Yaengsaeng Xayavong, 26, left, of Oakland, and Amy Bowers, 20, of Milwaukee, participate in an orientation at the Center for Lao Studies on Thursday, June 11, 2009, in San Francisco, Calif. Xayavong and other Lao-Americans are traveling to Laos for the first time on June 12 to learn more about the experiences their parents faced as refugees. (Jane Tyska/Staff)
Yaengsaeng Xayavong, 26, third to the left of the screen in back row, of Oakland, and others participate in an orientation at the Center for Lao Studies on Thursday, June 11, 2009, in San Francisco, Calif. Xayavong and other Lao-Americans are traveling to Laos for the first time on June 12 to learn more about the experiences their parents faced as refugees. (Jane Tyska/Staff)
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Children of refugees make first trip to Laos
By Matt O’Brien
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 06/17/2009 05:25:42 PM PDT
Updated: 06/17/2009 05:59:42 PM PDT
SAN PABLO — Yaengsaeng Xayavong is trying to reacquaint herself with a homeland she cannot remember.
The 26-year-old was born in Laos but has no memories of life there. Her family made a nighttime escape across a river to Thailand when she was 5.
On Saturday, the laboratory technician from San Pablo returned to Laos for the first time since her refugee family fled.
“Words really can’t describe how I feel,” she said before she left. “There’s always been a part of me that’s missing.”
Xayavong is one of a handful of Lao-Americans spending the next eight weeks getting to know Laos through an inaugural study abroad program sponsored by the San Francisco-based Center for Lao Studies.
The pilot program is the first of its kind in the U.S., said Vinya Sysamouth, the volunteer-run center’s executive director.
“A lot of Lao-Americans have very little knowledge about their own background, where they’re from, their own language,” Sysamouth said. “They’re curious about their background and the experiences their parents went through.”
The participants, who range in age from 16 to 37, met each other Thursday at an orientation in San Francisco and arrived in Laos over the weekend. They will spend most of the summer in the capital city of Vientiane, studying at a local college and performing community service. Some will seek out family members they have never met.
“I’m trying to connect with a side of me I don’t really know much about,” said Brandin Versteegh, 21, from Marshalltown, Iowa.
Versteegh’s father was a teenager when he fled Laos and resettled with family members in the central Iowa town. There, he met and married Versteegh’s mother, a white Marshalltown native who listened to country music. Versteegh said his cultural upbringing was focused heavily on his mother’s side. Going to Laos, and learning more about his father’s background, has been a lifelong dream.
Laos from the 1950s through the 1970s became an extended theater of the war in neighboring Vietnam. The Central Intelligence Agency secretly backed the Laotian royal army as it battled communist fighters. When the U.S.-supported forces lost, many of those who survived were forced to flee.
Los Angeles teacher Vatsana Bilavarn, 37, said societal pressure to assimilate caused her to neglect learning about her family history while growing up in Danbury, Conn.
“I pushed my heritage aside for a long time because I didn’t feel like I had the connection,” she said. Although her parents expressed great love and longing for their homeland, they were reluctant to delve into their painful refugee experiences. Today, Bilavarn said “there’s a great urgency and need to acknowledge the Lao Diaspora” and she wants to use the trip to find ways to preserve endangered Lao culture and folklore in the United States.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be surprised,” Bilavarn said of the trip. “I don’t know if I’m going to be disappointed. I don’t know if I’m going to be enlightened.”
Sysamouth, who also fled Laos as a child, said the study program was partly inspired by his own difficulties finding a way to learn more about Laos when he was a college student in 1994. With no programs available, he enrolled in an exchange program in Thailand and made a personal detour to Laos.
Sysamouth estimates there are 35,000 Laos immigrants and their descendants in the Bay Area, including members of the Mien, Lue and Hmong ethnic groups. He tapped into the Lao community locally and nationwide for the summer program, but said the size of the travel group remains small because participants must pay about $5,000.
Xayavong, who grew up in a Lue family in the Richmond area, found out about the program from a flier she picked up at the Champa Thai and Vietnamese restaurant in El Sobrante.
She has been practicing her Lue for weeks, making sure she is ready to speak with a grandmother she says is waiting to meet her.
“I wouldn’t say I’m fluent,” Xayavong said. “My accent could be better. But I definitely can sit down and hold a conversation. I might have to pause a bit to make sure I’m using the right words.”
Reach Matt O’Brien at 925-977-8463 or mattobrien@bayareanewsgroup.com.
San Pablo resident Yaengsaeng Xayavong and other participants in the Summer Study Abroad in Laos program are keeping track of their eight-week experience in a blog at http://www.laostudies.org
