Pol Pot refugee earns award

Press, 31 August 1989, Page 13

Pol Pot refugee earns award

By

PENELOPE MAHY

Transition from threats on life to N.Z. accomplishments

NINE YEARS AGO Mony Thou was a bemused young refugee living in the Khap I Dang camp in Cambodia. Today, at the age of 18, she is the recipient of a gold Duke of Edinburgh medal. The former Avonside Girls’ High School pupil was 10 when she came to New Zealand and spoke no English. This year, she is studying sciences at the University of Canterbury. Ms Thou’s father was an agricultural adviser in Phnom Penh when Pol Pot came to power and ordered everyone to leave the cities. “My parents told us that we would only be gone for three days. We took almost nothing with us,” she says. The family marched more than 300 kilometres to a small village in the north. Mony Thou’s older sister and mother were put to work in the fields, but her father was too sick to walk. Ms Thou and the younger children worked closer to the village. Family members were separated and did not dare to communicate with each other. “Once we got to the village, our parents hardly talked to us because they were scared we might say something by mistake and be killed. The country children used to threaten to have me killed because I was from the city and my accent annoyed them. “Every night I would wonder how much it would hurt if you were killed. “Anyone who could read a sentence was couriered an in-

tellectual. Even if you wore glasses it meant a threat on your life. Being in that situation and looking back — it seems like fiction.”

The village celebrated with a big party when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, and drove out the Khmer Rouge. Mony Thou remembers being at the centre of the singing and dancing but feeling too hot and going outside for some air. “The leader of the village knew he would die when the Vietnamese came,” she says. “The man pulled the pin from a grenade in the midst of the party and 40 or 50 people were killed.” Ms Thou’s family were on the edge of the crowd or outside, and so they escaped. The family left the village and began the trek to the Thai border. “I remember that we came across Angkor Wat and it made me feel proud because our culture had been so great.” The twelfth century shrine is famous round the world for its beauty. Mony Thou’s family spent eight months at Khap I Dang camp before they came to New Zealand. She remembers carrying buckets to collect water each day and collecting twigs for firewood on the hillsides. She attended school in the mornings and learned how to write. In all, 13 members of her family made it to New Zealand. “There were my parents and four children, and two cousins

stayed with us, and then my auntie and uncle and their three children. At first we stayed in a hostel in Mangere and were taught some English and about the New Zealand culture.” Soon afterwards, the family moved to Darfield to join the family who were sponsoring them. When they found a home of their own, they moved to Christchurch. Over the living room wallpaper, eloquent Cambodian dancers sway in pictures. The mantelpiece is a riot of school trophies, cups and photographs. "It.is harder for our parents to adjust than it has been for us,” she says. “They are always delighted when we do well, but they don’t push us.” Ms Thou’s father recovered from his illness in Cambodia but has been suffering from attacks of asthma since being in New Zealand. In a corner of the room, a polished wooden Cambodian xylophone looks especially exotic alongside the moulded couch. There are other artefacts, too, reminders of home. “My auntie went back to Phnom Penh and she saw our old house.” All the houses further along the street had been reduced to rubble, but her aunt brought some photos back. Ms Thou received the bronze and silver Duke of Edinburgh medals in 1985 and 1986 respec-

tively, but it takes two years to complete conditions for the gold award. ■ In the skills section, she took a defensive driving course and got her driver’s licence. Her expedition was a tramp of more than 80 kilometres in the Abel Tasman National Park and at Lake Sumner. For the physical recreation component, she played badminton for the Avonside Girls’ B team. She also spent a 40-hour week at the Lyttelton Care Centre, helping with the children’s holiday programme. But the project closest to her heart was probably the residential one where she worked with Cambodian refugee children, teaching them the values, culture and language of the land they have been forced to leave behind. “I think it’s good for children to learn about their identity. There was nothing like that when we arrived in New Zealand.” She still has some trouble with written English. “I’m not a language person like my sister — she's taking up Japanese as well.” Not many Cambodians are coming to New Zealand now, and few families have settled in Christchurch. “I miss having other Cambodians of my own | age,” Mony Thou says. “My sister and I are the first Cambodian girls to go to university here.” She likes Christchurch and thinks she will stay here, but she also wonders what it would be like to return to Cambodia. “Perhaps I could work with | children there?”