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Amid the jungle gyms of Totland, May Chao looks at a 5-year-old Chinese-American girl playing with her long black hair and thinks, “Laos was not this easy.” 

“When I was her age,” said May, a quick-to-smile 31-year-old Mien-American woman, “ I was working in the fields. There were no schools in the hills of Laos.” Instead of Pokemon, pizza and weekends at Lake Anza, she remembers the farm, the village, the river – and the war.  

May is one of seven Mien women who care for Berkeley children at Totland, a small park teeming with kids, parents and international nannies.  

Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Russian, all can be heard above the screams of kids and the sound of tricycle tires over concrete. But while many nannies and caretakers come to the United States on au pair visas, May’s arrival came under radically different circumstances.  

“I came to the United States as a refugee,” says May. After living in two refugee camps along the Thai border, and at another in Bangkok, she boarded a plane for the Bay Area. At age 15, speaking no English, she landed in Richmond, where a large number of Mien had already immigrated. 

“I felt like I was safe, I didn’t have to run away again. Now this is going to be my home.” she said.  

But this wasn’t home yet. 

“The first morning I woke up, I thought, this is real real cold!” she says laughing. “And I had never seen so many white people.” 

The only Caucasians most Mien had seen before that were either Christian missionaries or CIA operatives. Living in the hills of Laos for centuries as farmers and hunters, the Mien were sucked into the Cold War by virtue of their geographical proximity to Vietnam. Though Laos had been declared a neutral country by the Geneva Accords in 1954, The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran directly through it, and the United States brought CIA field operatives to recruit and train the Mien and other hill tribes into guerilla units to fight the North Vietnamese. 

“The United States promised us that if we fight for them, and don’t win back our country, then they’d bring everyone here,” says May. Now, sitting on a bench with the two children crawling over her shoulders, May, calls herself “one of the lucky ones.” 

“Other people died – trying to cross the Mekong River, moving from Laos to Thailand because of the war. I don’t want to think about those times in my life, those were bad times. Terrible. So I don’t even ask people about it,” she says. Nor does she talk about it much. Nor is the history discussed openly even here in the United States. 

The Mien, along with the Hmong, Khmu, Thaidum and Lao, fled Laos in 1975 when the United States withdrew from the Vietnam War. Military arms and food supplies were suddenly cut, leaving the hilltribe guerillas locked in a civil war, but bereft of ammunition or supplies. Thousands fled to refugee camps on the Thai border rather than stay in a nation controlled by their communist adversaries. 

Today, there are over 350,000 Laotians in the United States, of which over 200,000 are from hill tribes. The largest populations of Mien and Khmu in the United States live in Richmond, an industrial city of hilltop tank farms 10 miles north of Berkeley. It’s a far cry from the rural, electricity-free existence in the verdant hills of Laos. 

May, who also speaks Thai, Mien, Hmong, and Lao, learned English in one year. “I was the only Mien girl at El Cerrito High, and it was scary. But my councilor was very kind and helped me.” she says. She graduated in 1987.  

Such facility with language helped her gain her U.S. citizenship a decade later. 

“Citizenship makes you feel like this is your country, that you won’t have to be a refugee anymore.” says May. “Until then, I was not from here, and I wasn’t from Laos either.” 

Part of the citizenship process was an oral exam, where INS officers ask applicants questions in English. 

“If you cannot speak English, you won’t pass,” May said, “and that’s why my husband is still not a citizen.” 

There are other reasons, however, for attaining citizenship. With much of the Laotian community dependent on welfare, their economic well being is tied to citizenship. In 1997, such economic aid was threatened by national welfare reforms, sending the entire community into a tailspin.  

“People were buying livestock grain, picking mushrooms, and fishing from the Bay - which is unsafe to eat from- just to feed their families” says Fam Linh Saechao, a community organizer at Asians and Pacific Islanders for Reproductive Health in Oakland. 

“Welfare was our life preserver,” say Saechao, “and when welfare reforms in 1997 threatened to take it away, many Mien were forced to get their American citizenship to keep their benefits.” 

May’s own family was on welfare. 

“We lived on AFDC and had a two bedroom home that eight of us lived in,” she says. 

And though her husband’s chances for gaining citizenship are low without fluency in English, a window has recently opened that may change all of that. Last May, Congress passed the Hmong Veteran Citizenship Act, which waives the language and civics requirements of the Naturalization Exam. There are two hitches, however – a deadline, and a cap on how many people can use the waiver. Only 45,000 Laotian veterans and family can qualify for the waiver, and they have until Sept. 27, 2001 to do so. 

Furthermore, says Sally Kinoshita, of the Asian Law Caucus, “getting the word out to those who can benefit is difficult. The Mien and other groups didn’t have a written language until a few decades ago. Many of the older generation can’t read or write. So you can’t just mail them some information. And there is no real media network in the Laotian community to pass information through either.” 

While some things have changed for May, others remain the same. Her earliest memories are raising her brothers and sisters. “My parents were working in the fields, growing corn, rice, peppers,” she says, “and I was the oldest, so I had to take care of my brothers and sisters.” 

“Now, I take care of these kids,” she says. 

May calls over to Claire, a radiant child who is “five and three quarters old,” the oldest of two sisters May looks after daily. 

“Where is your sister?” she asks Claire. “Don’t you want to keep an eye on her?” 

She leans over and picks Claire up, wiping sand from her shirt. 

“I was eight years old when my family left Laos,” she says, searching for Claire’s sister Bette with her eyes, who she finds playing nearby in the sand. “I had to carry my brother all the way to Thailand.” 

She lets go of Claire, who runs over to her sister and sits down, picking up a shovel and running it through the sand.  

Then she laughs. 

“If I were in Laos now, I’d be working in a field. I’d rather be in Berkeley.” 

For more information about the Hmong Veterans Citizenship Act, call the Laotian Organizing Project (510) 236-4616.