In One's Own Land by Place in Time

Not In One's Own Land

Janneth Gil

Not In One's Own Land

In oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own land

Design, text and images copyright ÂŠ Janneth Gil 2015 unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by other means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission in writing from Janneth Gil. ISBN 978-0-9941181-2-7

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Printed in Christchurch, New Zealand

Not In One's Own Land

Janneth Gil

This book is dedicated to all our immigrants and to the people who receive them with kindness and an open heart. In particular to Sam, Cristene and their children who shared their experiences with me, and who have made our nation richer by being who they are.

Introduction

For some the perception of Colombia, the country in which I was born, is a land of passionate people, unique and significant biodiversity, emeralds and the famous aromatic coffee; for others, Colombia is the land of Pablo Escobar, drugs, corruption and danger. My father believed in the importance of education, that being educated was a way to survive, words I later found to be true. Education gave me an opportunity to leave the country in search of a better life, a new beginning. I was 20 years old when I left and I made a promise to myselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C;I am not going to be poor anymore and I will find a way to help my family out of poverty. In my travels I always found people with good hearts that helped me when I had difficulties, families that adopted me. I lived in Israel and France before I immigrated to New Zealand; the land that I love and that I now call my home. It was not easy to adapt to each of the countries I lived in. Initially, I could not communicate easily with others; to learn another language is not easy. There were months when I felt lonely and sadly at times overwhelmed. It was here in New Zealand that I began to understand the need to adapt, I needed to learn and get involved with Kiwis and their culture; from that time on I worked hard to fit in.

At times I have felt discrimination––however, it was only when I started travelling with a New Zealand passport that customs authorities stopped searching me for drugs. It seems that being a New Zealand citizen meant I was a better person. On the whole I now feel adopted by this society; but like an adopted child you can feel both, loved, and at the same time, a lack of connection and belonging. I have heard both happy and horrific experiences from many immigrants in many countries. Among them, Sam’s life story inspired this book. Sam’s family survived the Cambodian Genocide. His is a crude example of what no child should have to endure. And yet, despite his past, Sam’s life now is, for many, an example to follow. Along with other immigrants, he is looking for a place to call his own and also for an opportunity to contribute. He, like many of us, wants a better future for our children and ourselves. I feel privileged that he has allowed me to tell his story and I hope it will contribute to an understanding of those New Zealanders born elsewhere, who have come to call this place home.

The camp was a horrible place. Night was the time they attacked. Rebels who came out of the surrounding mountains used to run into the camp shooting randomly, raping, killing and then off they would go again. We had a hole we had dug for when this happened, we would climb into it and lay bamboo over the top in order to hide. Our neighbour had one too. They were hidden in it when one of the rebels came by and threw a grenade in. Everyone died except for one kid. Mum and Dad, being the sort of people they are, took on the orphan. Later on he got adopted and went to live in Canada. Sometime after, he found out we were in New Zealand and he wrote us a letter. My parents were really good people because even in the worst of times, when a lot of people would think only of their own survival, they looked after this kid. From time to time you hear about people getting murdered in New Zealand, but over there itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on a different level. Even as a small child I remember the violence. I have seen people die; I have seen bodies after they have been riddled with bullets. I have watched a man being lowered into a toilet, a long drop, to retrieve the bodies of his son and wife after the rebels had killed them. I will never forget those things. I do feel however, the experiences I have gone through in my life have built my character and made me strong. Even though they are the most horrible things to ever see.

I began my life in the Jungle––that is where I was born. My family escaped imprisonment in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime’s genocide and they were making their way into Thailand at the time. Eventually we ended up in a refugee camp called Khao-I-Dang

Sometimes, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if I have been blessed or cursed with having a really good memory. I have also learned how to suppress it. I guess this was a coping mechanism because of what I experienced. I can pick and choose what to remember and what to forget. But you never really forget.

Growing up at the refugee camp, you felt like you were growing up in a zoo. We used to get buses full of French missionaries driving around looking at us. I was there with hundreds of other kids looking back at these people. I think that was the first time I had seen a white person. It was an odd feeling but what made it worse for me was that they used to throw food out the window and we used to fight over it. It was kind of humane in a way, but at the same time it wasâ&#x20AC;Ś I guess the word for it is degrading. We were scrapping for food, and it felt like they were on a bus tour looking out the window at this place and marvelling at it, while at the same time, we were living it. Once a month Mum used to come back with a parcelâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C;UNICEF used to give out parcels. We would get a sack of rice because we were quite a large family, but just one tube of toothpaste for all of us and at that stage we were seven. We also got milk powder and some condensed milk. I remember the taste of that condensed milk. I still love it to this day. One thing I always remember about the milk powder was that it came from New Zealand.

Our diet was very restricted. I never ate meat while I was living there because the only type of meat available were ratsâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C;people used to catch them and keep them in cages to sell.

To live in a refugee camp is not a good feeling. You just existed with the hope you will be out one day. You survived by blocking your reality–– that is how you coped. Even for me as a child, you felt like you were stuck there and you weren’t going anywhere. You were a Cambodian living in someone else’s country and you weren’t welcome. They made you very aware of this by putting up the highest fence they could with the sharpest barbed wire they had, just to keep you in this little area. I remember the Thai soldiers, how the guards used to beat up the kids. You certainly knew they didn’t like you; they didn’t want you there. We had a hospital with Doctors Without Borders working there. My brother was sick and he used to spend a lot of time in hospital. I found it was a very depressing place. There were people there who had been shot or had stood on land mines. Not far from the hospital, near the temple, was where they used to cremate the bodies. It was close to the field where all the kids used to play. Even at a young age the smell got to you, sometimes it was something putrid, like rotten bodies in a humid and hot day. Sometimes that was the reason for it––human bodies decomposing. You could see dead bodies with maggots and flies all over them––I hated flies, I still do; you could not get away from it. It definitely wasn’t nice.

After we had been living in the camp for many years, we went through a process with the United Nations to re-home refugees. We got selected because my brother was very ill and he was spending most of the time in hospital. The doctors in Thailand wanted to operate on him because he had a cancer, but my Dad said no, he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t trust those doctors. Later on Dad told me there were a few countries we could have chosen, France being one of them. Cambodia was a French colony and a lot of Cambodians moved there, but that was not a place Dad wanted us to go to. Then there was the USA but Dad didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a good feeling about North America either. Australia and New Zealand were on the list. The reason we chose New Zealand was because my cousin Vanna and his family came a year before us and settled in Dunedin. They used to write to us. It was the only place where there was somebody we knew, so Dad decided we would go to New Zealand. We arrived in New Zealand around about 1990. I remember us having to go to Bangkok from Khao-I-Dang. It was a very interesting feeling because it was the first time I had been outside the fence and the first time I had been on a bus. For years we used to stand up against the fence watching these buses go past along the highway and all the kids used to say that one day they would be on those buses and how cool would that be.

When they said, ‘Yes, you are going to go’, you were really excited because you heard about people going overseas and, as kids do, you would tell your friends. Even though I was only about eight years old, I always knew I was never going to see those people again. However, the hardest thing for me was that my eldest brother couldn’t come with us because he had his own family. He wasn’t classed as one of our immediate family so we had to leave him behind. I loved my brother. He was awesome. I remember when I used to get into trouble with my Dad, I always used to run to his house and he would look after me. I said goodbye to my brother, his son, his daughter and his wife when we were boarding the bus to go out of the camp. That was the last time I saw them. I regret now that I did not make a better effort to express how much I love him and how much I would miss him, but I was excited to get on the bus. Excited to be moving and going to this place everyone was talking about. We stayed in Thailand while we were waiting to get the final visas so we could jump on a plane to come to New Zealand. When we were in Bangkok I saw an old lady who had a stall in the market. She was selling apples. I had never seen an apple in my life. She gave me a piece and said that this apple came from New Zealand. It was the sweetest fruit I have ever tasted in my life. No apple has ever tasted as good as that one.

When we finally got to jump on that plane, we were so excited. We were given new clothes. They gave us a puffer jacket because everyone said how cold it was in New Zealand, that it was down at the bottom of the world and freezing. We flew on Singapore Airlines and it was really cool because my brother and I got to go into the cockpit. We met the captain and looked out of the window. They gave us some wings and we thought ‘Wow, this is awesome!’ The day we landed in Auckland it was cold. It was freezing. Coming from the equator it was a shock. I had never felt the cold before and believe it or not I have never felt cold like it since. Government officials greeted us and shortly after that we jumped on a bus again. So we jumped from a refugee bus, on to a plane, on to another bus and arrived in Auckland at a place called the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre. I think, normally people stay there up to six weeks but we must have stayed there for close to a year. It felt like a long time. That was the transition stage. There were other refugees there and they would teach us about how things worked in New Zealand. Mum and Dad didn’t speak a word of English and us kids were pretty fresh. That first night we spent in New Zealand, yeah, it was pretty exciting. It was also very different because we were sleeping on a bed. Back in the camp there were small bamboo slats right across the whole house and we all slept next to one another. Here we actually had an individual bed and our own blanket. I remember my blanket––it was one of those old grey blankets with a red stripe down the middle. It looked as though it might have come from a hospital or something.

The Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre is still there today and I remember how strange the food was. People were trying to cook rice, but it just wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t nice. We ended up cooking our own food. We were living in a big building that felt more like an army barracks. Our family had a couple of rooms. There were four of us in one of the rooms. Life in there was very interesting. We were free to come and go but always had to be back and let people know where you were going. There was an abandoned rail track that you used to walk across all the time. There was a sense of freedom because we could go there and explore. Things at the centre were very structured. Kids would go to primary school and they would teach us Basic English. They tried to teach the grown ups English so they would know how to communicate with other people and pay bills etc. I remember I had a teacher who was lovely. She had an orange cat, the fattest orange cat you have ever seen. For some reason that cat just sort of stuck with me. We would play, run around and not feel we were going to be shot at, not be afraid we had to hide if we heard sirens. We were allowed to be kids without the responsibility of fleeing for your life when you heard that noise. That was really cool. Finally my brother had his operation in Auckland. He spent a long time in hospital recovering from the surgery. He is still alive and well. Our family was one of the larger families so it took them a long time to house us. We always enjoyed being part of a larger community and we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see ourselves any other way. So it makes it hard when you see other immigrants who move here and move into their own little communities. I feel they have missed out on what I have experienced.

If you are an immigrant you chose to come here, but as a refugee you don’t belong anywhere. I am Cambodian, but I could never feel like one. I have never been to Cambodia; I wasn’t born in there. My parents were. They lived there before they had to flee. My Dad was serving in the army and he fought against the Khmer Rouge. For me, I didn’t fit in as a Cambodian. I was born in Thailand and my passport says so, but you knew the Thais hated you and that is not where you belonged. And even though there are times when I don’t feel like I belong in New Zealand, I will always call this country my home. In the beginning I really wanted to learn the language. I must have been about ten or eleven when my brain clicked over and all my thoughts were in English. I knew from that day on my life and the way I thought, was going to change. To this day all my thoughts are in English. I have to translate Cambodian in my head, and often I still get it wrong. Because of this Cambodians don’t see me as one of them. I don’t strongly feel part of that community, and I don’t know if I want to either. I don’t know what I need to do to feel like a New Zealander. It is really hard to explain. I have good friends who are Kiwis, but do I feel like I am a Kiwi? No, I don’t. Do I feel like I am a Cambodian? Far from it! I feel like a person in limbo. I could go to Cambodia but never belong in Cambodia. Yet, it was my parents’ home. I could live here all my life, but I will never feel I am a Kiwi. I speak with a New Zealand accent and I guess in some ways that is the closest I will get to it. I grew up playing backyard cricket, playing rugby. My upbringing was Kiwi but at times things around me make me feel I don’t really belong.

There was a Friday night I haven’t forgotten. It was around 11 pm, and I was catching a bus home. Waiting for the bus on Riccarton Road, I had a run in with some skinheads. They reminded me of the fact that I don’t belong here. I can only say that I got the shit beat out of me by six of them. I was alone––minding my own business. That is not what New Zealand is about, but even so, I ended up in hospital. I have lived here for most of my life but they wanted to reinforce the fact that the way I looked meant I didn’t belong here. People see the colour of my skin and if I don’t open my mouth they just see me as another brown person. Working with tradies has been difficult. The way they talk to me sometimes can be considered racial abuse; I just put up with it. I put up with it because I love what I do. In 2015 I still get it. I don’t let it affect me much and I don’t talk about it because, it is just one of those things––I just cant be bothered. I have also worked with open minded and well-educated Pākehā friends that treat me like a Kiwi. Even so, they don’t understand the way people like me feel––like a foreigner in one’s own land. The racial abuse and discrimination I had in New Zealand are reasons why I would like my children to get rid of their last name. I understand my surname––Chan, is my legacy and it would be a shame to get rid of it. But sadly is what makes me susceptible to stereotyping. This was confirmed when I told my wife––Cristene, to put my last name on her CV. She did not get any interviews. When she removed it, she instantly got interviews and job offers. We are only talking about 10 years ago.

Despite those difficulties, I think people from different cultures are learning how to get along. After all, we live in the same country. I think acceptance in New Zealand has improved. There is always the odd situation where you will get racial abuse, but you get it everywhere. I think immigrants should be willing to come out of their shells and be part of the larger community and not establishing their own and separated groups. There are things about New Zealand that are different from where immigrants have come from, but we have to respect that and integrate. I think keeping a piece of your culture is part of becoming a Kiwi. I am not suggesting to forget our cultural background and where we came from–– that has made the people who we are, but integrating and contributing to this society that have adopted us. A lot of Cambodians still go to the Buddhist temple but at the same time they celebrate the Kiwi Christmas. A year after we came to live in New Zealand, we got allocated a house in Christchurch. A lovely Dutch family sponsored us. They lived in a beautiful house in Cranford Street. One thing I remember about Christchurch in the early 1990s is that there were hardly any people around. It was amazing. We arrived on a Sunday. No buses ran on Sunday and it was so quiet. We got picked up at the airport and we were taken to a house down Barbados Street––an old Victorian house with four bedrooms. We had a washing machine outside. You had to put the clothes in to rinse and then put them through two rollers and turn it. It was awesome. My brother and I had bunk beds and we used to jump off them with our sheets pretending we were skydivers.

Wintertime was absolutely freezing. Dad used to walk us to school. We didn’t have a car but Dad had a push-bike and he always used to put one of my sisters on the back seat and one on the front and walk us from Barbados to Shirley Primary School. Dad used to do it every day. I loved it. That house, there was something about it. It is still there, still standing. It was a nice character house. Going to school was very hard. It was strange, because I was about nine years old and I was put into a class with other nine year old. The difference was I couldn’t speak a word of English, apart from hello. I wouldn’t use the excuse that I had learning difficulties but I definitely had other challenges. Even though I was a nine year old in a nine-year-old class, I felt more like a five year old. When other people were doing far more advanced stuff I would be stuck with a tutor, Mrs Sebastian who lived down the road from school. She used to tutor me privately, basically ABC, how to make sentences, read little books for five year old. I did a lot of catching up. I always knew I was going to be behind at school. I felt that the only way I would get through was with my memory, because I never learned how to read or write fluently but I always knew how to remember. When I was a child, New Zealand was a predominantly white country, Maori were the only brown people around and there weren’t many of them in Christchurch. I never saw other Asian people here. People always stared at us. I didn’t know it back then but we used to get a lot of racial abuse. We couldn’t understand what they were saying––I guess that was a good form of protection. We always tried very hard to be part of the larger community––to contribute and to belong.

We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel as though we were forced to integrate but we just felt it was natural for us to integrate with others. I met my first friend there, Ryan, and we are still friends to this day. He was the first Kiwi kid who talked to me. I started school on the Tuesday and he came up to me at morning tea and said â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hello, Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your name? I said that my name was Samouet. I gave him my Cambodian name, and to this day he is the only white person who can pronounce my name properly. In fact he finds it quite strange to call me Sam. Growing up I felt I had a Kiwi upbringing because Ryan and I were so close as friends. His family used to take me away with them on holiday at Christmas time. We used to go to Okains Bay on the Banks Peninsula. They used to take me to their family bach. We went spearing for flounders, I learned how to wind surf and I felt I had a totally Kiwi childhood. We used to go fishing all the time. They even used to take my brother. I think the reason that I have become more of a Kiwi is probably because of Ryan. He has shown me a lot and that is why we have remained friends. Ryan loved coming to my house and I hated him coming over. We lived in a state house; I think I was ashamed of that. He lived somewhere very different, and yet he always took an interest in my background, we even decided we were going to join the army together but my father would not let me. I think he had too many bad memories of such things.

After finishing Shirley Primary I went to Mairehau Intermediate School. I had a teacher whose name was Mr Laws. At the time I had issues with maths and I was just struggling a bit. One day, I told him I would really love to get some help with my lessons, I told him of some things I was having difficulties with. ‘That’s your problem’, he said, ‘you are always expecting people to help you’. I was 12 years old. After that I became less involved, I wanted to learn, but that was a kick in the face to my confidence. I would go to school and try to learn things but I felt I was less involved. I felt if I asked a question it would be a stupid question. I guess as a kid you don’t know how to deal with what you are going through. If you ask for help you think people will look down on you. I never once used my background or my language barrier as an excuse. I refused to let that be the reason for how things were in school. I wasn’t a big achiever, not academically anyway. In sports, yes. I always knew I wasn’t the smartest kid in class, but whatever the teacher taught us I would always remember and that is the way I got through school. I didn’t write a lot, but I remembered everything.. I loved sports at school. We would play rugby and cricket––basically just a normal Kiwi upbringing. I just fell in love with cricket. The first time I saw the Nines’ in the World Cup I remember thinking I could love this game. After that I joined up with East Shirley. It was strange because I was the only Asian person in my cricket club. I wasn’t bad at it, I was learning and I got really good, but I was always struggling to make top teams because my last name was Chan. But I always performed. My brother and I got really good and played Men’s grade. In school we were really competitive when it came to sport. All my mates played sport. I still like playing cricket, I’m still part of a club, and I still like playing rugby and other sports when my body is up to it. It’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I shifted around a few high schools. One of them was Mairehau High School. Mairehau was an eye opener in terms of high schools. You were basically part of an elite community because it had a reputation of being one of the worst high schools in New Zealand. We used to have regular drug busts. We made the news because one of the boys decided to bring a lunch box of marijuana to school and someone tipped off the cops. We were on the news and the current affairs show presented by Paul Holmes. I remember going home and watching it and saying, ‘Hey Mum and Dad, that’s our school. We just had a drug bust!’ We had sniffer dogs that used to check everyone’s lunch boxes and bags. It wasn’t a school that was well renowned for anything else, but I loved it there. I played cricket and I made a lot of good friends. Education wasn’t really important for me, but when I look back, I think I should have done better. I got into a lot of trouble as a teenager there. I did things I’m not proud of and that I don’t want to talk about. I think there were a lot of bad influences. I was lucky that none of those bad influences really stuck. We had members of The Mongrel Mob Gang in our neighbourhood, they were lovely, they were really nice guys, in fact them, my brother, and I played in the same touch rugby team, and one thing that they don’t do is shit in their own back yard. We always felt safe around them. They only had problems in other suburbs. I found them more welcoming than the Europeans; I guess that is because they saw themselves as outcasts too. Throughout high school I mainly socialised with Maori, Samoan and Tongans. We all felt like we had our little community. In the early 90s, if you were brown you stuck together, you did things together. You said G’day when you saw each other, you always gathered in groups. Although, I felt that brown people were more accepting than Pākehā, I also built good and lasting friendships with people from other backgrounds like Ryan.

From the age of 14 I have always had a job. I had more or less left home by then anyway. One thing that I have always told myself was that I would never ever go on the dole. I have never been comfortable with the idea of free money because there is no such thing. I sold my labour in many places. I worked picking and packing for the Meadow Mushrooms company, flipped cookies for eight hours a day for Cookie Time, I’ve picked flowers, I’ve even worked in a mussel processing facility and in a framing company. I’ve always worked hard for what I have. I have worked at many jobs before I realized what I wanted to do with my life. It was not great for the weekend sports that I liked; I guess when you are not well educated you have to do what you can. It was always difficult for me to know what to do next, but in 1999, I was lucky enough to be offered a scholarship by the New Zealand Institute of Sport, that also was the year I met this beautiful person, Cristene. When Mum, Dad and my siblings emigrated to Australia, I went boarding with Cristene’s family. Sometime after that she and I started a relationship. We were still teenagers. We always had difficulties with her parents because they did not approve of us being together. The way her parents treated us forced us grow up together and eventually to move out. Then something happened that changed my views in life. I was sitting in my car one day thinking what am I going to do with the rest of my life, as I found that Physical Education and Personal Training wasn’t what I wanted to do as a career. My cousin Vanna rang me then and said they were looking for help at a compliance testing company called Parkside Laboratories. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I went to the interview and I was lucky enough that Manuel––the boss, offered me the job. I really came to appreciate the opportunity I was given.

For the first time in my life I felt intimidated, excited, challenged and the most unqualified person in a room full of talented individuals. People working at Parkside Labs were well educated. They were mainly Electrical Engineers. One of them was a Nuclear Physicist. I developed good friendships with them. They were amazing. How could I get to be a part of that? I suppose that was then when it all clicked––I realized that education was important. I finally new that life could have a direction. I used to go to work beyond normal working hours. I didn’t want people to see me as a slacker. A lot of people see refugees as lazy people. I think the word refugee is associated with a negative connotation because we were offered to come and live in New Zealand––this is different to other types of immigrants. Some people feel we are getting a free ride. Perhaps in some ways we do, but I think I have done my part to pay for that ride. I have never been on the dole and I have paid back my student loan. Not all Kiwis can say that. Sometime after, Parkside Labs change ownership. The employees where not happy with the new owners management style and working conditions, so many of them left––it was a mass exodus. I felt all my friends were leaving so I would have to look for another job. One of my co-workers helped me get an apprenticeship at Aotea Electric Group. They are one of the largest and most respected electrical contractors and servicing companies in New Zealand. This was an opportunity to get qualified as a sparky. I worked hard and learnt a lot, but sadly, after a while I felt I was just a labourer––all the apprentices felt the same way. I became so disillusioned with the job that I left as well.

Not long after that, Cristene and I decided to get married. I needed money for the wedding and I had accumulated a bit of debt so I went to Adelaide for work and I stayed with Mum and Dad. At the time, our family had grown to 15 including my parents. I guess they thought they were moving to greener pastures when they packed up and went to Australia, but in fact it was the opposite. It is not a very nice place to be. You felt you were in a ghetto, but a ghetto surrounded by 30,000 other Cambodians taking advantage of each other, taking advantage of the situation, people selling and consuming drugs, unwanted teenager pregnancies, people partying every weekend and never worrying about getting ahead in life, most of them sell their labour. I saw myself as more than that but I just didn’t know how to achieve it. The other thing I saw there, was the contrast between Australia and New Zealand in the way communities work together. Here I was starting to feel that I was part of something. In Adelaide I felt I was a part of a Cambodian community. Just that––a Cambodian community. It was rare that you would socialize outside that group. Everyone just stuck together. Everyone lived within walking distance from one another. I found that really hard. Even though there were Cambodians there I didn’t feel like I belonged completely. I couldn’t understand the language very well. One thing I saw in Adelaide was the rut you could get into as an immigrant or a refugee. The way I see it is that we have been given the same opportunities, some of us take them, some of us don’t. It was unlucky that Mum and Dad decided to move to Australia and that my siblings followed them but it was their decision. After a while I came back to New Zealand. I always knew I was going to come back. I knew then, I could never live anywhere else but Christchurch.

Life has taught me the value of friendship. When I came back to Christchurch I went to visit one of my closest mates. I remember saying to him, ‘Scotty, I don’t know what to do mate, I don’t have a Job’. ‘Dad’s looking for help’, he said. ‘What does he do?’ ‘Just fire alarms, house alarms and stuff ’ So, I went to see Bill, Scott’s dad, and he offered me a job. Once again an opportunity had been given to me and I just had to take it. From that day on my life changed. Working for Bill was just awesome. I met lots of good people. We had a good team and I learnt a lot. I worked with Bill for some years, but I got offered another job that would help me more financially and I needed the money. Leaving that job was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Bill though, thought it was great. He had trained me so well that someone else wanted me to go and work for them. Everything I learned about business was from Bill. Both, what to do, and, what not to do. I feel I owe a lot to him because he gave me an opportunity and taught me many of the skills I use today in my own business. He didn’t have to. I guess it was more because I was a mate with Scotty. But I still had to prove myself and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do stuff as well and that I could learn. After that I got another job and although I felt I was an important part of the team and I was worth something, I always had this thing in my head – I wish I could do more. After Cristene and I got married we bought our first home. Being from my background that was not something you ever thought about, let alone expect to happen. No one in my family had ever owned a house or even imagined being able to afford one. When we managed to do so, I felt it was an achievement but I didn’t want people to see us as being materialistic because that is not who we are. When I get asked if we have a house, I say that we live down the road.

Sometimes, I have felt guilty owning a house, because I know my parents and siblings struggle financially, I had to remind myself that we have worked really hard for it. To have a home of your own is amazing. I love it. The first thing I did was cut down trees. I guess that is a Kiwi thing––putting your mark on your own little bit of land. In our case it was a very little bit of land––a two bedroom front unit flat with a small piece of lawn. To me though was a massive lawn. I couldn’t keep up with it. We renovated the flat completely. I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it. A lot of friends helped us. To me I felt I’d had a taste of the Kiwi dream––buying a house and doing it up. It was awesome. There is no doubt that if the support from my wife hadn’t been there we wouldn’t have been able to buy that house and to achieve what we wanted to. My wife and I have become like one person over the last 16 years. The support we have given each other has helped us to become better people and to achieve our dreams. We always know we are there for each other if anything ever happens. We always have each other. We have come from nothing; from being homeless and sleeping in a car when we were very young, to being comfortable, having a family and owning a business. I think hardship has given us a lot of strength as a couple. We are not afraid to fail.

I think I wouldn’t be the person I am if she wasn’t there. As a young person I was on the slippery slope and meeting her brought me back into line. I don’t actually think I would be in the situation I am now if I hadn’t meet her. She gets along well with my siblings and my parents; that really helps the relationship. She is a part of my family and I am part of her family. We met each other when we were really young and a lot of couples don’t get through that stage––it is just a phase, but when we met we knew it was special. We knew it was more than a high school relationship. Even now when people see us again they are surprised that we are still together but back then I believe it was important that we were young. For us we are just fortunate to meet the other at such a young age. When we decided we were going to have kids and found out that Cristene was pregnant, I felt it was amazing. I never honestly felt we would have our own family. I went through a period of both happiness and deep depression––it was a hard time of my life. I knew I was going to have a son, and that I never wanted him to go through what I had gone through. I felt guilty just for being alive, for the success and opportunities I have had in life, and the fact that a lot of people my age in the same refugee camp never even got out of there. Some of them are now just ashes in the camp. Others like my eldest brother survived the camp, but died just after he left. I guess you could call it survivor’s remorse.

My eldest brother died of AIDS, I was very upset when I overheard that news. After the camp closed down, all the refugees had to leave. They sent everyone back to Cambodia whether you liked it or not. It was called forced repatriation. My brother and his family tried their best to survive. Mum and Dad would send them money but it was never enough. Sadly, he contracted AIDS, which was then passed onto his wife before he died. Then, she died, and left three young orphans. My parents send them money. One of them is doing well––he is very intelligent, but the other two are struggling. People read about AIDS and have some idea about it, but having a family member dying from it is very different. I haven’t told many people about this. Not because there is a stigma that exists in a variety of forms about this illness, but because I know he suffered a lot and it was a horrible way to go. I don’t let it upset me, because I choose not to. Once again I’m bottling things up. I know eventually it will affect me and I will have to face it. My parents and siblings never dealt with the past. I guess it is because you want to be seen as tough. You want to be seen as strong. You never want to be seen as weak. But for me it was a great weight on my shoulders and I needed to deal with it.

When Ayden, my son, was born it was the most amazing thing that had ever happened, sadly I felt depressed and at the same time the guilt was corroding me inside. Our family never talked about our background. We had a code––we never talk about anything. To us the camp never happened. The fact that I saw people get shot and die never happened. Life in the refugee camp just didn’t happen. When Ayden was born I felt I couldn’t shut it out any more; I couldn’t suppress the feelings I had. Over the last ten years or so I had found the more successful I became the more depressed I got. Why me? Why not someone else? Why not the girl who was in the same camp as me? Why is that child you grew up with dead and you are still here?’ those questions were constantly appearing in my mind; slowly destroying the moments of happiness and the relationships with the people I love. People say kids don’t remember, but having a good memory can be a burden as well as a blessing, and that is probably why I am different from my family because I chose to remember what happened in the camp. I chose to remember what happened to all of us. The depression hit me really hard in my early thirties. There was just no way out of it. I thought I would get over it. I guess I was a typical bloke, ‘She’ll be right, it will all pass’. But it didn’t. When we have gatherings with our friends I get a sense of being happy in this one room, how lucky am I to have this. Other people will never experience something like it. I have built a special group of people around me. I have a supportive wife that I love, a son that makes me smile with happiness and financial stability, but there was always that grey patch over my shoulder. I had it all but I couldn’t be happy.

I have spent a lot of time helping others. Now it was my turn, I needed help. Cristene said to me that I really needed to talk to someone but no. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;No,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; I said, there was nothing wrong with me. But she kept insisting until I really did not have any choice. Finally I made up my mind to talk to a therapist and it was one of the best decisions of my adult life. People knew I was a refugee, knew about Cambodia, knew about the war, but I never wanted to elaborate on the details. You always try to laugh it off. My friends and I would joke about the reasons I am such a fast runner. They used to tease me and said jokingly that it was because I was dogging the bullets and the land-mines when I was at the refuge camp. The funny thing is it was probably true. There was a time for a while when I would have been happy to give up my life. I did not know how painful it was going to be to talk about it, to bring back all those memories, to revive those experiences. I was afraid to open that window and only see darkness.

The first time I talked about my experiences it was emotionally really hard. It sounds crazy, but I thought, why am I being such a pussy about this situation? Why canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t I just get over it, move on, be happy? Those thoughts made me even more depressed and really unhappy. I had to talk about it. Get it off of my shoulder. When I finally did, I felt like letting out a really loud scream. It was a good feeling. I learnt that my experiences are part of who I am. I saw light and hope and I realised how important all the support from my wife and friends had been to me. Once I was feeling better, we opened our own business; we took a big risk because we had a mortgage to pay and Ayden was a new-born. At the time we had $500 in the bank. Cristene had to go back to work to supplement our income while I was working on the business and looking after Ayden. They were tough times, but it was not the first time weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d had financial difficulties.

When I was younger, sometimes I had to work up to 20 hours a day, especially, when Cristene left her parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; home. She was studying towards her Bachelor at the CPIT and at the time I was also supporting one of my siblings. We have always worked hard and helped each other because we wanted to get where we are today. There was a lot of sacrifice but that is not such a bad thing. When we started Phoenix Security I honestly did not think we would be here after five years. I thought we would give it a go. I have always said if it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work out I can always get a job working for someone else. I still have that in my head. We have put a lot of time and effort into it to get to a point where we are comfortable. Really that is all we ever wanted to be from day one. Being rich was never on our list, having a fancy car was never on our list. We wanted to have a family, to be comfortable and have the same friends now as back then. For us everything has worked out that way. By no means do I feel I am successful. I feel I am good at taking opportunities. That is pretty much it. Once one door shuts another one opens up.

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have many goals for the future; I think we have worked so hard for the last five years that making any more goals would be exhausting. We just want our children to excel in many areas of their lives. That would be really good. At the moment our main focus is to nurture our kids and to provide for them a good structure and education. We want to do that because we are the type of immigrants who came here to adapt, to contribute and to look for the opportunity to build our own foundations for future generations in New Zealand. I hope my children grow up in this society and get accepted as Kiwis, even though the colour of their skin is brown and their surname is Trenuela-Chan. I want for them to have that sense of belonging that many of us have lost or never had. I would like to go to Cambodia when Ayden and Ameleah, our newborn baby girl, are a bit older. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what I would tell them or how I will feel about coming back to Khao-I-Dang after all these years; but somehow, I want them to understand what I had experienced. I want them to learn about their roots and how privileged we are living in New Zealand, a country that gave us the opportunity to have a new start.

Acknowledgements

This book could never have been written without the incredible dedication, kindness and generosity of so many people. My deepest thanks to Samouet Trenuela-Chan for sharing his experiences to me and allowing me to share them in this book. I feel privileged to receive the gift of his friendship. I am also grateful for the friendship, patience and support of Cristene Trenuela-Chan. Sam, Cristine and their children Ayden and Ameleah are always welcoming and allowed me to photograph many aspects of their day-to-day life. My deepest appreciation and admiration to Glenn Busch. He shared his talents as a writer and photographer. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m grateful for his tireless dedication to us, his students. Thanks to Timothy Veling who shared his professional knowledge and provided support during the development of this book. I am also grateful for the friendship encouragement and collaboration of my classmates Arabella Spoors, Chloe Hamilton, Ellie Waters, Sophie Abbott and Tegan Hollis-Ristow. Thanks to Lauren Crothers who gave me valuable information and contact details of the Cambodian Organisations and individuals that documented the life at the refugee camp in the 1980s. I am very grateful to Chhan Touch, Jack Dunford, Richard Rowat, Sherry Riddick, Tim Grant, and Vira Rama for kindly donating their photographs from the Khao-I_Dang Refugee Camp.

Thanks to these organisations and individuals that took the time to provide information, photographs and guide me through the background research for this book: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum Thai / Cambodia Border Refugee Camps 1975-1999 - Information and Documentation Website UNHCR - UN Refugee Agency Tessa Asamoah - Photo Assistant, UNHCR Documentation Centre of Cambodia Youk Chhang - Executive Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) Dara - Documentation Center of Cambodia Cambodia Daily Last and perhaps biggest thanks must go to my partner Scott. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t thank you enough for your love and support.

Photograph Credits

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright owners. However, if any material has been incorrectly acknowledged, I would be pleased to make the necessary corrections at the earliest opportunity. I would like to thank the following for their kind permission to reproduce the photographs featured in this book: 11 Dunford, Jack. Khao-I-Dang. 1986. Photograph. Private Collection. 13 Samouet at the Khao-I-Dang Refugee Camp, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 17 Dunford, Jack. Khao-I-Dang. N.d. Photograph. Documentation Center of Cambodia. Cambodia. Reproduced with permission of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. 19 Dunford, Jack. Khao-I-Dang. N.d. Photograph. Private Collection. 21 Dunford, Jack. Khao-I-Dang. Nd. Photograph. Private Collection. 25 Touch, Chhan. Interior of Khao-I-Dang Hospital Ward. N.d. http://www.websitesrcg.com. Web 1 May 2015. Reproduced with permission Richard Rowat from the Thai/Cambodia Border Refugee Camps 1975-1999 - Information and Documentation Website.

31 Dunford, Jack. Site 2 Khao-I-Dang. 1993. Photograph. Private Collection. 35 Samouet at The Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 37 Samouet at The Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 45 Samouet. N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 49 Samouet with His High School Friends, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 57 Samouet’s Family, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan 59 Samouet’s First Home, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristine Trenuela-Chan 61 Sam and Cristene, N.d. Reproduced with permission of Samouet and Cristene Trenuela-Chan All other images © Janneth Gil

Sam’s family survived the Cambodian Genocide––they were escaping from imprisonment when he was born. As a small child, he lived horrific experiences at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand. His early life is a crude example of what no child should have to endure; yet his life now is an example to follow. Sam reveals his story with sincerity and openness. He tells of his transformation, the various hardships duri his life, and also the acceptance he has found as a refugee in New Zealand.