"I Have Big Challenges In My Life"

"I have big challenges in my life," said Te (pronounced "Tee"), a 56 year old hotel maid in Vancouver, as I invited her to share her story with you and me dear reader. Te's story is compelling and I think it will touch your heart as it did mine.

Tee is of Chinese heritage and in 1936, Japan bombed the area where her family's home in China was located as the Japanese soldiers invaded and occupied the entire area. Te's grandparents were taken away by the Japanese and were never seen again.

Food was in short supply as people starved. The Chinese military fought back and the men, women and children were caught in the middle, costing thousands of them their lives. As a soldier age male, Te's father could have been taken away by the Japanese at any time, and he was forced to flee for his life to Vietnam, leaving her mother and a baby son behind.

Times were so hard, that when the baby got sick, there was no medicine to heal him and he died. But finally after two years, her father was able to get her mother to Vietnam. There the family settled and they eventually had two boys and two girls, including Te, and as time passed, they prospered in South Vietnam.

Decades later during the 1960's, the U.S. invaded South Vietnam, occupying it and heavily bombing South and North Vietnam. The death toll eventually exceeded a million men, women and children, and children by the tens of thousands were orphaned or died of hunger or were poisoned by napalm the U.S. military sprayed or of diseases readily treatable in the western world.

After the U.S. was defeated in 1975, Vietnam was reunited as one nation under Communist rule. Te and her brothers and sister, like millions of other Vietnamese, felt like prisoners in this desperately poor nation and were determined to flee for better lives.

In Vietnam "life was so hard," Te said, "Twice before me and my sister tried to escape but we got caught. The first time we were in jail for 22 days. The second time we ran away (before they could be punished)." The third time Te and her sister and parents got up at 4 am and hid until they could catch a bus to the coast to pay to get on a boat to escape Vietnam. By fleeing, her parents lost their home and lost their candle making factory.

On November 15th, 1978, like millions of other Vietnamese would ultimately do, Te, her parents and older sister boarded a rickety, barely sea worthy boat and cast their fate to the seas. The one Te and her family boarded was a two deck 25 foot long boat.

They were among 222 men, women and children packed together elbow to elbow sitting on bench seats, as the boat headed into the South China Sea. The hope was it would land in Malaysia, and the passengers would receive asylum and a better life, rather than being returned to Vietnam and what ever punishment might await them for fleeing.

On board there were only some buckets of water to share in common as drinking water and crackers to eat, "but I was so scared, I didn't eat anything," Te said. "We were all scared. The waves rose as high as nine feet," Te continued, "People cried out when the waves hit the boat. I was scared but I just cried out in my heart."

Their boat was slowly taking on water from the crashing waves, and Te sitting in the lower level saw the sea water rise until it reached the bottom of her legs. It was frightening and she knew their boat without repairs, could not last much longer than the trip to Malaysia, assuming it reached Malaysia. But a similar boat had far worse problems.

When their boat left Vietnam, so did another rickety boat carrying 260 men, women and children. Unfortunately, while at sea, that boat took on so much water, it sank, Te heard on a radio. But later Te also heard an air rescue saved 60 of its passengers, the rest of the passengers, including children, drowned.

After three days and three nights at sea, Te's boat reached Malaysia, where the passengers held a rope as they walked through the water to the beach, the water nearly neck deep for Te when she got out of the boat.

The passengers were then locked up in detention camps but given food and water and aid. While in those camps, the frightened people made a plea for asylum and eventually Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland granted them asylum, with Switzerland even taking all of those people with physical limitations.

On May 2nd, 1979, Te and her sister arrived in Canada, and their parents arrived in Canada a month later. The Canadian government paid their airfare and got them settled in housing and Te and her sister took the work they could get to support their parents and themselves and pay back the Canadian government, which they did. The family was grateful to be in Canada, a land of freedom and safety and of education and opportunity.

Later Te met and fell in love with another Chinese immigrant, a man who was bar tending while he went to school, and they married in 1985. Today he is a draftsman, and their son and only child, 21 will be graduating next year with a degree in mechanical engineering. His future looks bright as companies are already inviting him to intern with them.

Te is intelligent, multi-lingual and personable and she is a pleasure to be with. Anne and I met her because she was going to do the maid service in our room and we took the time to speak with her and she took an interest in us as well. This is but a part of her remarkable story.

Many people view immigrants as a burden, but that is only because they don't know their stories. Like Te, these immigrants tackle the tough jobs many people avoid, like maid service, kitchen help and food harvesting and they are often low paid, as they sacrifice so they and their families can have better lives and in the process, hope to climb the ladder to success, a ladder that benefits the society of which they become a part.

Dick