Crossing the Mekong

5

The bamboo houses in the refugee camp were 4x10 feet or 4x5 long, all of them squished together to make more room for refugees. Voices traveled through each house and shadows were lined up against if someone in another house wanted to sit by a wall. A bamboo fence separated each family, but the smell from their dinner would walk across each fence.

Every morning the refugees waited for water from a well. A line long enough to make the well stop giving water for awhile. By the afternoon young children were playing with marbles, jump roping, and hopscotch. Men sat around and relaxed after cutting grass and sweeping leaves, and many women worked on their cross stitching.

At night an elderly couple would bring a crowd of little kids by a fire. They told stories that gave the children chills or made their eyes light up with wonder with fairy tales. The couple comes three times a week.

By 10 P.M. everybody had to be inside their homes, and only the watchmen got to stay up.

Like many other women in families, Faye, her older sisters, and her mother made their families earning through their cross stitching. Traders from the city would give them fabric and thread to start making intricate patterns in the fabric. Once they were done, the women would give back the finished product, and the trader would then give it to the Thai queen. Each handmade stitch work is only worth 150 Thai baht which is the equivalent of four dollars and fourteen cents.

Farmers outside of the refugee camp would get the refugees to sell their produce. Every day at six A.M. the farmers negotiated how much the middlemen earn for selling his goods. Hands grazed each other passing vegetables through the barbed wires.

Each month the Thai government brought rice to the refugee camp, and on every Sunday brought vegetables and meats. This food didn't last long. Only a certain proportion went to each family, depending on their size.

The refugees were able to go to the market out of the camp to get more food for their family once the monthly food ran out. Families who had more money were able to get more of a balanced meal with vegetables and meats, but families that didn't have money were only able to eat mustard greens, green beans, cabbage, and maybe fish if they caught any.

The refugee camp was rough to live in, but it was not as bad as living in Laos.