by nhoa | Mar 27, 2021 | Uncategorized
When they were around 11 years old, both my two older brothers were taken by the military into the child soldier program in South Sudan. That happened before I was even born, so I never knew them. My memories of growing up are of war, and constantly moving. Whenever...
by nhoa | Feb 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
In the civil war in El Salvador, my parents would often hear gunshots, sirens, and bombs going off all night and see dead bodies on the side of the road the next day. One night, my father had a gun pointed to his head by the military when he walked home after curfew....
by nhoa | Dec 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
One day, when I was 12 years old, I had just finished making lunch when suddenly we heard bombs falling in our suburb. Outside, we saw houses being destroyed around us and people being killed so everyone just started running. I lost my family in the chaos, but I ran...
by nhoa | Oct 31, 2020 | Uncategorized
When I was 10 months old, my parents bought tickets to escape Vietnam on an overcrowded fishing vessel with 363 people onboard. It was really scary for them because they had heard many stories of boats capsizing, and of pirates. They had got married just before the...
by nhoa | Oct 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
My father was a freedom fighter against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. When I was 3, he sent my mother and us kids to Pakistan to give us a better life. As a result, I grew up in Pakistan, but visited my father in Afghanistan every few months. In that time, he...
