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Horror at sea |
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Written by Frank Peebles
Citizen staff
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Sunday, 05 July 2009 |
Vietnamese boat people survived murder, rape and robbery in a desperate attempt to flee Communism
Last in a two-part series
Kuku Island had water but no episode of “Lost” was so terrifying as Buoi Kore's unexpected new home in the South China Sea.
The young Vietnamese man was on a beleagured ship that once contained 250 people when it evaded the borders of Vietnam headed for some unknown freedom, but 50 had died or been murdered on the high seas in the first nine days of their voyage. Twice they had been overrun by Thai pirates with robbery, rape, killing and torture the ransom they had to pay.
Now a resident of Prince George, Kore told The Citizen during a Canada Day conversation that escape to Kuku might have been worse than facing the perils of the ocean but they had little choice. Theirs was part of the exodus that got an estimated million refugees free of the suddenly communist Vietnam after the war there ended, and untold more who perished in the attempts of the so-called “boat people.”
Kuku Island provided water and some fragile shelter, but there was no food. The traumatized, weakened group had to scrabble for everything they ate. Kore said they lived that way for weeks on end, never knowing if they would ever know any other home but this.
“I never thought I'd leave that island alive,” he said.
He was one of the young, strong ones on the island. He and some others with more able bodies tried to help the others with hunting food, scraping shelters together and so on, but he said they were so desperate they took to eating things like bug larva.
“At that point you are so hungry you'd eat anything,” he said. “If a grasshopper went by I'd grab it and eat it before anyone else could get it.”
Many died and many more were sick. He estimated about 100 more of their original 250 perished on Kuku Island and “I was skin and bone waiting to die myself.”
He remembers the sound of the helicopter, the whopping of the rotors in the Indonesian air. It was low and purposeful. It was a scout party from the International Red Cross and it was looking for the hundreds of thousands of boat people stranded all over the region. They spotted Kore's dying community on the scanty beach of Kuku Island.
A boat came for them and took them to Tanjun Pinang, Indonesia and the crowded Galang Refugee Camp. He wore the same button-down shirt and pair of white shorts, and mismatching shoes he scavenged from the dead on Kuku Island, for five months.
During that time, international delegations would come to the camp. The refugees could apply to go live in one of the countries touring through. One 13-country delegation came containing a representative for Canada and for the United States. Kore applied to these two countries, knowing virtually nothing about either of them, and got accepted by both. He was struggling to decide which he should choose, a choice he knew would have massive ramifications on the rest of his life.
“One of the delegates asked if I would have my picture taken with her, in my ragged clothes and horrible looks,” said Kore. “She was from Canada. I thought, if she wanted to have her picture taken with the likes of me, then Canada must be friendly. I chose Canada. I have never regretted it.”
As soon as he picked Canada, life moved a lot faster for Kore. He was whisked to Singapore by plane, still wearing his refugee clothes and mismatching shoes. He was given a personal allowance of $3 per day and he spent that on a new pair of shoes, a cheap set of clothes and a Chinese-English dictionary.
Today that dictionary is still in Kore's home. It is dog-eared with faded pages. The weathered cloth page marker was tucked onto page 367, the one containing all the words between “invade” and “investigate”.
Also tucked in the book was a long forgotten business card for Maria Cordero, the assistant co-ordinator for the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. In Prince George. Kore had no idea why but the Canadian government picked this city for his final destination. He arrived from the refugee camp with 100 others, first to Montreal where they were dispersed across the country, then he and five others were directed to Prince George.
On the plane ride over, the in-flight meal gave him flashbacks to his hungered days on the journey. He still remembers every morsel.
“When I went to the grocery store in Prince George for the first time, it was the Safeway that used to be where Sport Mart is now, I started to cry, I had never seen so many choices.”
He still had his original refugee camp bag with his refugee clothes, as he started out on his new cultural mission to learn English, get a job, get an education and make his life in Canada. That small gym bag is still stuffed with those items now, in his spacious home in a new subdivision in the Heritage neighbourhood.
“Do you want to see?,” he asked. The words were hardly out of his mouth when his two remaining daughters at home, 10-year-old Zoe and and 14-year-old Aisha (a third daughter, Mai Ma, 27, they adopted years ago from China and is now in third-year nursing studies at UNBC), came running.
“Are you serious?,” said Zoe.
“I can't wait to see this,” said Aisha.
Neither had ever been shown the items from their father's past, in spite of the high-scoring Heritage Fair project Zoe did this year entitled “My Father Escaped Vietnam.” Once they had left the room, Kore could not hold back the tears.
“There are so many memories, so many things that happened . . . I don't ever want my daughters to have to think about them,” he said.
Kore chose to go back to medicine as a profession, becoming a nurse and working at Prince George Regional Hospital ever since. For the past 12 years he has been in the ICU ward.
His wife Kim is also a refugee from Vietnam. She is the niece of one of the original six boat people who arrived in Prince George with Kore.
He has been back to Vietnam twice since his 1970s exodus out. When the communist regime relaxed its stance on the escapees, in 1992, he went back to reconnect with his family. His mother nad father both passed away soon after he fled, but his siblings were still there.
“I kept seeing the same faces everywhere I went on that trip, and I learned later it was the secret police, watching me and my family,” he said.
His second visit was in 2001 “and when I got back to Canada, I got off the plane and kissed the ground of Canada,” he said.
This is his home now, and he is proud of it. His children get good marks, they do well in their extracurricular activities, and it has been the land of opportunity that 35 million current Canadians were born with. Don't ever ignore, he said, that billions of others don't have this lifestyle and would risk their lives to try to get it. He almost lost his several times on his own path to being Canadian.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 July 2009 )
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