My Name Is Vo
As soon as I got home my mother asked “what did you bring back.” quickly I replied “we need to leave the Viet Cong. They are close and they are going to take our land and force my brothers to fight for them.” shocked my mother walks over to the cracked floorboard and picks it up. Inside was money she had been saving. She grabbed all of it and handed it to me and said “ Take it, you need to leave with your daughter and go to San Francisco.” My mother walked to her dresser and opened the top drawer and pulled out a business card. She told me when I get to San Francisco to go to this address and live with your cousins.
The Viet Cong have been fighting for over 9 years. They believe in a communist government. The United States joined the war to prove that democracy and a free market are the right ideals. My daughter Kim Chi and I have been walking for 3 days to get to the ports. We are only halfway there. There's no stopping for any unnecessary reasons. If we miss the boat to America we will have to wait for the next boats that could take weeks. We don't have weeks. We’ve been sleeping outside for the last few days and the mosquitoes have been biting us so badly that our skin became as bumpy as fish scales. I barely slept that night. When I woke up. I could smell a strange chemical smell coming from the south. I knew immediately that something was wrong. I woke Kim Chi up and I carried her for a few kilometers on my back. Suddenly I hear people yelling behind me. I turn around to see what was happening and it's just a family trying to get my attention. They are a few meters behind. I wait for a few minutes for them to catch up to me. It's a small family of 3 its two patents and their 4-year-old son. “Hi how are you, where are you heading,” I asked in a polite voice. “We are heading to the docks to go to America.” the man replied. They are trying to leave just like me. I ask them “why is the sky red and why does it smell like chemicals?” They explained that the American army is dropping chemicals on to the forest to destroy the trees. He further explains that we need to hurry to the ports before something bad happens to us. We decided to stick together until we get to the ports so that we remain safe. We didn’t sleep because we needed to make it to the ports as soon as possible.
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