(Photo: Hilda Morrow is a refugee from Thailand, now living in San Diego. Alison St John/KPBS )
More than 300 refugees from Myanmar have arrived in San Diego this year, fleeing from an oppressive regime. Many of them are families who were forced to leave the country decades ago and live in refugee camps on the border of Thailand. KPBS reporter Alison St John visited a young Myanmar mother who is now struggling to find her feet in San Diego.
Hilda: (In Karen) My name is Hilda, I come from Mae Ra refugee camp in Thailand.
Hilda Morrow’s native tongue is Karen, but unlike most recent refugees, she speaks some English. She has spent 23 of her 29 years living in a bamboo hut in a Thai refugee camp.
Hilda says there were 100,000 people in her camp, with more coming every year. She is part of a generation that has never had a country. Her parents were forced to flee Burma over 20 years ago to avoid persecution or death. .
Hilda: I have a problem sometime when people ask me where are you from? People say, “you can’t say your from Thailand, you have to say you’re from Burma from Myanmar.” My mother always say one day she want to go back to Myanmar but for me I never stayed in Myanmar.
Hilda’s life was severely restricted. She wasn’t allowed to leave the confines of the refugee camp. She cooked on a charcoal stove, and went to fetch water every day from the communal tap. Three months ago she, her husband and two young children arrived in San Diego. She’s discovered electricity and plumbing. She’s adjusted to sleeping on a bed instead of on a dirt floor.
St John: So when you came here how did you feel?
Hilda: The first time we feel like, homesick…
Hilda’s brave face dissolves in tears, other members of her family were granted refugee status, but they got sent to other cities.
Hilda: We all separate. Two of my brothers in Omaha Nebraska, my mother and two brothers are in Texas ,
The telephone is one of the best things in Hilda’s new life -- it connects her to her far flung family. But that life line has turned out to be expensive.
Hilda: Last month my telephone paying is almost $100.
Money is not something Hilda has had to handle before. She’s no ideas how she’s going to pay the phone bill. She gets only very basic support from relief agencies and that will run out in the spring. She also gets some support from local churches.
Hilda: Most people when they arrive here have a problem they don’t understand and they worry about where we can get a job.
St John: So why did you want to come?
Hilda: We want to have human rights, have an opportunity, we want to develop our life, how to say -- to get free, to have more education, yes.
Hilda and her husband are both going to school and struggling to learn English. Their 8-year-old son is enrolled in Rosa Parks Elementary.
Hildea: For us, for our generation, it is very hard for us, but maybe next generation for our kids, our children, will be better.
Hilda is one of 14,000 Myanmar refugees admitted to the United States this year, up from fewer than 2,000 in 2006. Relief agencies say they expect the numbers to continue rising.
Alison St John, KPBS News.
