Thursday, 3 July 2008

July 4 gathering reunites 2 long-separated sisters

REUNION PLANNED:After 17 years and thousands of miles of separation, Anderson businesswoman Kim Keo can hardly wait for the July 4 reunion planned with her older sister, in photograph, Eng Chun Lim of Cambodia.

By George L. Winship, Editor
Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Anderson businesswoman Kim Keo last saw her older sister, Eng Chun Lim, in 1991 when both of them tried to escape the deadly Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Mrs. Keo, now 48, eventually made it to the United States on Aug. 29, 1992, and moved from Sacramento to Redding in September 1995.

This Fourth of July weekend, the two long-separated sisters will reunite with other family members still living in the Sacramento area.

Mrs. Keo strongly contends that the American spirit and way of life has made this reunion possible.

“I was able to come to the United States in 1992 because my parents had both died, and so they (U.S. Immigration authorities) let us join my brothers and sisters who were already living in the Sacramento area,” Mrs. Keo said.

“Life in America is very, very good. When we are sick, we can go to the doctor. We are safe here.

We can sleep at night and not worry about someone trying to kill you or hurt you,” she explained.

“In America, if you work hard, you can have everything you want. In Cambodia, you have to work hard and you have nothing except food to eat,” she added.

Shortly after reaching the United States, and while working for another of her sisters at a donut shop in Sacramento, the shop’s baker introduced still-single Kim, then 32, to a fellow baker, Jack Keo, who had grown up in the same region of northwestern Cambodia as had the newly emigrated Kim.

Jack Keo escaped the killing fields of Cambodia in 1979 by way of the same network of refugee camps on the Cambodia-Thailand border that Kim used in 1991.

In fact, Kim, her parents and three of her eight siblings had all tried to escape Cambodia in 1979, but were turned back at the Khao I Dang refugee center. During the long 40-mile hike back to their home city of Sisophon, her father was killed when he stepped on a land mine hidden in the dirt and jungle brush along the well-worn refugee trail.

Life back home was not much safer.

The Communist, hence Red or Rouge (French for red), Khmer political party ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and killed an estimated 1.5 million to 3.5 million of the country’s total population of 7.5 million.

Rallying to the motto, “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss,” the Khmer Rouge systematically moved every Cambodian from the heavily populated cities to collective farms or forced labor projects where the protesters, perceived slackers and intellectuals were routinely executed, starved or worked to death, Mrs. Keo said.

“I’ve seen the movie, ‘The Killing Fields,’ and the reality of the Khmer Rouge was much worse.

In my family, my grandma, my sister, my brother-in-law and my nephew all died. I think my sister and my grandma died when they got sick because there was nothing to eat, but my brother-in-law was murdered by the Khmer Rouge,” Mrs. Keo explained.

Before she escaped to the United States, Mrs. Keo was forced to work long hours, from before sunrise to well after sunset, bending over to plant and harvest rice in muddy paddies.

“We were lucky because we had a cow, pigs and chickens to eat. There was just enough food to feed the family,” she remembers.

The Khmer Rouge was removed from power in 1979 when the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and started 13 years of oppressive occupation that sometimes rivaled the Khmer Rouge in beastiality and violence.

“After the Vietnamese soldiers came, everyone was just surviving for themselves. That is why we finally ran again to Thailand,” Mrs. Keo said.

When she and Jack finally married in Sacramento in 1995, the Keos decided to start a Chinese fast food restaurant, The Wok Inn, at the Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding.

They moved the business to Anderson in 2003 when their lease expired at the mall “because there was not too many Chinese restaurants in Anderson at that time,” Mrs. Keo explained.

When they relocated the restaurant to Anderson, Jack also decided to open a donut shop, Jack’s Donuts, in the same space.

Today, Jack and Kim Keo run the two businesses in tandem, helped during the summer months and after-school hours by their two daughters, Gina, 12, and Jeanney, 8.

The entire family is looking forward to finally meeting Kim’s second-eldest sister, who was to arrive in San Francisco at 11 a.m. Monday, June 30, after a 24-hour flight.

“I am going down to see her on July 3 through 5. She might also come here,” Mrs. Keo said with obvious excitement shining in her expressive eyes.

“We’ve talked to each other on the phone about once a month, but she doesn’t have e-mail,” Mrs. Keo said of the long-distance relationship.

Mrs. Keo and the other six surviving siblings each donated slightly more than $1,000 to assist with the cost of airfare and other travel expenses required to bring Eng Chun Lim, her husband Li Jane, and their son, Li So Kun, to America.

“My sister wants to come to the United States to see her other son, who is living in Baytown, Texas, a suburb of Houston. She still has one more son that she wants to bring to America for a good education,” Mrs. Keo said.

On July 4, however, they will all be gathering in Sacramento to celebrating the 232nd birthday of the United States of America, and the newly-won independence of the last living family member who for so long remained behind in their ancestral Cambodia.

“We are a very proud family,” Mrs. Keo said. “Before my Mom and Dad died, we all lived together in the same house.”

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