Young and Happy

By: Mimi Woznicki

I enjoyed my time in the Indonesian refugee camp immensely. I was twelve-years-old and didn’t have a care in the world. Every day for ten months I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and take a long walk along the beach collecting seashells and catching hermit crabs. I would spend hours every day searching for the perfect shell. It was a paradise.

There were things to be done, of course, but being the youngest I didn’t have much responsibility – that fell on my sister Carina, who was sixteen. One of the first things the three of us needed when we arrived on Kuku Island was some kind of stove, so my brother Saigon put three rocks together, stuck some sticks of wood in the middle, lit them and tried to build up a fire. We both squatted on the ground and blew and blew until the smoking sticks caught fire, nearly losing our eyebrows in the process.

Eventually, I mastered the art of cooking over an open wood fire, but while trying to become Martha Stuart I did cook a memorable pot of rice. Saigon and Carina will never forget the three layers of rice I produced: burned bottom, raw top and smoky middle. After that Carina decided she would cook the rest of the food and I would stick with rice. She must have been worried that I would burn precious eggs while boiling them.

That arrangement changed a few months later when my sister developed eczema on her hands and had to keep them as dry as possible. Inevitably I took over the cooking – and the washing.

But that didn’t take a huge amount of time. I filled my days with many activities from singing in a choir to learning English to hiking on a nearby island and walking far into the bush to search for fresh water. Sometimes Saigon and I swam out into deep water and met with local people to trade some of the canned goods that had been supplied to us for fruit.

Among the supplies each refugee was given when they arrived was a large, thick wool blanket. The three of us needed just one between us, and we only used it once or twice during the monsoon season – it was hardly ever cold there. One of the women I knew, Mai, asked me to go around the huts where I lived and ask people if they would like to sell any of their spare blankets. Of course we were her first customers – we sold her the two we didn’t need – and I gathered at least a dozen from our neighbors. Mai then gave me money to buy more blankets and paid me a commission for each one I brought back to her.

I was thrilled with the idea that I could actually earn money with my bare hands. I walked the island from hut to hut, buying unused blankets and balancing them on my head as I trekked down the steep hills, soaked in sweat. Business was great! With the money I earned, Carina bought fabric and hand-sewed clothes for me and my brother. The pants she made were uneven, the sleeves were back to front, but they fitted well enough and I loved them. I also purchased treats for myself and my brother and sister. I felt so proud.

I enjoyed the evenings on Kuku. We’d met a newly wed young couple who loved children, and they called all of us kids who lived nearby their adopted children. Every evening when it wasn’t raining we would gather at their place to listen to the husband tell us stories. Often the session wouldn’t end until my sister came to tell us it was bedtime. Sometimes when the moon was bright and the stories finished earlier I would walk along the beach to watch couples making out. I went to bed happy every night. Unlike my sister, I didn’t really pay much attention to when we might get to leave the island – I was content.

In 2009, exactly thirty years after we’d left Kuku, Carina and I went back. The experience of being on the Island again and meeting some of the people we’d travelled with made me realise how blessed and fortunate I am. That swift journey taught me to respect and value life more and to live with gratitude every day.

I thank my sister Carina and my brother Saigon for their love and protection during our journey to America.  I owe my life to them.

Mimi is an MBA graduate.  She works as Pharmaceutical Sales Rep.  She lives with husband and daughter in California.

Mimi Woznicki

This story excerpted from the book "Boat People, personal stories from the Vietnamese exodus 1975 -1996" edited by Carina Hoang