When I was young!

I started my life in a loving family in a province in Cambodia. I had two loving parents and 3 older siblings. Every day my parents would play the Khmer traditional songs and music. My mother was a respectful woman, she always helped people who did not have enough food and clothes. She gave them water from our well, which was the only one that we had in my district. Because of that, we had a good relationship with our neighbors and my whole family was known to all of that area. My family had enough money to live and we would always eat meat and not many vegetables, which wasn’t good for us.

The house I lived in with my parents. No one has lived there for 10 years.

A life without parents

One day, my life changed when my parents were killed in a road accident. After I recovered from my own injuries in the same accident, my siblings and I were sent to live with my grandparents. Even though we lived with our grandparents, my siblings and I had to find jobs to make a living. Finally, we found out that we could sell sugar palm juice so that we could have money to buy food. My sister and I were too small to helped my brothers, so they decided one of them had to stay at home and get the sugar palm ready while the other went with me and my sister to help him with the ice.

Me with my older sister and one of my brothers selling sugar palm juice.

However, when i was 7 my grandparents decided to send us to live in a children’s home near where they lived so that we could go to school. I felt like I was having to restart my life again - new place, new people. But as time went by, I started to feel like I belonged there.

Me and one of my brothers at my Aunt's wedding.