Refugee camp life is all that Pheng Lee has ever known.
He was born and grew up in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand, and now the 23-year-old is raising his own children in one at Wat Tham Krabok.
“When you don’t have much of a choice for any other kind of life,” Lee said, “you make the best of what you’ve got and try to find some wiggle room to improve your life when and where you can.”
There hasn’t been much wiggle room for Lee. Even though he attended a school run by the Thai government outside Wat Tham Krabok and graduated in 1998, he wasn’t able to get an official graduation certificate or a professional job because he’s considered an illegal immigrant, just like the rest of the camp’s refugees.
Instead, Lee teaches at a Hmong school inside the camp. He is proud to do so, but the pay is little, when it exists at all. And he must rely on others in his family to provide food.
Lee and many others in Wat Tham Krabok’s burgeoning youth and young adult population desperately want careers and to be able to care for their families. They are the most ecstatic about the prospects of resettling in the United States.
“You can’t believe how happy we are with this chance to go to America,” Lee said. “The young Hmong of Wat Tham Krabok are tired of being stuck in this place where we have no opportunities to improve their life, no rights to pursue higher education or get a decent job to support their families.”
An estimated three-quarters of the camp’s refugees are younger than 25. Many are married. It’s typical to find Hmong girls as young as 13 married and raising their own children.
Two-thirds of the camp’s adults have received no education. Young people’s schooling averages just two to three years.
Lee, who was married when his wife was 13 and he was 17, said many of the Hmong neglected education because they didn’t see a need for it. More important was starting a family, true to the Hmong culture, and finding work to support it.
“It really made getting an education pointless for the Hmong here,” Lee said. “Without the opportunities to change their lives and seeing that no one was living any other way, life went on as it always has been for the Hmong.”
Leng Vang, 18 and Chong Lor, 16, married nearly a year ago, and she recently gave birth to a son.
Despite the marriage, Lor’s resettlement with Vang was in jeopardy until she proved her age. Thai records had shown she was 15 and considered too young to leave with another family.
Her parents will remain behind.
Dia Yang, 20, put off marriage in hope of being able to follow her relatives to the United States. She is scheduled to move to St. Paul, Minn.
An unmarried Hmong woman Yang’s age is viewed as a liability for her family.
“But I’m not concerned with what people think because, one, I haven’t met someone to marry and, two, I’m just not ready. It helps that my parents support me in this decision.”
By contrast, Va Xiong, 20, and her husband, Fong Vang, 23, have three children. “If we married in our 20s, we’d be considered too old,” Xiong said.
However, Xiong, whose family is bound for Wausau, said that if she lived in the United States, she wouldn’t be married yet.
“I don’t think it would matter so much in America if you put off marriage,” she said. “You have other things to do with your time. ... It’s not like it is here where the only choice you have is who to marry and raise children with.”
Yang said that when she goes to America, she wants to obtain an education, land a job and live on her own. “I think that would seem odd to the Hmong and I don’t think my parents would let me do that, but it’s still my wish,” she said.
Some of the Hmong worry it may be too late for them to get an education.
“I think I may be too old to go to school now and, in America, I still will have my family to raise,” said Va Chang, 27, who is headed to Appleton with his wife and five children to join his sister.
“But if I could go to school, I certainly would. I never had the chance to here, and I think that if the Hmong want to live like others in America, where knowing how to read, write and speak English is important, we must learn to help ourselves.”
