Can you tell us on thing about Laos?
Uhhhmmm…
Are you thinking really hard?
*Nods
Is there something you like?
*Nods
Is it the sticky rice?
*Nods
Read MoreMy very first summer job was picking strawberries, like everybody else in the Hmong community, with my parents and my cousins. I was 12, I don’t remember much but you know, when you’re young it seems so fun because you’re picking berries, but it was probably really hard work because you had to bend down and pick so much at a time.
Read MoreMy name is Titus Peachy. Laos is an incredibly beautiful country with wonderful people who have been through a dreadful war and suffered greatly. And yet I found people there to be so resilient - and very humbling to me as a U.S. citizen - very hospitable and generous in their reception of me into their homes and telling me stories. Often, eating in Lao villages I would be served food with spoons and forks and plates made from U.S. bombs. They took a weapon of war and turned it into an instrument of hospitality and nurturing - a powerful symbol.
Read MoreMy first memory of the refugee camp was waiting for the U.N./Red Cross to come with food rations, and I remember that this other older lady didn’t have any children and my mom would loan me to her because if you had more children you get more food. So once I week I pretended to be her daughter. Whenever I would go with Mae Ba I would get a lollipop, so of course I always wanted to go with her.
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