Because the reason they need help isn't as tragic as we thought? Outrage, I say! My money was going to the wrong type of poor person!

Donors are the bane of every NGO's existence because their money makes them believe they know what's best for people on the other side of the world.  Now, we're crucifying this woman because she chose to use the rhetoric that donors want to hear to help women they are incapable of empathizing with. They need to realize that what charity clients need may not be romantic or even ideal, but that doesn't make them less deserving.

Handcrafted by No One in Particular

What is this "Handmade Movement" that Etsy goes on about?

Don't get me wrong, I love Etsy.  There's a link on the right of this site to take you to my Etsy site.  In fact, I've started this mid-year resolution to stop buying clothing from mass retailers and start perusing Etsy more because I'm trying to stop hypocrisy in at least one area of my life.

But there's something incorrect about the phrase "Buy Handmade."  When you think of something that's been made by hand, you think of a pair of baby booties your grandmother knitted, or maybe a luxe pair of shoes stitched from Italian leather. Even the lace on Kate Middleton's wedding dress was hand-knitted by the Royal School of Needlework (that's a thing!)  The "Handmade Movement" now associates handmade items with emotion, time, love, and detail.  Lest we forget, someone out there sews for Forever 21.


Garment factories are spilling out of Phnom Penh and popping up around Takeo, near my mom's mango plantation. For most of us, nothing good comes to mind when we hear "garment factories."  But I recently found out about, for lack of a better word, factory homework. Women take projects home with them and paid per piece.

Pictured is my mom holding up a piece she made for a gigantic American retailer.  We don't know for sure, but let's say Banana Republic (owned by Gap Companies) for the sake of perspective.

Mom is the most talented craftswoman I've ever known and probably ever will know.  She taught me how to sew, and can recreate anything from scratch whether it be a prom dress from a magazine picture, a bracelet drawn on a napkin, or an aluminum baby crib conjured up from her own head (It's not practical, but clever nonetheless).

Guess how much she was paid to painstakingly hand bead that collar for Banana Republic? Go on....I'll give you a minute.
...
...
...

1000 Riel, or $.25.

An expert needle-worker could make about five of those in a day, totaling a whopping $1.25 per day to do something that takes incredible skill and patience.  I went to our good pal, Etsy, to see how much first-world artisans are charging for something similar. Depending on the material, the bare minimum is around $40.00 and the max is $1,200.

That.  That right there.  That's how places like Forever 21 can charge $5 for a dress. Some argue that the living costs are lower here, but tell that to a woman who is the sole provider for her children, living in a rural area that's dominated by the back-breaking labor of rice farming and the ubiquitous factory industry.

If you're not paying very much for clothing, please know that somebody is. There's a human putting every stitch, every bead, and every button in place, whose only shortcoming is that she was born under the wrong circumstance.

The Shoe Rule

I have just one question for travelers wanting to work in Cambodia:

Do you wear shoes?

Shoes are the best indicator of competence in Sihanoukville.  The town is somewhere between civilization and a deserted island where scorching hot pavement is littered with shards of glass.

Despite this, a lot of tourists insist on walking around barefoot. I'm a pragmatist, and there's no logic to this trend except for a foreigner's insistence on "going native."  But, if anyone has adapted to the heat and treacherous, man-made terrain, it's the people who have lived here since the dawn of time. And they wear shoes.  If a local isn't, then it's not a noble "be-one-with-nature" reason.  It's because he or she is poor.

Maybe my patience runs thin with the no-shoes-by-choice crowd because I worked for an NGO that had a monthly budget for children's shoes.  A good portion of our days were spent cleaning wounds and subjecting young children to painful antiseptics because they stepped on a rock or broken beer bottle.  These were not "kids being kids" cuts.  They were "Try not to retch while I wash off this hemorrhaging flesh wound" injuries.

And yet, as I walk down Serendipity Beach Road under the equatorial sun, there is never a shortage of white people playing a perverse game of hopscotch to get from point A to point B.  Point B is never one of the countless shops that sell $2 flip flops.

At least there's one saving grace for their habit.  If they walk through the river of shit that runs down the hill from Sokom Guesthouse to the pier, they'll develop incurable rashes and infectious boils that double as signs that say, "Don't interact with me." 

Also, the shoe-less provide hours of entertainment for the kitchen staff at Monkey.  There's nothing like a big Barang lad navigating scalding hot gravel and hopping past the window to give someone a moment of zen during a busy shift.

It's safe to assume that if someone comes up the road looking for a job, they have been here for at least a month.  They've realized that working on the beach as part of a revolving door of idiots will lead to an early grave, but they don't feel like going home yet.

So why -- WHY -- do some insist on not wearing shoes?  I get it.  You're in Sihanoukville.  you would wear Daisy Dukes and/or an ill-fitted tank top if the POTUS came to dinner.  But, if you hike up the road from whatever cesspool on the beach and fail to stop in a shoe shop, then I question your sensibilities.  Why should you be trusted with a cash register and an unsupervised, limitless supply of booze?

Of course, I'm not saying shoes = responsible. I am, however, absolutely saying no shoes = irresponsible.

A Love Story Between a Girl and Her Water Filter

The Super Tunsai is, hands down, the best purchase we've made for our home. It uses a clay pot to filter water until it's 99.9% pure.  It cost $28 from a local store called Electronic City.  We love it so much, I made Torie buy one when she got to Sihanoukville, and we gifted one to my mom so she could stop paying for water deliveries.

The most impressive aspect of the Super Tunsai is that it's made, start to finish, in Cambodia.  You can see a video (a poorly produced one, but a video nonetheless) of the Super Tunsai warehouse by clicking HERE.

I lived in Cambodia for a full year when Lee discovered the water filter.  About 9 months before, when I was working for Let Us Create, our little town was visited by the USNS Mercy, a massive, fully equipped naval hospital ship that runs humanitarian missions.

Part of their mission was bringing water filters to poor neighborhoods that may not have had access to clean water. I know three separate NGOs who were given these filters, and they were complete failures at every site for three reasons:

• They used several different types of gravel that couldn't be sourced in Cambodia.
• They required constant monitoring to make sure they didn't break.
• When a problem arose, we had to email the water engineers (who, by that time, were back home on the other side of the world), who could only troubleshoot using educated guesses.

With the amount of time we spent trying to figure them out, we could've just bought clean water for $1.25 and spent our working hours doing other things.

When Lee brought home our Super Tunsai, I had a "where have you been all my life" reaction.  All it needs is a good scrub once a month, and even our son drinks water from it.  It's paid for itself several times over.  In fact, Lee put two of them in one of his businesses.  Since the only overhead is it's initial cost (plus pennies for tap water), customers can refill their water bottles using the honor system and put 1000 riel ($.25) into a collection box for the Sihanoukville Tourism Association.  That money is then used to pay workers to clean the beach.  

The filters are an illustration of a problem with most international NGOs. It's the idea that "stuff" from the first world is better and more capable than "stuff" here. But, when money is invested in local resources, it's invested in the entire town.

Those Who Need

Charity work is a paradox in Cambodia.  Last year, I visited conCERT, an organization in Siem Reap that helps potential volunteers weed through the over 300 NGOs based in the city.  With a population of 896,309 people,  36% live in poverty, according to conCERT's website.  That's about 322,571 people, or 1,075 per NGO.  Of course, some NGOs, like Friends International will work with more, and others will work with just a handful.

Compare that to Sihanoukville with a population of  278,259 and no up-to-date data on how many people live in poverty.  The last I could find on it was from 1997 when there were half as many people and an illegible map of income per capita.

But here's some math: Sihanouk Province is 868 square kilometers, or 320.6 people per square kilometer.  Siem Reap, on the other hand, is 10,299 square kilometers, or 87 people per square kilometer. It's safe to assume that Sihanoukville has at least the same percentage of people in poverty, but probably more, since most workers here are migrants from the countryside working in the factories (which account for 655,000 jobs, nationally) or in unskilled labor like construction.  I've always said that Sihanoukville is like the Wild West of Cambodia.  It's a kingdom of its own, within the Kingdom of Wonder.

As far as I know, we can count the number of active, registered nonprofits in Sihanoukville on one hand.  In the last two years, I've always wondered why there's such a disparity in charitable work between the two provinces.  Here's my professional and scientific hypothesis: Siem Reap is a better place to live.

Numbers are moot.  You can just visit the two towns and see how different they are. The booming tourist economy that surrounds the Angkor Temples has turned Siem Reap, a small town, into the most cosmopolitan town in the country, after Phnom Penh.  When we were there last week, I saw the road to the airport had a bike lane.  A BIKE LANE.  There are also 5 star hotels that contribute to a hospitality industry rivaling any First World holiday town.  And don't forget the air-conditioned coffee shops.  Oh, the air-conditioned coffee shops!  Coffee shops as far as the eye can see!

Ask any random tourist what they think about Siem Reap.  When I was visiting with a friend at Under Construction in Siem Reap's Wat Bo area, I met a middle-aged woman from Washington.  She had only spent 3 days in Siem Reap, but had adamantly decided it was her favorite town in all of South East Asia.  And this is AFTER visiting Saigon and Hoi An.  She said the people are smiley and polite, there are lovely shops, and OH MY, the CULTURE!

I told her it's a good thing she didn't have time for Sihanoukville.  She would've left with a bad taste in her mouth.  In fact, a long-time Siem Reap ex-pat told me he was sad his ex-boyfriend wants to move back to Sihanoukville.  Because, and I quote, "He deserves better than that town."

Back to my original point, Siem Reap's 300 NGOs aren't necessarily placed where they're most needed. They're not "being the change" -- a phrase that if I see one more time on Facebook, I'll throw my computer against a wall.  They're following the change created by travel books, magazine articles, and TV shows that say everyone needs to see Angkor before they die.

Sihanoukville NEEDS change makers.  We don't have ancient ruins and our beaches aren't near as nice as Thailand's to attract tourists who demand the air-conditioned coffee shops.  But with the exception of a few extraordinary, patient people, charity workers who will commit a year or more of their life in the Wild Wild West are few and far between.

Sadly, with the discovery of oil near our shores, Sihnaoukville is on path to being a boomtown.  But, roughnecks on oil rigs aren't usually followed by bike lanes and 5 star hotels.  Instead, we'll get more human and drug trafficking, as well as corruption within our self-contained government. What do-gooder in their right mind would want to move here?

Texts from Cambodia: Chocolate Dreams 2 9

One of the best things about living in a country where most everyone speaks English as a second language are the ESL text messages and emails we get from the people we work with.

I want to start a new series where I share some of the best messages that my friends and I receive from our friends who have done something I have yet to accomplish: be conversational in a second language.

The first is from Torie, who got a lovely send-off before she hopped on a plane to spend Christmas in the States. (Names have been changed).

Sweet dreams, tonight, readers.

First World Qualified

A question that hangs around in the air here is, "What are you going to do after Cambodia?"  For most ex-pats, living here is a placeholder for a real ambition.  There are exceptions, of course;  The old men who retired here to find young wives who can live like kings on their Social Security checks; the couple who was born oceans apart, fell in love and built a business.  The fugitive who skipped town whilst on bail.

For the most part, however, whether you're here 10 days or 10 years, you will reach your Cambodian expiration date and go on to a new adventure.

A few weeks ago, my friend Robin and I were trying to figure out if anyone we know is first world qualified to do their Cambodian jobs.  Lee, who is the most capable person I know, even says that he can run a business here but has no desire to back in England. So what happens to people when they create a home in a small beach town over several years, then decide to move?

I said that it's all about how you break down your experience.  Any Joe Schmo with a few grand can open a bar here, but a small percentage of those people are successful.  Still, can they go back home and say they ran a successful business here without anyone knowing the wiser?

It becomes painfully obvious who knows what they're doing and who doesn't.  It's all well and good to say "I own a restaurant," but when your first world interviewer asks you very specific questions about accounting procedures (which are done entirely analog), human resource management (with unheard of turnover), and marketing (go to the bus station and hand out as many fliers as possible), your fantasy job as a Cambodian business mogul looks no more impressive than a child's lemonade stand that uses a Country Time mix instead of fresh lemon juice.

I'm looking for ballpoint needles.  Do you have them?
Do you know what they are? Where am I?

It comes down to the fact that doing business in Cambodia is grinding.  For example, if I need to restock all of my sewing hardware, I can't pop down to Jo-Ann's or even go to the online store that sells wholesale.  There are no superstores here, and shipping anything will cost more than the items you're buying.  I wait until we go to Phnom Penh and find two hours where I can sit on the back of a moto and hold on for dear life as the driver navigates the roads to find the zipper store, the twill stall, the linen lady, and hopefully some place near by the sells a seam ripper.

Imagine how my world changed when I went back home for a month and visited Mood Fabrics in New York.  Everything was there.  I took two trains, walked a few blocks, hopped in an elevator (with an elevator attendant (what?!)) and found myself in the promise land.

Mood Fabrics NYC via my sister

Running a successful business in Cambodia is like the baseball batter who puts weights on his bat before he steps up to the plate.  You do a few practice swings with two extra kilos so your arms suddenly feel lighter when that perfect pitch comes your way.  Cambodia is the weights.  The first world is being at-bat.

When we go back home and interviewers asks us how our experience in Cambodia relates to what you're trying to do in the first world, laugh in their faces and tell them the weights are off and you're ready to hit it out of the park.

Sidewalk Enterprise

Every morning at 6:00, a boy who can't be older than 14 arrives to the sidewalk across from our apartment with a large bag and a bike pump.  For the next half hour, he inflates about thirty penguins.  Then, he sits.  A few times an hour, he'll adjust the penguins that moved from their orderly columns and turn them so they face the street.  If one is dirty, he'll replace it with a clean one that he wiped down earlier.

His busiest times are before and after school.  Over the last four days, I've seen him get six sales.  Two to a moto drivers who had a small children, one to a man in a Lexus who wouldn't open his door all the way to inspect the penguin (he even yelled at the boy to back off), two to me, and one to a teenager who arrived to the penguin site immediately after me.

It's almost like a lemonade stand, but the money goes to his family (who, I think, are positioned around Sihanoukville selling the same penguins) and he sits behind the collection all day, 6 am until sunset.  I was prepared to pay a dollar for the penguin.  It was 5000 Riel ($1.25) so I shelled out the extra cash in support of small business, then noticed the penguins all say "dolphin" in stock script on their sides.

I used to think he attended school during the afternoons because I looked over one day and saw an older man there.  Alas, the boy was behind the man's moto, inflating a brand new penguin for the man's son.  When I spoke to him, I asked him if he spoke any English.  He said, "aht," which means no.  It's safe to assume he just works.

A Reasonable Man

There's one story that perfectly describes my father.  My sister's boyfriend, Hayes, told it to me in New York, and ever since, I've used it to explain what Dad is like to people who have never met him.

Dad was at my Aunt Sue's house with a few people, talking about sitting in traffic.  No one likes sitting in traffic.  That's a given.  It's on par with having your flight delayed or sitting at the DMV anxiously waiting for your number to be called.

Dad, however, has a different perspective.  He said that it's not so bad.  You have your air conditioning, the radio, and a comfortable chair.  It's really not that bad.  Sometimes, he even enjoys it.  Because he's the most reasonable person alive.

This photo is from 6 years ago, but it's the only one I have on hand.

While I was [ahem] between jobs, I worked in his law office doing tedious paperwork and screening calls from potential clients.  Attorney's offices are where indignant Americans go to get revenge on any Tom, Dick, or Harry who swindled them out of a few dollars or said something they think is defamation of character. My main purpose was to tell them they didn't have a case without using profanity.

When there was an especially persistent and difficult caller, Dad would take the call and explain in his even tone why not only he, but no lawyer worth their dime would take the case.  He said he's been hung-up on a few times, probably to make me feel a better about my first yell-and-hand-up-call.  But as far as I could tell, every person ended the call thinking Doug Meier was the most logical person in the world.

In addition, he's one of only a handful of lawyers who will answer inmate letters.  That was another one of my duties.  Every single letter goes answered, usually with a piece of legal advice, even if there's nothing he can do to help them.  When word got out there's a lawyer who answers letters, prison mail started coming to his office in droves.  All of them get a reply.  He said that most inmates just want to know someone is listening.

I've always thought he'd make a great judge.  If he were to teach, he'd be every law student's favorite lecturer.  But he chooses to work hundred hour weeks, suing insurance companies and other lawyers whose incompetence ruined someone's life.  His profession has been so ingrained in our lives, that as children, we'd play a game called Judge for Yourself.  You read real court cases and have to figure out how the jury or judge voted.  I never knew that was strange until my friends said they mostly played Candyland.

His success as a lawyer comes from two philosophies that he repeats to me several times a month:

• It's not about what you say, but how you say it.
• It's easier to put out a fire with water than gasoline.

Dad credits his level head to a few things.  One is his upbringing. I don't know what my grandparents were like in the 60's, but Dad's side of the family (two parents and six children) is probably the only one in the modern world that doesn't fight with each other.  No one ever gets mad and holds a grudge or displays passive aggressive tendencies.  I'm not saying they're saints, but the ruffled feathers come from those who married in.

His other reason is that he lived in developing countries for the better part of his twenties -- Thailand, Bangladesh, and Somalia.  He worked for NGOs that were positioned in refugee camps (which is how I was eventually born).

It's those experiences that gave him wisdom and insight into my frustration with Cambodia.  He's talked me down from countless ledges because working here is grinding.  It's that insane degree of difficulty that gave him the patience to own a business in the United States.  When you have to bribe a government official, drive around all day to find stuff that's neatly consolidated in a Target or Walmart, or use Google as a trusted pediatrician, all the things you thought were difficult at home are put into perspective.

Dad would never try to make his life sound poetic.  He would probably just say he gets paid to do his job and his kids made it to adulthood without any major injuries. To me, he couldn't handle his day-to-day without knowing another life.  A life where everything is much worse than an extra hour in traffic.

Runaway Imagination

I've only written about my mother once.  It was for a class at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, called "Intro to the Personal Narrative." When I wrote the essay, I wasn't thinking about Mom.  It was supposed to be about me and the beginning of a long journey that ended where I was at the point in my life. Mom was a character I had created to help the narrative.

Yesterday, we were at lunch and Mom told us a story about her little brother's death that I wasn't prepared for.  She said it nonchalantly as part of our conversation. Throughout my life, I've gotten small details of what happened to her family during the Khmer Rouge, but I hadn't heard any graphic details since I was six.

When I read my essay again, I saw that it wasn't about my millennial need to give myself some validation for my personal and academic meandering, but rather about Mom.  It's about her sacrifices and everything she went through that ended with raising my sister and me.

I'm not ready to talk about that lunch conversation, but I wanted to share this essay, which I found among hundreds of forgotten documents on my Google Drive account. Consider it an introduction to a deeply personal subject that will take me a lifetime to understand.

I woke up because my throat hurt and I was sweating. Mom always worried Amanda and I would get cold at night so she'd sneak a few extra blankets on our beds. In her mind, death by dehydration took a backseat to hypothermia. In the morning, she would wake us up for school and assume I had a fever because I was always soaked in sweat. My thirst may have saved me from the ten extra minutes it took for her to take my temperature and decide not to make me stay home.

The blurry light creeping through the mini blinds was bright enough that I didn't need to grope around for my glasses. By now, I could expertly navigate the trails that Mom plowed through our mountains of Barbies. I pushed the covers to the end of the bed, and tiptoed to the bathroom so I didn't wake Amanda. Then, out of nowhere, I stepped on a rogue Barbie shoe. I jumped up and down, muffling my cries of pain, knowing that Amanda would throw something at me in a drowsy stupor if I woke her up. After gathering my composure, I limped the rest of the way to the bathroom and closed the door behind me.

I turned on the light. Big mistake. I immediately turned it off. Once that big white flash went away, I grabbed a Dixie cup from the dispenser next to the sink and turned on the faucet. I held my hand underneath the running water until it was ice cold, dipped the cup under the water, lifted it to my lips, and gulped it down in one breath. I repeated this action until I replaced all of the fluids that were now soaked into my flannel bed sheets.

After a dramatic, satisfying sigh of relief, I opened the medicine cabinet and reached for a pair of tiny scissors. I cut into the side of the Dixie cup. I was carefully edging around the bottom of the cup when the hallway light turned on and Mom opened the door.

"TAVE! AGAIN?! You're not thirsty, you're just wasting our cups!" Her eyes were tired, and I knew that she had just finished a long night of sewing doctors’ scrubs in our basement. I knew that it had to be at least midnight.

"No, Mom, I'm really thirsty!" I was still working on pronouncing my R's.

Even though the wear of working for sixteen hours was visible on her face and body, Mom noticed I had been sweating and put her hand on my forehead. Her frustrated scowl quickly turned into one of panic. She took me back to bed and pulled the covers back over me. Very quietly, she trekked through our room, stepping on the same Barbie shoe I had earlier. Unlike me, however, she gave a small wince and carried on to her bedroom, carefully closing the door.

I threw off the covers and opened the top drawer of my nightstand. I had been clutching the bottom circle of the Dixie cup and excitedly threw it into the drawer. There was the distinct sound of plastic shuffling around. I slowly and silently closed the drawer, turned over, and fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up to a dull blow to my thigh. I could barely open my eyes, but saw Amanda’s blurry figure sitting upright in her bed. As I made a move to find my glasses, the bean bag she threw at me fell off the bed.

“Manda! Why?” I sat up then fell forward on my bed, causing my glasses to fall off the bed and get lost among the Barbie dolls. A moment passed and I almost fell back asleep until THUD. “WHAT WAS THAT?!”

She had thrown her favorite doll at me. It was ragged pieces of cloth with stuffing poking out of the stitches that has been constantly replaced by Mom. It’s name was Amanda. Our father had given it to her when she was too young to know there were more names in the world besides Amanda. After it hit me in the head, there was a weak tinkering sound from the wind-up music box inside – the only part of that doll that still functioned as it did on day one.

“GET UP!” Even as a ten-year-old, Amanda was uptight about being early for school. I didn’t care as much, so I sat there for a few more seconds, then pushed my feet to the ground and dragged them to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and gulped down a few Dixie cups of water, then proceeded to cut up both my and Amanda’s cups and taking the bottoms to my top nightstand drawer. Amanda raised her eyebrow, but didn’t stop to ask me what I was doing. Her curiosity about my new hobby faded over the weeks and became nothing more than a way to waste precious moments that could be spent getting ready for school.

Each morning, Amanda would be downstairs, already on the couch watching Power Rangers, when I finally clamored down the stairs fully dressed. Our backpacks were in the exact same corner of the entryway from the day before. Mine was pink, hers was purple. Together, we’d take them to the kitchen where mom had our lunches packed in brown bags with our names scrolled in her curly handwriting, with a small heart underneath them. She used to draw a pair of lips as a “kiss,” but stopped after we told her it was embarrassing. Amanda’s lunch always had a peanut butter sandwich, an orange, and a Snicker’s bar. Mine had a jelly sandwich, an apple, and a Milky Way bar. Once, Mom switched our names and we ended up going hungry that day. Now, we’re ready for school.

Colorow Elementary had recently implemented a “reading block.” Someone in a suit decided that pretending to stare at a page of a book was more productive than the teacher teaching, so we always had to have reading material in our desk. I bent the rules and brought National Geographic. Mom had a subscription and would keep all of the volumes in a magazine rack by “my” loveseat. No one else sat in that loveseat, so I had constant access to these magazines and would flip through the pages thousands of times until I memorized all of the pictures. I couldn’t read most of them, but I refused to get a subscription to National Geographic Kids.

Before we left for school, I grabbed an issue that had a long article about Pompeii. It was old and after months of sounding out words and memorizing pictures, I had finally finished the article, with a lot of help from Mom. Even though she was fluent in English, she still wasn’t a native speaker and there were some words that would stump both of us. Sometimes, she would have to pause for a few minutes because the images of the skeletons – the people -- who died embracing each other made her cry.

So I sat there in class, with my National Geographic open. My teacher, Ms. Whitworth, had stopped questioning whether I was actually reading the material or just looking at pictures. She learned her lesson one day when she took it away from me, asked me what Pompeii was, and listened to my three-minute summary of the article. Now she was focused on getting me to read something new, but something about this dead city was very much alive to me.

Weeks before this article came out, there was a Discovery Channel documentary about Pompeii. At first, I walked into our small living room and wondered what happened to Nickelodeon. I sat on my loveseat, scowling, until the talking head disappeared and the camera slowly crawled in and out of these buildings that were once homes, but now graves. Like, a frozen moment in time, these people were entombed with their rings still on their fingers, with their bread still in the oven, and with their children crouching near them, probably frightened. Briefly pulling my attention from the TV, I looked at Mom who had a tissue in her hand, wiping her eyes. Then she went to the basement and I could hear the familiar buzz of the sewing machine.

Though we weren’t doing it as often, Amanda and I would get sick of TV and follow Mom to the basement. She kept a black garbage bag of scrap fabric for us to play with. We learned to use these industrial machines at an early age, but Amanda was scared of them and would leave most of the sewing to me. Even now, her ironing skills greatly surpass mine, but asks me to make things like aprons or bedspreads. This was one side of the basement. The other side was a different world that Mom had created just for us.