SU_P_07

[i] Hello.
[r] Hello.
[i] Could you please tell me where you were born?
[r] Well, I was born… on a border, so we’re not really sure, a border during the war, between Vietnam and Cambodia. So I’m not really sure where I was born.
[i] And what year was it?
[r] It was in ‘84. 1984.
[i] And what were the circumstances of your birth like?
[r] Well, my mother told me that it was in a refugee camp. And… well, she heard the bombing while I was being born, and that I was delivered by an American, an American nurse. In a tent somewhere, lost in the middle of nature. Yeah.
[i] And how come she was there at that time?
[f] I think they started to flee the war, so I think the Khmer Rouge… She… from the beginning, so… that made her leave her country. And so suddenly she must have met my father and then fled together. And so suddenly they got me on the way, I think. Yeah, so, there you go…
[i] And do you have any information about your parents’ lives before you were born?
[r] Well, the only information I have is that my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandfather worked together. So my maternal grandfather was a customs officer, and my paternal grandfather was in business, so he was a merchant. And so they often crossed paths, and so they became friends, and wanted their two families to unite, so to speak, and so they took a bit of a chance, I think, and it fell on my two parents, my dad and my mum. And so they got married like that. That’s it.
[i] And they come from which cities?
[r] So Mum is from Prey Veng. I don’t know how you say it in French. And so my dad… I don’t really know, I don’t really know much about him, about his side, though, yeah. So, with the war, they separated quite quickly, so each was in a… well… There was my father’s family, who were Chinese-Cambodian, and my family, who were Cambodian, well on my mother’s side, who were 100% Cambodian. And so, well, the… the grandparents loved each other very much, but then between the brothers and sisters, it was… they had a bit more trouble, the paternal side, given that they were Chinese, they didn’t want too much of our… well, the Cambodian side, let’s say, so it was a bit difficult, I think. My mother didn’t have a good experience with my uncles, especially my great-uncle. So after I was born, there was… well, they stayed… I know they… My father went to a refugee camp to go to Australia, so there was his family, and on my mother’s side, there was already… Half of the family was already in the United States, and my uncle worked as a translator with the Americans. So he had brought his whole family over to my mother’s side to go to the United States, and as a result my mother was torn between two choices. That is to say, to follow my father to the refugee camp, to go to Australia and therefore to be with my family, with my father. Or to go the other way, to go with her mother. So, well, my grandmother really fought for her to come with her. Then, my… well, she made the decision to go with my father, so that I would have a father, in fact. And then, I don’t think it went very well, and she regretted it very bitterly. And I know that she had told me the story, well, briefly, I was very young, and one sentence had remained, well, she had said to me, ‘I can have other husbands, but I only have one mother.’ So all of a sudden, she took me and decided to go back to the refugee camp to go to America. And on the way, well, in the meantime, the camp… where my grandmother was, of refugees, was closed, in fact, so the evacuees. So she found herself with no one, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. And so she decided to go back to my father’s refugee camp, and then that was closed too in the meantime. So she really found herself all alone without a family, in fact. And so that’s how she met my stepfather today, who… and I was 18 months old at the time. So in fact, for me, he’s always been my dad. And so that’s how we ended up in France, because he helped my mother and me to escape the country and the bombing, to come to the refugee camp and then to France. So there you go. We were welcomed in Thailand and then came to France.
[i] And what year did you arrive in France?
[r] We arrived in 1990. June 1990. We were in Créteil. So, yeah, I was 5, 5 and a half at the time. We had arrived… so, in the meantime, my little sister was born. So, she was born in Chonburi. And she arrived when she was 3 and a half months old. So she too is a political refugee. And so we all ended up in Créteil with a whole load of people who were with us in the refugee camp, in fact. And so that’s when we started to be in a country of freedom, so to speak. That’s it. So we started…
[i] Do you have any memories of the refugee camp over there?
[r] Yes. So I have memories from… I think I must have been 3 years old… 3 years old, I remember living in little straw houses. We each had a little straw house that was no more than… no more than ten square metres. For the whole house. I remember we had a bamboo bed and a… and just a shelf to put all our things on. And I remember one evening when there were bombings and I remember seeing my mother gathering all the things together at once, in fact, all our things were on a piece of plastic. And so suddenly, I saw her take the four corners and… leave like that… She gave it to my father, and I was on his back, in fact we ran. We ran to go underground, and I still remember the… the sounds of distant bombing, let’s say quite muffled sounds. But yeah, I can still see myself on her back, her running, yeah. Then it stopped. And then we left, I don’t know, I think, by that time, we had returned to Cambodia in the evening to a camp between the two countries again. Between Cambodia and Thailand, and… the strongest memories I have of the refugee camp were in Thailand, in Chonburi. And there, we had bigger houses, it was much more spacious, it felt less like a refugee camp… well… when I say refugee camp, I mean you see… well, a sort of tent scattered here and there, and that wasn’t the case there, they were really small houses, small neighbourhoods, we were well housed, it was, well, it was very modest, but they really were small huts, and in the middle there was a small courtyard where everyone could get together, and it was really much more cheerful there. Well, we as children, let’s say, saw our friends all the time. Opposite, we ate together, we slept together and we showered there, in the middle of everyone on a piece of plastic, with water. Everyone had their ration of water. And I also remember queuing up to… to get rations of sugar, flour, oil and all that with a little notebook, where we got stamped when we had taken our ration. Those were the last memories, let’s say, in the refugee camps. Quite cheerful, let’s say, it wasn’t sad. It was… we were happy, we had enough to eat, everything was fine, we went to school. I learnt a little bit of the Cambodian alphabet, at the very beginning and… then that was it. And then afterwards, how can I put it, we were taken to places… I remember that, to come here, we had to undergo a whole battery of medical examinations. So, we were… I think, there was a hospital, I think, I imagine, I can’t really remember where it was, but suddenly, I saw myself in a doctor’s coat so we each had to go through it and I remember, more… the thing that made a big impression on me was the dentist. So he must have pulled a tooth out, and I was really traumatised, because I didn’t want any injections and that’s what scared me the most, the injection, and he had to pull the tooth out. I don’t know if he managed to give me the injection, but as far as I remember, he didn’t… he hadn’t done it, but so he’d pulled the tooth out by force like that, because my teeth were hurting a lot. And then… that was it. And then afterwards, we were on the plane, we knew we were going to leave for France. There was still the question of whether we were going to France or to the United States at that point. Two weeks apart because in fact the United States was taking us two weeks before, and France two weeks after. And when you’re a refugee, well… All you want is to go to a free country. Well, any country, really, to escape the war, to… that’s all. And I remember, well I don’t know if it’s my memory or what they told us, our parents. But they said that we actually hesitated a lot, we had done all the interviews, the talks to come to France, but as for the United States, well, they said, ‘We’re leaving in two weeks, and France in a month.’ So in fact, it was two weeks, it doesn’t seem long, but it also seems so long at the same time, but, in fact they said… At school, my mother said, ‘It’s just that very wealthy people send their children to study in France.’ In fact, she had passed her baccalaureate there, and she had got it into her head that it was a cultured country… well… The United States too I imagine, but I think France was more of a dream too. And so, well that’s how it is, I think they chose to take the risk, let’s say, of waiting two weeks… more. And that’s it. And to come to France rather than to the United States, in fact.
[i] And you, at that time, were you already aware of what it meant?
[r] No, I don’t think I was aware of it, I’d just been to so many other countries, I feel like, well for my little life, I mean, we changed refugee camps and each time I felt like I was finally… leaving one country for another. At the time, I don’t think I realised it. Maybe in relation to what my mother told me. But… In fact, for me Thailand was already freedom because I couldn’t hear the bombing and all that. So, and I was living quite normally, let’s say. Our parents went to work, we went to school, we came back, we played with the children, all that… So I wasn’t aware that there could be another kind of freedom elsewhere. So, no, I wasn’t aware, but I was happy because we were preparing to leave. So apparently she wrote to my biological father, who was in Australia and had sent us money for our departure, so we had done a lot of shopping and bought lots of things to bring to France. So yeah, it was a very happy time, so there you go. I don’t think I realised it yet.
[i] And your mother, had she taken her baccalaureate in France?
[r] No, in Cambodia. But then, as he was under… the… well they were, I think they spoke a lot of French there, and she had taken a lot of subjects in French, yeah. That’s how she managed to talk to us with words, she understood words and all that. Well, they came from a more intellectual family, let’s say, and that’s also how their family was decimated by the Khmer Rouge. Well, my grandfather was a customs officer, my grandmother had 15 children. So my mother was the fifth and therefore one of my older uncles, well, my oldest aunt was married to my uncle who was who worked as a translator with the Americans. Then I had my uncle, my mother’s brother, who was a doctor and… my mother who was a nurse, and then the rest, most of them were in the police or in business, that’s it. And all the people who were in the hospital sector, who were in the police, were murdered, in fact.
[i] And among the family you have left, do you have any in France or in other countries?
[r] Well, in France, I don’t have any blood relatives at all, so to speak. I only have any in the United States. Most of them were able to go to the United States in the first wave, and so there you go, I have my uncle the translator, who is still alive. And I have my cousin who was my adopted brother, well, his two parents were policemen, so they got killed. My mother was able to save him. So, he was my adopted brother, so he’s still in the United States. And I also have the whole family of my uncle who was a doctor, so he was also killed, but his wife and all his children are in the United States today. So there you go. And… I have a few cousins here and there. But mainly they are in the United States. And a few in Cambodia too, but I think they are dead. That’s it.
[i] And do you have any links with your family in the United States?
[r] Yes, thanks to Facebook! So there you go, we found each other like that. Before, well, before the Internet, it was a bit more complicated, there were letters… I didn’t necessarily know them, we were all young, it was really just the parents who communicated with each other. We young people got news from our parents, otherwise we couldn’t communicate with each other. And then there was the Internet. And thanks to the Internet, that’s how it happened. That’s how I kept in touch with them, how they found me on Facebook, and that’s how, finally, when I got married, they were able to come. They were able to attend my wedding. It was great! There you go.
[i] Is it important for you to keep these ties?
[r] Of course, yeah. It’s very important. Well, they’re my roots, so they’re a bit older than me, so they were 10 or 12 when it happened. So they have a lot more memories than I do and… They were the ones who, in part, told me about those little… that little moment when we were together, in fact. That’s it. Otherwise, I was, I was very small when I was with them. I was a baby.
[i] So when you arrived in France, how did it go?
[r] Well yeah, when I arrived in France, well there were… we had never seen so many French people, so many people from all kinds of cultures, really… We had never seen Africans, for example. That was something, well, I think that, at the age of 5, well, it was weird. And I asked my mother, I remember asking my mother, ‘What is that thing on their hair, their braids, how does it stay on…?’ Well, you know, it was weird… Those were the first questions. We were going to say, well, the… we were going to say, the Europeans, we had already seen some. So, they were the ones who welcomed us, who took care of us, and all that, before we left. But there you go. It was different. Very different. Yeah, I remember already having been there, having landed in Créteil, seeing all those buildings, well, those… those huge, well… apartments. It was nothing like what we experienced, what we saw in the little huts made of straw, wood, bamboo, and all that. So to see that was super impressive for us. And then, well after… I don’t remember being shocked for very long, let’s say, I think that as a child I got used to it quite quickly. But there are lots of very funny stories that our parents told us when they arrived in France. For example, they told us, ‘Be careful, buy salt from Cambodia, buy salt, sugar…’ Anyway, there are things, you know… So my parents came back with several kilos of salt and several kilos of sugar, thinking they would run out here. So that was quite funny. And then sometimes, well, doors that opened… automatically, and windows that they weren’t used to, so they would bump into the windows and all that. So yeah, it’s… funny little stories.
[i] And when you arrived, did you go to school fairly quickly?
[r] Yes, well, we were taken care of fairly quickly, we went to school, so between… between refugee children in fact, who had just arrived So… well, I have less memory of that period. It was when we moved, we went to a hostel, that there were actually a lot more people who had come from all over Europe, I really think, there was a bit of everything. Whereas as soon as we arrived in Créteil, it was just us, just Cambodians. Then, when we changed, we were mixed up. We weren’t all in the same place, let’s say, in the same hostel, let’s say, and… it made me feel a bit… I don’t know… what the feeling was, but it scared me a little and… I was sad too, to be separated from my friends. And… well, we didn’t know, we had the impression that we were going to be abandoned there. And then, we thought we were all together, and then, we saw them leave again. We felt like saying to ourselves, well… What are we going to do here? Why have the others left? Anyway, that’s it. Lots of fear, lots of questions… I think, I was 7 at the time. That’s it. And then, yeah, at that moment, I remember the school well. So the school… and that I had a lot of trouble… expressing myself. But I understood. I had a lot of trouble expressing myself. I remember… the food. That… well, there are smells, in fact, that… that strangely remind me of that period. For example the… What’s it called? The artichoke, well… I don’t know, it’s a strange smell. They used to bring us a big artichoke like that, cooked. We didn’t know how to eat it. And I remember seeing the canteen lady telling us that you had to tear off a petal and dip it in oil or I don’t know, a sauce, vinaigrette, I guess. Yes for me, it was oil at the time. And then, to eat it like that. And we found it… too weird. And then also the smell of… butter in the rice. Oh! That was something that shocked us. Because you never put… you never put butter in rice. And so every time I smell that in a restaurant, for example, butter in rice, it really reminds me of that period. It was weird. That’s it.
[i] And which city did you live in when you arrived?
[r] I think it was Lens but I’m not sure. Yeah. It was a city called Lens… I don’t know, near Troyes or… That’s it. We went through… yeah it was weird because we’re… well no because it’s not in the Paris region. We stayed in the Paris region, but I can’t remember exactly, yeah. I know we didn’t stay very long, I think less than a year, and then we went to Sarcelles. Sarcelles, because my grandmother’s cousin lived there, and she welcomed us into her home. So, there you go. Well, it was… I don’t know why she took us in, but… My parents left thinking it was a… how can I put it, an opportunity, to… to leave, start our life and all that. But in the end, it was a mistake to leave so soon, because we didn’t have… Because the centre could have helped us find a real… a real flat, a home of our own, to give us more support with the formalities, with education, well, with… with taking French lessons, I think we rushed to leave at that point, thinking that the best thing, well, the best thing was to leave and stand on our own two feet, whereas we should have stayed, they could have helped us more. So we moved into an apartment, a very small apartment. We were all stuck together, we only had one room. We were kind of left to our own devices, we didn’t really know where to go, there wasn’t any… We didn’t have any support. And… Well, and the lady wasn’t very available either.
[i] So you were a bit lost at that point?
[r] Yeah, at that point, I had to go to another school as well, so say goodbye to my friends, change… I found that a bit difficult. And so suddenly, I had to change places again… And then we arrived, well, here we are in a… what’s it called in the neighbourhood. I was going to change schools, change houses again, relearn how to get used to my environment, and then school was very hard, because of course there were the other children, who made fun of us because we didn’t understand. Yes. Not a very good time. Well, my brother was born there, so… And then we left again in 1992. In 1992, we found an apartment in Aulnay-sous-Bois. We found a large apartment and so, when we found the apartment, it was friends, in fact, colleagues of my father, who have become very close friends now, who found us this apartment. And it turns out that this flat belonged to my mother’s teacher. So they met up again like that, and then, well, when they exchanged… well, the owners changed tenants, so she saw it, she recognised it, and he recognised it too.
[i] Was it a coincidence?
[r] The greatest of coincidences. Yeah. So suddenly, there you go, it’s a… They were able to talk about the past again, all that. So… Anyway, I think it must have done my parents good, especially my mum, who was able to tell her a little bit about what had happened to her in relation to her life, which was really carefree, you could say, as a student, or there you go, She went to school, she played a lot of basketball, she was at a high enough level to go and play in other provinces, and then suddenly the war came, and she lost all her freedom. I think it’s… she was a bit more shocked than everyone else, I think. Because she really had a happy and carefree childhood, and then after the war, it really… Well, killed, I think.
[i] Did she tell you a bit about that period?
[r] Yeah. She told us a lot about her period, her childhood, Well, so, where she… I can’t remember where she was telling us all the provinces she went to when she was competing, or where she went She said that… well, you know, that thanks to that, she was able to visit a lot of cities. So actually, when she was telling me, well… she was only saying good things, really, about her childhood, about… Until she started working, until… She said that, well, of her siblings, she was the least pretty, let’s say, the least pretty, well, the most rebellious, maybe too… so suddenly, well, that’s… My grandmother’s favourite because they all thought she was the reincarnation of my great-grandmother, and well, as she was, you know, less spoilt by nature than the others, my grandmother had more trouble in fact for my mother. So they were much closer in fact, and… so well… That’s it. And she also told me that… when she got married, before my father, she got married to a doctor, who was a friend of my uncle, so they met at work and he… So they had a few happy years, let’s say, before the war, and on the day the war actually broke out, he took her to see his parents, and from then on, I think the Khmer Rouge arrived and she must have, well her husband was killed at that moment. They would say, ‘Here are all the boys in the neighbourhood. Here are the names of the people who have to go and chop wood, for example, to provide for everyone,’ and that’s when he finally never came back because of… that. And so, well, my… his mother-in-law understood straight away, so she remembers actually coming to see her in-laws, so she told me that she had dressed up, she had been to the hairdresser just before and as soon as it happened, she remembers that her mother-in-law had taken her hair and cut it in all directions. Well, I don’t know, to say that she was a country girl, that she was illiterate and she sent her to the rice paddy and my mother said that the rice paddy was really hard work, because she had never done that before, and that, well, you see, it was a really difficult time. As a result, she was pregnant too, and then there’s her husband, who was killed, and she found herself with her mother-in-law, far from her family, and… well, it was very difficult, a really difficult time for her. And she always told us that it was her appearance, not blessed by nature, that saved her life. Because she didn’t come from the city, let’s say, but as an illiterate peasant woman, so suddenly, she was darker than everyone else and all that. So suddenly, there was that and then well, she carried her pregnancy to term. And… and then, well, in the meantime, they had really murdered, I think, almost everyone in the hospital, from… well, all the people who had studied, you know, who had a job, all that. To put young girls from the countryside as nurses, as midwives, so suddenly she had given birth to a little girl who had trouble breathing because of the phlegm, in fact. So my mother told me that she, they just needed to… to turn her over, to spank her bottom in fact, or to hit her, I don’t know, to spank her bottom, but very hard, to make the mucus come out and to make her cry in fact, but as they were… they didn’t know the little ladies, they didn’t know what to do, so suddenly, they thought that she was a stillborn in fact. As the little girl didn’t cry, they declared her a stillborn, and so my mother could… I said to her, ‘But why didn’t you tell them, actually? Why didn’t you show them and all that?’ I said but how… ‘You see, how could I? I mean, if I show them, it means that I show them that I’m not illiterate, it means that I know what to do.’ So she said, “If I spoke, we’d both die, no matter what happens.” So she could never have saved her child. So it was very difficult.
[i] And so, she… when she got here, she managed to… move on, and build her life anyway with those memories?
[r] Well, I think she was forced, shall we say, to… for us, I think. She had to make a lot of sacrifices, bury it all inside her, in fact. So that we could be happy, I think. But, yeah, she managed to… to rebuild something to make us grow, to talk to us, but without… without, I think, forgetting her past, because she often talked to us about it, and… I don’t think she wanted to forget it either. She talked to me about all those things, even though I was very young, actually. Sorry. But it’s weird that I remember all that, because I think I must have been ten years old, well, I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you… you tell your child or maybe that we remember as children. But… But I was very keen to… all that.
[i] Did you want to know?
[r] Yeah. Even if I can’t remember half of it but… Yeah, I wanted to know. Yeah.
[i] And… And today, how do you… how do you feel, does Cambodia have a very important place in your life?
[r] Yeah. Right now it really is, well Cambodia really has a very big place in my life, that’s for sure. It’s my roots, my origins. We’re part of an association that, well, with our parents, we’re very active, we help a lot, with this association so as not to forget, in fact, well, what we’ve experienced, our country, our roots. My parents always speak to us in Cambodian and they… well, they don’t want us to speak to them in French. So we… we manage to do both, in fact, we speak Cambodian, we speak French, we speak other languages, it enriches us.
[i] And what is this association?
[r] It’s the Cambodian association of Aulnay-sous-Bois, in fact. It’s… with that one that we do all the ceremonies, the… that we celebrate the New Year together, that we collect donations that we send to be able to buy rice, bags of rice, pens, clothes for the children of Cambodia. That’s it. I remember, well, being on the other side, well, we got a lot of help, and we were happy to have all that, so that’s it. That’s why we help them.
[i] And… do you have children?
[r] Yes. I have a little girl now, she’s a year and a half, so… She’s a little one. Yeah, I’d like her to… well… I think when the time is right, I’ll tell her everything, I’ll tell her, well, what she wants to know about her desires too. I don’t want to shock her, I don’t want her to not know, to not know our story, where her mum comes from. Her grandmother’s stories too. Yeah, I want her to feel attached to that country, it’s also hers, and that… I have to show her, well, there you go… I think, her being born here, she doesn’t know anything about… about Cambodia. Well, it’s her roots. I’m going to try to… to teach her things.
[i] Do you speak to her in Khmer?
[r] Well, I don’t speak to her in Khmer… my father speaks to her in Khmer. I try to teach her English, so there you go, I think it’s quite difficult at school for… with her classmates to learn English, so I think I’ll have to teach her English, so she’ll speak English with me, and Cambodian with her grandparents. And then French, at the nursery and with her dad.
[i] And… so, going back to your childhood here and then later, your studies, what did you do, what did you study?
[r] Well, human resources. So yeah, it had started right away So from the beginning, well, when I arrived in France. So when I went back to Aulnay, I had to repeat a year, so I came back, I was in CP I remember, in Aulnay. And it was very difficult, let’s say, to learn French. So I had extra lessons with a lady who taught me little things in… well, at the same time, outside of lessons. And… then, well, I did all my schooling, my primary education in France. And then my mum fell seriously ill, so she wanted me to get to know my biological father. So she sent me to Australia. So I did all my secondary education in Australia. Hence the English. And so, well, I lived there for 5 years. And then I came back to France and resumed normal schooling, so to speak. I should have been in second year but I wasn’t at the right level. We weren’t at the same level in Australia, so I went back to third year. And so I continued my schooling like that. Then I did, I passed my baccalaureate. And then after that I did, I did a BTS, management assistant, then I continued, I did a licence in management, and then well all that was a work-study programme, in fact. And then I went into human resources, so I did a master’s in human resources, finance – human resources, and… so now I have a master’s in finance – human resources, and then I went on a bit to get my MBA. So now I also have a master’s in human resources. And today, I’m a consultant in international mobility and I look after expatriates.
[i] And what does that involve?
[r] Well, we’re a consultancy firm. And we advise companies that don’t have their own international mobility department and so they ask us to… Well, they have a project to send their employees abroad, what should be done, the procedures, the policies, in short, each… what policy they wish to establish, how much it will cost, what type of social protection. We have agreements with some countries, and not with others, what should be covered, not covered. Like France, we have social protection, one of the highest in the world, so when an employee leaves France for a foreign country, they should be able to retain all these benefits. So we have private insurance policies, and we subscribe to them, we affiliate them with private insurance companies to maintain a level of social protection for them as if they were in France. That way, when they return to France, they won’t have a contribution gap for their retirement, for example. And… all that. That’s it.
[i] And how long have you been doing this?
[r] For 5 years now, that’s it.
[i] Do you like it?
[r] Yes, I really like it. It’s a job that allows me to… well… to practise my English, to work with expatriates, to work with people who have changed countries a lot like that, who have to re-familiarise themselves with other countries, and maybe, in a way, I can understand how difficult it is to… Well, arriving in another country, feeling lost, in short, how… How to manage, in short… how to do everything in fact to live in another country that is not ours, but that will become so.
[i] And where… where are your offices?
[r] We are based in the 10th arrondissement, in Paris, in the Cité Paradis. So… in a small neighbourhood, really, in a small and very, very friendly housing estate, we are between the Galeries, rue Lafayette and Grands Boulevards.
[i] And what exactly is your… what connection do you have with the city of Paris? Do you like the city? Do you feel Parisian?
[r] Well, I’ve always lived in the Paris region, I’ve never really lived in Paris, but I’m there every day. So it’s a city that I really love. Well, it’s… When I see Paris, I… When I drive by, or when I’m on the bus, and when I see the monuments, I see the Eiffel Tower, I feel really privileged, so to speak, to be there, in this beautiful country with so much history, with all these monuments, which has also been through a lot, which has also experienced war, and which now, which has… who came back, who rebuilt themselves, you might say, and yeah, it’s a beautiful city. I feel… when I walk around and see all these monuments, and I think that there are many, many… people who… well, who come to visit Paris and I’m here every day, that I can see our Iron Lady whenever I want, in 40 minutes by train, I feel privileged.
[i] And which neighbourhoods do you like?
[r] So I don’t really have any favourite neighbourhoods. Obviously, the neighbourhood where I like to be is near my work, let’s say. There are… little bars, little corners where we like to go for our after-work drinks, in the petite, the passage des Petites Ecuries, for example. Around the Folies Bergères, well, there are some nice little spots. We also like to be on the Grand Boulevards, it’s very lively.
[i] And outside of work, do you go there too? For leisure, for example?
[r] Yes. For leisure. For sightseeing. Sometimes to do a bit of shopping, to go to restaurants. That’s it, to show my daughter the monuments too. Sometimes I take her to see my colleagues, to visit them. So there you go. I go to Paris quite often.
[i] And where do you live now?
[r] In Champs-sur-Marne. So, in the Paris region, I’m not very far, let’s say. In the centre of Paris, to go to Châtelet, I have a train that goes directly in… in 25-30 minutes. Let’s say, we’re really not very far from Paris.
[i] And do you like living in Champs-sur-Marne?
[a] Oh yes, I like it. So in fact, we are really close to Paris, but in a green setting, so it’s true that you need a certain level to live in Paris. It’s very pretty, but it’s… Well, I don’t think I could afford such a big apartment with my means. But… we’re not very far away, so it’s okay.
[i] And in relation to… to your naturalisation procedures, have you already done any, and how did it go?
[r] Yes, I have already started to do it, it was in… I think in 2009. I had tried to do it. So I had taken… I was on a work-study programme, and I remember taking time off work to go to the Préfecture du Raincy, to pick up a file, and there, at that moment, I couldn’t pick up a file, they gave me a stamp. A stamped sheet to say to come back next year. Then I didn’t really understand, so I thought there weren’t any more files available, and I thought it was a long time to wait a year to get a document. So what I did, a month or two later, I looked it up and downloaded the forms from the Internet. And I filled them in twice, I did all the documents, it… it took me a year to gather them all, there were quite a few documents to gather. There you go. And then, well, I took another RTT day off, got up at 3 or 4 in the morning to queue up there. And then they stamped another document for me to come back in a year and a half’s time. I said to her, ‘But Madam, my file is ready, it’s here, it took me a year to put it together. And so here I am today, with the paper that they stamped for me last year, in relation to your invitation from last year.’ And I said to her, “Well, there you go, my file is ready, I wanted to give it to you.” She said to me, ’Oh no no, it wasn’t like that. It’s not like that, you’d have to… Actually, it was just a piece of paper to get the form back.’ So a year to get the form. And I told her… I didn’t understand, actually. ’Because it took me a year to gather all these documents, so I took a day off work to come and give it to you.’ And she said to me, ‘No, actually, you have to…’ I don’t remember what she said, but anyway… you have to submit the file, so send it by post with acknowledgement of receipt, and wait a year and four months minimum. So then I thought to myself, ‘Oh no!’ I… I had had enough, and I think I gave up at that point, because I couldn’t see myself waiting again and everything… Well, it was too long, it’s… Well, the administration, they’re really not understanding, and I was really on edge, after three hours standing in front of the fence, in the cold, waiting, and all that, so I was at my wits’ end, I think I gave up at that point.
[i] Did that discourage you?
[r] Yes, very much so. It really discouraged me, and I said to myself well, I… well up to now, it hadn’t bothered me, shall we say, just having my residence permit, and I change it every ten years, like like any other French person, so, it hadn’t seemed necessary to me at that moment. So there you are, suddenly…
[i] Do you ever plan to reapply?
[r] Yes, let’s say, it’s that’s… That’s it, for… for belonging. That’s it, to say, I’m French, because I’m often teased, my friends often tease me, to say ‘the refugee’. That’s it. So, also, well, that’s it, well, to be French. I feel completely French. Well, this is where I wanted to make my life, well I had the choice between Australia and France. So I chose France, I wanted to be here, so I feel completely French, you could say. I have more French culture than any other culture, I have lived here. So, this is where my life is.
[i] So you haven’t given up hope of obtaining your nationality?
[r] Yeah, no, I’m not losing hope, maybe I’ll do it…. with… well, my daughter’s arrival changes a lot of things too. That’s about it… well, I’ll do it so we can all be French, so that, well, I’ll take more time, maybe, and well, for the documents.
[i] And what will changing to French nationality change in your life?
[r] Well, I don’t think it will change much in my life, except for travelling, let’s say, I will need fewer visas, and all that. But maybe in my private life, yeah, I will be happy to be French, actually. Let’s say, I will say, well! Well, I’ve… I’ve taken the steps. I… It’s going to be a little piece of paper about what I feel inside, in fact. There. I feel more French than a political refugee today, it’s just the paper that does that. And I think that being naturalised as French will just show, well, what I have inside, in fact. There.
[i] And have you ever been back to Cambodia?
[r] No, never. I have never been back to Cambodia. In fact, I have a plan to go back there with my whole family. Every time, I want to see Angkor, for example, to see Cambodia again with my whole family, my brothers and sisters, and my father. And my daughter. And every time, there was always someone who couldn’t come, so we ended up going to the neighbouring countries, but not to Cambodia. Because I wanted to see Cambodia for the first time with my whole family at the same time. I didn’t want to tell them what I had experienced there, I wanted to share it with them.
[i] And what image do you have of Cambodia today?
[r] Today, I think it’s a country that has modernised. They’ve built a lot of things, you could say they’ve come a long way since the war, they’ve bounced back, it’s a country where life is good. It’s a… I think, from my outside perspective, because I don’t see what goes on inside. But from what I see, it’s a free country, well, that has no war, well, no big war anyway, that… it’s… You can study, you can go out, you’re free to move around, to think… to… there you go, to be who you are too. I see, there you go, it’s a country that has rebuilt itself really well, a country that was bruised, you could say, well, because of its history with the Khmer Rouge. And I really admire… that they were able to overcome that, in fact.
[i] Are you looking forward to going back?
[a] Yes. Yeah. I can’t wait. Well, it’s a year-to-year thing. I ask everyone to… to be ready, but it always gets postponed. We’re really going to try to go next year. Really.
[i] Do you still have any family living there?
[r] Yes, yes, I have cousins that I’ve never actually met. We know each other, well, through photos. I know they exist. I know they exist. Now we communicate on Facebook. When I have needs, like typing texts in Cambodian, for example, I ask them. And now they speak English, so communication is much easier, and yeah, thanks to the Internet, I communicate much more with them. And I see that they too have made a success of their lives, they work in offices, they have their own flats, they have their children, they too have made a success of their lives, so I’m very happy to see them, and to see that, well, if they are well, it means that the country is doing well too. So, there you go, I’m happy.
[i] You were just talking about Australia.
[r] Yes.
[i] What is the difference between living in France as a person of Cambodian origin and in Australia as a person of Cambodian origin?
[r] So in Australia, I arrived, and I was like in a… in a corner, where there were, and we were the only ones there. So there I was in Aulnay, I went from Aulnay, where we were all together, Africans, North Africans, Asians, we were all there, in the same building, there was everyone, and then I went to Australia, to very small houses, or buildings no more than two storeys high, and there was a square in the middle. I had the impression of reliving the refugee camps, in fact. But hey, in brick houses. But, you see, that was the feeling, I think, today, now that you ask me, that I had, since it was just us, there were only Asians, we all spoke Cambodian, Chinese, Vietnamese. And most of them spoke all languages, yeah. And so that’s where I learned English. English in the street. Because I didn’t have my papers to go to school and so I had learned English in the street, I had to learn Chinese because my mother-in-law was Chinese, Cantonese. So it was also a difficult period of adaptation. I had to go to school with the… the elderly, the seniors, in fact, where there were lessons for an hour here and there. Then, well, when I got my papers, I was able to go to school there, and suddenly it was… When I came home, we were all together, and the school that was willing to accept me was only for Australians. There were only Australians, maybe two or three Asians, and one African. We were really… So, in fact, I was forced to communicate in English, and that was difficult, the teasing and all that, but anyway, I only spent a year there, and then we moved on to secondary school. And there, at secondary school, I got all my friends back who were in my neighbourhood. And so, now it was really… School was really… How can I put it? A place that I really… that I really liked a lot. The school there, well I… With my friends, in fact, there were some who had also just arrived in Australia, so they had a lot of trouble with English, so I felt much less alone, in fact. And I was one of the… well, the ones who understood the most because with French, well, there were words that were similar, and so it was a bit easier for me, so I was the one helping them with that, and then with the school we did lots of activities, lots of sport. Yeah, it was… It was a lot of fun, it was nice at school. Yeah. And yeah, the country itself is very… it’s very good too. But actually, I had… Anyway, after 5 years, I went back to France. Then, you know, in terms of the neighbourhood, it changes. But it was really nice to see all my childhood friends again, in the neighbourhood, in Aulnay, we were all together, everyone seemed really happy to see me. I was really happy to see them too, it brought back lots of memories. I had come on holiday, and then afterwards, I didn’t really want to leave. So I was really torn between my family here and my new friends there that I had made. Well, the two countries, well at that time, they were two countries, that’s it… And they were two countries that were very good, and I didn’t make my choice based on the people who lived there. That’s it. So, I preferred to stay with my family in France, rather than my family in Australia. Well, as far as the two countries are concerned, it’s… They’re both very good.
[i] You were well received in both… both in France and Australia?
[r] Yeah. We were made to feel welcome in France, well, after a while, it wasn’t the same feeling. I mean, in France, I was arriving from a country at war. It was finally… Everything, every little thing that was done for us, it all seemed so… grandiose, shall we say. I felt really safe once I got here. Then I went to Australia… There you are, I was already in a land of freedom, as we say in Cambodian. We are in a land of freedom. Then I went to Australia, which was another country… Very welcoming too. I mean, Australians are very nice… But I didn’t feel the same as when I arrived in France, in fact. Let’s say that I didn’t really feel like I was in a safe cocoon over there. Maybe it was also because I was far from my family that I knew. And… But anyway, I learned to love that country or… I really enjoyed school with my friends, I have very, very good memories of being there.
[i] Which city were you in?
[r] We were in Melbourne. So that’s the very south of Australia, and… Well, I have very, very good memories of it.
[i] Do you still have ties with your family in Australia?
[r] Yes, so I still have ties. I have my cousin, I have all my little cousins, and everything, who have grown up. Well, we are quite far apart, we were eleven years apart at the time. But anyway, now they are in their twenties so it’s okay. And… yeah, I kept my uncle, and all that, who came to my wedding too. So, well, I was very happy to see them again. And that’s it. Good memories.
[i] Did you have a Cambodian wedding too?
[r] Yes! We had a Cambodian, Buddhist, Vietnamese and Christian wedding for my husband and his parents. Then we had a restaurant in Chinatown in the 13th arrondissement. That was a day for the parents, and then we said to ourselves, well, for our second wedding, we’ll get married for us. So we got a small estate, a small mill, in the 77. And so we had our own wedding, the one we wanted, really in a country style, outside. That’s it, with a secular ceremony. So, as we had done all the religious and traditional part in the first week, we wanted this one to be really European and secular, so really, that’s it, just our feelings, you know. Everything we wanted to share at that moment, without the barriers of our parents, so to speak. So there you go, it was a very moving second wedding.
[i] Are Cambodian traditions very present in your life?
[r] Yes, let’s say… We try to celebrate all the ceremonies, the good ones… Really… well, we have a pagoda at the end of the street, the Champs pagoda. We go there, well, we don’t go there every week either, but we go there every time there’s a ceremony, or… or there’s a party, and all that, so… Especially for New Year, it’s very important. And so in everyday life, we burn incense, that’s it. We pray for the protection of the house, the family, all that. Then we eat… when the parents are there, we eat mainly Cambodian food. And then, in everyday life, I don’t have much time to cook, but… But otherwise, yeah, it shows in the food, I like to share it, I share with my colleagues, when I bring food back, or sometimes I do ‘spring roll’ workshops at work, I show them how to roll them, the ingredients and all that, so, yes. I like to share my culture.
[i] So the cuisine is mainly Asian at home?
Yes, it’s mainly Asian, and also when we go to restaurants. Mainly Asian, and I find that there are many… many feelings that come through food. The love of our parents, I think, comes through food a lot too, because at home, we don’t say… We don’t say ‘I love you’, you know, it’s… They are things that we really keep for… for intimate moments, let’s say, strong moments. But we don’t say it to each other on a daily basis, but I know that our parents tell us through food. My parents, well food was something very, very important to them. Well, you know, we ate very well with my parents. It was something, well, they made a point of making sure we ate well.
[i] Do you also cook Asian food?
[r] Yes, I also cook Asian food. I make a lot of stir-fries, noodles, rice noodles, I make a lot of spring rolls, and all that, so… salad and everything.
[i] Do you go to the 13th arrondissement?
[r] I used to go there often, when I was more on the Aulnay side, let’s say, there were fewer Asian restaurants. But now I’m on the Champs, 77 side, there are a lot of Asian restaurants. So I don’t need to go that far. So within 5-10 minutes, I really have restaurants that are very famous in Île-de-France. So yeah, I have… we tend to go nearby.
[i] There is an Asian community that is present…
[r] Oh yeah.
[i]…in the area?
[r] A very large Asian community, for example, there in Lognes, there’s a… I think 65% are Asian. So, there you go, you have a lot of Asian, exotic shops. I think that if there are a lot of shops like that, it means that there is a good concentration of Asians.
[i] And you go shopping there too?
[a] Yes, I go shopping ten minutes from here. Because the 13th is really far away, and we only go there if we really need something specific, quite fresh, orders, and so on… big… you know. Big orders, let’s say. But it’s always a pleasure to go back, we always have very good memories there.
[i] And among your friends, are there many Asians? What are their origins?
[r] Well, there’s a bit of everything. Many Asians too. But… it’s… It’s the children, it’s the children of friends of our parents, in fact. We… that’s it. When we were young, we were all together in the neighbourhood, now that we’ve grown up, we’ve all gone our separate ways, all over the Île-de-France, all over… well, in the South, my sister lives in Bordeaux now. And… when we meet up, we feel like we’re all cousins, in fact. We… We feel really close, in fact, we’re… Well, for me, they’re more than friends, in fact. They’re, well, they’re family, because I don’t have much family in France, so… For me, they’re my family, in fact.
[i] Did you find it difficult growing up as an Asian in France?
[r] No, not at all, not at all. Well, first of all, where we grew up, really, we were all… there was a really good melting pot and there was really everything, I didn’t feel, finally, too much, or… in a minority. We were, well, fairly represented, let’s say, Asians, so there were Asians, Africans. I think there were a lot of Europeans too, North Africans, there were… a good portion of each, let’s say, so… No, I didn’t feel… and that’s it… I grew up very well in the neighbourhood .
[i] Have you ever suffered… experienced discrimination, or racism or not especially?
[r] Oh, among young people, when we were little, yes… When the little ones wanted to tease us, they would do ‘Tching tchang tchong’ to us, little things like that, but well, nothing… well, let’s just say I’ll keep it in my heart. No, nothing.
[i] And in terms of leisure activities, what do you like to do in your free time?
Well, we like playing board games. We discovered this a few years ago, now it’s been… it’s been… I think eight years now that we’ve been playing board games, and it takes up a lot of our time, we like game afternoons on Sunday afternoons with our friends, so… That’s it, we play games, well, sometimes they can take us five to seven hours, you know, in a row. Then, I like to get together a lot, so I like to have little parties, decorating. I like it, I’m very hands-on, so… I do a lot of decorating, paper flowers, … tassels made of foil… that’s it, I organise quite a few parties at home, for people, we do baby showers and all that. So, all my friends who… who are pregnant, I organise everything for them. So, there you go, and then we make the most of the garden when it’s nice outside. And that’s it.
[i] Are you happy with your life at the moment?
[r] Yes, I’m very happy. I tell myself that I’ve been through a lot, let’s say… from changing countries, the war, freedom, then… well, the feeling of insecurity, then security when I came here. The neighbourhood was, let’s say, difficult, because Aulnay is… it’s a neighbourhood that… Well, from an outside perspective, there are… there are… There are… It’s difficult, we don’t feel the same when we experience it from the inside, I guess. Well, I don’t feel the same sense of insecurity that people feel when they come to Aulnay. Anyway, these days, when I go back there, when I go to my parents’ house, it’s a real, real pleasure. I see… I also see the neighbourhood changing, improving. Look at the buildings. Some of them have been… some of them have been destroyed and rebuilt… Really new buildings, refurbished, with barriers now… Anyway, it feels like it’s changing, evolving too, and so it’s really a pleasure to come, yeah, every month, every week, to see where I grew up, in fact. Well, where we… I learned a lot of things, and now today, well, I’ve changed, I’m more in the East, and yeah, it’s a different life. It was difficult for me to adapt, because in Aulnay, where I lived, well, I was really in the centre, near the Galion, I was really in the centre, there were a lot of… As soon as I opened the window, there were always people outside, children, old men sitting and chatting. When I moved to Lognes, I had absolutely no-one, and I felt really very lonely, you could say, when I went to university. And then, well, you get used to it, you get used to it, and… How long has it been? I’ve been here for maybe 10 years now. But all in all, I’m happy where I am. There’s lots of greenery, we… well, we… we’re at home, it’s really very pleasant, we can welcome lots of people, we can enjoy the sun and all that, so… at home. Quietly. So yeah, I think I have… And yes, in relation to my studies too. Because I was not planning on studying for long. Well, I had difficulties everywhere. Well, every time I changed country, I lost a year, so I passed my baccalaureate when I was already 21. Without really, well, regardless of my will, I was always not very I wasn’t brilliant, but I was always persevering. in everything I did. So suddenly, I was getting there, little by little, step by step. So then, that’s it, I got my baccalaureate, and then after, after we had done the BTS, then well BTS, why not continue, because for me, where I came from, getting the baccalaureate was great, getting the BTS was wow! So then, we were that’s it… And then I had my husband with me, who actually pushed me a lot. He was the one who clearly said who believed in me, so he was the one who pushed me to get my degree. After the degree, for me, it was… that’s it. It was very, very good. My goal was the BTS, I got my licence, so it was very good. And while I was getting my licence, he was talking to me about the master’s. In fact, it went crescendo like that, he was always pushing me. And I said to him, ‘Oh, the master’s, no. It’s something I can’t do, actually. It’s too high for me.’ He said to me, ‘But no, why do you say that, you’ve come this far, go for it, what have you got to lose by trying?’ So I said to him, ‘Well, why not then?’ So we did our exams and… and he… well he also went back to studying at that point, with me. Waiting for me, taking me to the exam, so he was reading the brochures, and that… that made him want to go back to his studies. He had stopped at M1, so with a Master 1, you don’t do much, so he went back to MBA and I went back to the first year of Master. So we were at the same school, we were very happy. And so, after all that, well, step by step, I gained a lot more self-confidence when I got my master’s degree, so I continued with the MBA. So, there you go… And to see, where I started, well, not knowing a word of French, and to have got my MBA, until today, to have got married, to have bought the house, well, to work every day, well, to have my little girl, and all that, well, yes. It’s a feeling of… I’ve now reached a point where… I’m… well, I’m living a simple, happy life.
[i] Are you proud of your journey?
[r] Yes, I think I can be proud of my journey. There have been many… let’s say, difficulties that I’ve overcome, and… yeah, I think I can be proud of my journey today.
[i] And what are your dreams for the future?
[r] My dreams… Well, today, I think that… well… to see my daughter grow up, maybe have another child, and to see my daughter grow up, stay, that’s it, live like that, simply. I think that now, I have met my soul mate, I have built everything with him, and… I think that I am happy today, happy enough to say that I don’t have any other greater dreams, you could say, today, yeah. Apart from continuing my life, and seeing my daughter grow up, with my husband. That’s it.
[i] We are coming to the end of the interview. Is there anything you would like to add?
[r] No. I think that, well, that’s it… I have come to a conclusion… on that.
[i] Very well, thank you very much.
[r] Thank you.