Refugees

When the Dalai Lama visited

I was asked to recollect the Dalai Lama’s visit to Grace United Methodist Church to speak to Cambodian refugees in Dallas. Here is what I remember (with a little help from David Overton):

Bill Bryan, the pastor at Grace told me that the Dalai Lama was coming to Dallas to speak at Thanksgiving Square. Bill and I talked about it and thought it would be a good thing if His Holiness spoke to the Cambodian refugees who were in Dallas and didn’t have much in the way of Buddhist spiritual support.

Bill and I worked together to write a letter asking His Holiness to come and speak to the Cambodians. We got the address in Dharamsala from David Overton, a hospice social worker. I recall we said that the Khmer Rouge had killed most of the monks in Cambodia and at that time the Khmer temple in Dallas had not been built. I think there were a couple of novice monks in the Dallas area.

Initially the visit was turned down by one of the Dalai lama’s assistants. David Overton wrote another letter and a few weeks later the Dalai Lama heard

about the request and okayed it. I was not surprised at any part of these events. I think the decision went the way it did because we told him the truth about the situation in Dallas and the Dalai Lama has great empathy for refugees and is himself a refugee.

Bill felt it was inappropriate for a person of a religion other than Christianity to speak from the pulpit and so another site was set up at the front of the sanctuary for the Dalai Lama to speak from.

The visit was publicized word of mouth. At the time I was working in the refugee community seven days a week and I talked to a lot of people every day and I told everyone that a famous monk was going to come to Grace and speak to the people there. Few if any Cambodians had any sense of who the Dalai Lama was, but they understood the idea of a famous monk.

There were over 100 people in the sanctuary. There were many Cambodians, some Tibetans, and some American refugee workers and others. I don’t know how the Tibetans found out about it. At one point I asked some of the Americans to sit toward the back so the Cambodians could come up closer to the His Holiness. Then someone told me I had to sit in front, so that was a little awkward.

Pa Nous Pan did the introduction and I think he did the translation of what the Dalai Lama talked about. His Holiness was speaking English. What he talked about was similar to others of his homilies: being kind to one another was a dominant theme that I recall. He also said that we are all refugees in the Buddha.

When he was through speaking he was surrounded by people from the audience, mostly Tibetans and he was giving people a blessing by draping a white scarf (khata*) around their necks.

I was standing back behind that circle of people and he reached through the people and took my hands which I was holding in a prayerful posture of devotion and he took my hands between his. His hands were very soft. He said, “Keep doing this work.” I thought it was amazing because I hadn’t been introduced to him and as far as I know nobody pointed out to him what I was doing with refugees.

The Dalai Lama gave me a thanka after it was all over. I didn’t want the karma of having it and so a few months later gave it to the Cambodian Buddhist temple that was just then being completed. A few months after that the temple burned to the ground and everything in it was gone. Another lesson in impermanence.

*In Khmer “khata” means an amulet

Cambodian refugees

 

New arrivals, Carroll Street

The Cambodians would come into Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport a few families at a time, clutching their papers, benumbed and exhausted. Their journey across the world had taken them through war, genocide, and refugee camps before it ended in Dallas.

For most, the journey began around 1975 (“Year Zero”) when Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge and the entire population of ~7 million people was forced into brutal agricultural labor in the countryside. By 1979-80, when the regime fell, around 2 million people had been murdered or starved to death. Many of the survivors fled to Thailand where they were put into primitive refugee camps. From there the lucky ones were sent to America or France beginning in 1980.

They were met at the airport by caseworkers from refugee agencies such as the International Rescue Committee, Catholic Charities, or by church groups. They would be taken to a slum apartment furnished usually with a few mattresses, a small table, two chairs, some pots and pans, dishes and utensils. There would be a 50-pound bag of rice, a chicken, some fish sauce, and

Apartment on Carroll Street

a few other staples. Welcome to America.

When sponsored by a church the circumstances were less dire as there was usually a committee of church members who would help in various ways. Most families came in expecting to go to work within a day or two of arrival. The lucky families would have someone in a job within a few weeks.

In some locales like Long Beach, California and Lowell, Massachusetts refugees were placed on welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. In Dallas and Houston they received meager refugee assistance support for 6-12 months and then were on their own. Problems related to resource poverty were compounded by the third world rural background of many Cambodians and the myriad problems of genocide survival, grief, and PTSD. The fact that in Cambodia many of the leaders, intellectuals, businessmen, and clergy had been murdered was a problem in terms of community adaptation. Really, Cambodian refugees lived extraordinarily uncertain and stressful lives.

Inside apartment – family living here for several years

A few thousand Cambodians were resettled in the refugee neighborhood in Old East Dallas centered around Fitzhugh, Carroll, Bryan, Annex – an area with low rents and high vacancy rates. Apartment buildings had 20-40 mostly one-bedroom/one bath units less than 300 square feet/unit. Typical living situations would be families of 4-6 people in each apartment. In living rooms and bedrooms there would be mattresses on the floor with curtains around them if for adults; children would share mattresses, there would be a table, an altar of some kind, posters from a popular Cambodian movie. Window air-conditioning units might or might not work. They were hot in summers, cold and drafty in winter. (Placement in distressed urban areas or “hyperghettos” was the norm for Cambodian refugees across America.)

Language was an important issue among Cambodian and other refugees. Often it was children who were best able to speak English and translate for their family. This created stress within families as it placed children in a more powerful position than adults and it called upon children to be involved in adult and sometimes embarrassing or very personal matters. Few health care providers, police departments, or other official organizations had Cambodian language capabilities, so there were real problems in interactions.

War and radical

Dinner

communist rule had shattered many families. In some cases families had been recombined by the Khmer Rouge or by circumstances in the flight from Cambodia or in refugee camps. Many households were headed by widows. All of this created stress and hardship within families and within the community.

Recycling aluminum cans was always a way to make a little money

Infants and small children were cared for within families and if parents were working, children were cared for by older women. Breast-feeding was common and thanks to one dedicated volunteer, many women and infants were enrolled in WIC (Women Infants and Children nutritional program). School-age children were enrolled in area schools. One elementary school in a wealthy neighborhood was able to count Cambodian children toward their required minorities enrollment. In the early years, Cambodian children were seen by teachers as generally quiet and respectful students. There were several missionaries in the community focused on youth and two scouting groups led by volunteers. As time passed, some middle and high school students gravitated toward gang life – refugee children had hard, stressful lives, too.

Women and girls mostly wore colorful flowery sarongs with tops that were sewn by themselves or shirts from the second-hand store. Men wore checked sarongs at home and pants and shirts in public. (Within a few years of arrival community leaders, especially Christian preachers discouraged wearing sarongs as too foreign or something to be ashamed of.) Many older women chewed betelnut; men smoked cigarettes as soon as they could afford them.

At 1604 Annex

People shopped for food at one of several Vietnamese stores on Fitzhugh or Bryan. There was a larger Vietnamese store on Capital near Carroll. Those with transportation would shop at an open-air Saturday market in West Dallas where live chickens and fresh produce could be bought. As soon as possible people who could planted gardens with lemon grass, basil, mint, bitter melons, etc. Meals were taken with families sitting on the floor.

Jobs were difficult for Cambodians to find, even for the more educated. Language barriers, transportation, cultural dissonances, ways of interacting, lack of phones, poor physical and mental health status, and other factors made finding and holding a job challenging. In all cases, pay was poor. Exploitation sometimes occurred such as people working for a few weeks, then being fired with no pay.

Although many people needed healthcare and other assistance, often all they got was tuberculosis screening. Prenatal care was difficult to obtain, family planning was non-existent, sick care was almost impossible to obtain, medications were a mystery to get and understand how to take, and few Cambodians could take off the full day necessary to receive care. Health care providers had little, if any cultural awareness or even awareness of the unique health issues among Cambodians. Volunteers stepped up to fill the gaps as best they could.

The first patient at the East Dallas Health Coalition Clinic – the clinic was started in the Fannin Elementary school nurse’s office

One of the consequences of Buddhist clergy being murdered by the Khmer Rouge was that in many respects Cambodian refugees had few spiritual resources, especially in the early years. Evangelical Christian missionaries, Cambodian and American were quick to step in with answers to fundamental questions like, “Why has this happened?” After a few years a Buddhist temple was established for worship and important ceremonies.

That’s how Leslie and I and others found them in 1981. Struggling. Desperate. And still maintaining integrity and dignity.

Leslie at work in her office, the floor of someone’s apartment

A ceremony at the Medical Examiner’s facility

Khmer Rouge/death coming to a village

Paintings are by children at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Sometime in 1981 I got a call from a friend, Kevin who taught courses in infectious diseases at Southwestern Medical School. He asked if I wanted “to put in some PPDs” (tests for tuberculosis). “Sure,” I said. Leslie wanted to go and we met my friend at a two-story house on Sycamore Street near the corner of Carroll and Live Oak Streets. The house was called the “Welcome House” and there were several newly arrived families from Cambodia. Refugees. They were all thin and traumatized from war, torture, concentration camps, refugee camps (which, by the way, are not nice places), and travel to this foreign land called Dallas.

Kevin and I put in the PPDs via needle just under the skin. I was struck by how quiet everyone was, including the children, even when I slipped the needle in. Meanwhile Leslie was having a good time holding a baby. I remember Leslie was wearing a pink tank-top and afterward she was captivated by the baby scent that clung to the fabric.

Khmer Rouge killing

A day or two later the refugee agency caseworker called me sometime in the early morning. “Kao Ly, he already died” (name changed). I didn’t know what else to do so I drove to Sycamore Street. “Kao Ly” was a middle-aged man with four or five sons and a daughter. He was, in fact, lying dead in a bed he shared with several of his sons.

An ambulance took his body to the medical examiner’s (ME) office where he was held for several days for autopsy. During that time, another Cambodian family took care of the children and the caseworker arranged for them to go to another state to live with their mother. The ME was holding the father’s body I guess because they were waiting on toxicology. We wanted to have a ceremony before the children left.

Someone knew a Korean monk who was willing to hold the ceremony and that’s how we ended up on the loading dock at the ME’s facility, a several story building adjacent to the county hospital. At the time Dallas County had a population of about 1.5 million people which meant a lot of corpses processed through that building. The building smelled of death. There were Christmas lights on the dispatcher’s glass-fronted cubicle and some Pepsi cases stacked along the wall. Someone wheeled the body out, covered in a sheet up to just under the chin.

Running away

There was the body on the gurney, and beside it four desolate children and the monk wearing an orange robe. Over to the side was the refugee caseworker and me. The monk lit incense sticking up from a can with sand in it, he lit a candle, he extended a string from the body to the children with each child holding on to it, he chanted in Pali for awhile, and then he reached into his robe and pulled out a pair of scissors and he cut the string between the body and the children. It was a powerful moment in the midst of all this death and suffering.

The children went to live with their mother. I’m still in contact with several people who passed through the Welcome House when they were children, though I’ve lost touch with the family of the man who died. I know that at least several of the children from that family have done well in life.

Children at Khao-I-Dang refugee camp