Chao Her , 44

“After the Vietnam War was said to be over, we continued to fight in the jungles of Laos. My father did not take us to Thailand like other families. Instead we became ‘cob fab’ (part of a rebel group that continued to live in hiding in the jungles of Laos). During that time as ‘cob fab,’ my mother died. As the youngest in the family, I became an orphan child—motherless. She suffered from severe chest pain. Without a doctor to diagnose the problem, I believe it was heartache that caused my mother’s death. I was probably eight or nine years old when my mom passed away.
My childhood was full of difficult times, hard work, and danger. I took on lots of responsibilities. I learned how to cook, sew, farm, harvest, and barter at a young age.

We had to be careful about the things that we did and the places we went. Being ‘cob fab” made us a target for being captured and killed.

As a young girl, I was shown by my Aunt how to use Hmong herbs for healing. Traditional medicine had been practiced in her family line for generations, but she had no one to pass this on to. So, she adopted me as a pupil to pass on her knowledge of every herb that she knew. She told me that it would be useful for me to know, so that when I had my own family in the future, I would not have to pay expensive tributes to ask someone else for help. The medicines were ancient secrets and costly.
I remember a time in Laos when my family and a few of the other families in our ‘cob fab’ group were fleeing from Vietnamese soldiers in the jungle. We were surrounded and trapped by an army of thirty soldiers.

They told us that they were going to execute all of us. They lined us up at the edge of a small river bank and began to cut the throats of the people in our group. There were only three people left before it was my brother’s turn to be killed. My father was not a Christian, but he began to chant phrases up to the sky, asking for ‘tswv ntuj’ (‘lord of the heavens’) to bring mercy and justice on us. He shouted for everyone to call. We all chanted; repeating it as the soldiers made us kneel and pushed our faces to the ground. I remember it was ten o’clock in the morning, but the sky suddenly turned pitch black. Hail the size of eggs began to fall from the sky. Lightning began flashing all around. Large gusts of wind blew through. We thought that we would surely die this time, if not by the hand of these soldiers then by the storm. I could feel charges of lightning around my feet and legs. My father told us to begin feeling our way out. He shouted for everyone to go to the right. I could hear frightening cries and yells all around.

By night fall we made our way up the mountain side. When we looked down on the area that we had left, it was still filled with darkness. I could not see anything during our escape, but I could hear the soldiers being struck by lightning. There was so much confusion, but the clarity is that the storm was a miracle. This moment has always been an unforgettable memory for me. It is also an experience that determined for me that there was a greater power in the world. I did not call it God at the time. I called it ‘tswv ntuj’ just as my father did, because I did not know about God. My family was practicing traditional Shamanism. Now that I am a Christian, I believe that it was God that we encountered and who saved us on that day.”

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Excerpt from Chao's story, written by Christa Xiong and photographed by Kou Vang.