By Amara Perez ‘27
Poof! Just like that at the age of 16, Ly Kham had to move from one country to another. Everything happened so quickly, she had no idea what to expect. She had just one thing in mind – how am I going to survive?
As Kham was growing up in Cambodia, she didn’t have a childhood like others. She still loved it; she thought it was wonderful.
“But after the Civil War, then I started [not to] like it, because it’s too much of a problem,” Kham said. When Kham was 16 years old, Americans took her to America because of the Civil War war. She left everything in Cambodia, even her parents to come to America.
Philadelphia was the first city she arrived in coming to America
“I saw everything different when I came here, like in December, the tree, no leaf. I think it’s all a dead tree,” said Kham. “In Cambodia, I never see snow before I came here. I say, ‘Oh, my God, the tree is all die and had a lot of snow. How people gonna go out?’”
Cambodia is known to be a very tropical region, so Kham wasn’t familiar with the low temperatures. Seeing snow was something new for her.
Since then, Kham has grown to like America and thinks it’s a wonderful country.
Kham said that in America it is, “easy to make money too. Like at that time I work like $3 something per hour, but the rent is so cheap too. So we earn from that time, little by little.”
Ly met her late husband Loute Kham in America. “Oh, he lived here with the sponsor church,” she said. “And one day he went to Philadelphia, and then he met me over there, and he started to like me.”
Kham was able to get married at the age of 22 years old to Leoet Kham. They got married in Philadelphia. After getting married, they moved to Lancaster through a sponsor, Ly Kham’s sister, who let them stay with them until they got enough money for rent.
Soon afterwards, Kham had 3 children: Anthony, Derek, and Karen. For the next years, “my husband won’t let me do anything. Just stay home, cook clean for nine years.”
After being unemployed, Kham said, “I’ll be working hard and earn it, spend less, save more if you want something… so we got the first house in Lancaster.”
Kham was able to get her citizenship at the age of 38, and live happily.
Kham is now 59 years old and thinks, “It’s a little bit harder right now, because since my husband passed away, [in the] year 2020. I feel like sometimes lonely, so it’s not the same [as] before.”
Kham’s husband passed away due to leukemia. She has been living with her 2 sons since. Kham still works and hopes to retire soon, but she works hard in memory of her husband.
Would you be able to do what Kham did? Kham was able to start from nothing, but take her hopes and dreams and make them into her reality.