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Bebe and her family are Karen, an ethnic minority that
has been targeted by the Myanmar government and driven
out of the country. She moved to the Oakland, Calif.,
in August 2007 with a group of refugees who still have
family and friends in Myanmar who were affected by the
cyclone.
Transcript: My name is Bebe and I'm from Thailand.
My family was from Burma. I was born in a refugee camp
on the border of Burma and Thailand.
I came to the United States only 10 months ago and
I came because the U.N. called the refugees in the camp
and my family tried to come here.
My dad is from Rangoon and my mom is from a village.
A lot of people here are from Burma. We have 11 students
here and they are all from the camp. Some of them were
born in Burma, or like me were born in the refugee camp.
We have a Karen church, a Burma church, and they are
all from Burma.
The cyclone's destruction
My sister, she called my dad two weeks ago and said, "Dad
do you know what's happened in Burma?" And we don't
know anything. So I opened my corridor to go watch the
news on the Burma cyclone.
I saw the pictures and I feel very bad. Then in the
evening, one of my aunts called my dad and said, "Your
cousins in Burma, their families are hurt and their
houses are broken and they have to build new ones."
I'm so sad and all day I come to school, but I worry
about my relatives in Burma.
One of my nephews, he is just only two or three years
old, he was hurt, he is young so I worry about him and
his breathing.
The next day, I came to school and I looked sad. My
friends from Burma asked me, "What happened to
you?"
I told them everything about what I said about my relatives,
what happened to them, and they said, "Me too,
I have aunts in Burma and they lost their houses."
We just came only 10 months ago, we want to give them
money, but we don't have the money to send for them
to build a house.
My education, I don't want to be absent. I want to
get A's in my class, but I am so very, very sad about
that.
Life in the refugee camp
My life was a burden there, and I spent 15 years in the
camp. It's really, really hard. We can't go outside. We
want to go to the school, we want to go to the university,
but a lot of students finish high school and they don't
have a job, they don't have anything.
They are just in the refugee camp and everybody is
poor.
One day, if I finish college and I'm a person who has
a good education and my life is better I will go to
help my Karen people at the border.
They are from Burma, but the Burmese soldiers shoot
at them so they run to the border with Thailand. The
U.N. people made a big refugee camp so they just live
there and make a house there.
I am so happy to be here. I thank God so much that
my life has become better and I know that God has blessed
me. I'm so lucky to be here in the United States.
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Like many Californians, I live in a town where teenagers drive to school in gas-guzzling SUVs and pick-up trucks just because they want to look powerful and extravagant.
