A Few More Stories I Don’t Want to Forget

A sweet five year old in the apartments Htee Moo (not to be confused with the 20 year old Moo Tee), needed some serious dental work done. She had an initial dentist appointment where they told her she would need surgery. The poor girl and her mom had had zero dental hygiene education up until that point. Her teeth, or what was left of the enamel, were mainly brown and grey.

One day over the summer of 2018, I took Pwe Tee, the mom, and her daughter way out west to a pediatric dental surgeon. We left the apartment at 6:30am while it was still pretty dark out. Htee Moo was acting brave when we got there and we took her back to her hospital room, got her dressed into an adorable little hospital gown, and watched cartoons until the nurses came back. The facility was so beautiful and the doctors and nurses were beyond kind. It made me so proud that America has good, clean, reliable hospitals. The anesthesiologist along with an interpreter came to the room and explained the procedure that the doctor would do. They planned to extract 16 of her 20 teeth and put fake ones in their place (for lack of a better word). They expected the surgery to be a couple of hours.

Pwe Tee and I made our way back to the lobby to wait. From about 7:30 until 12:30, we just waited. Pwe Tee and I watched tv, looked through newspapers and ultimately slept in our chairs off and on for those five hours. Clearly the surgery ended up lasting much longer than expected and Htee Moo was apparently taking a little longer than normal to wake up from the anesthetics. Pwe Tee and I acknowledged how hungry and tired we both were. But I know we were both more eager to see Htee Moo.

The doctors let us come back and I’ll never forget how adorable she was, all groggy with a slightly bloody mouth and messy hair. She had done great and the surgery had gone really well. She was such a trooper. Never cried once. Just held tightly onto her teddy bear the nurses gave her. We got all of our follow up information and I got the sweetest hug from this cute little one. Pwe Tee kept saying in Karen that “Thara-mu (that means teacher in Karen and it’s what all of the adults who are much older than me at the complex call me) spent all day here just for us. We need to get home.” But I kept saying back, “duh bah naw me bah” which means “no problem at all!” We got home around 1:30pm and I remember thinking that night that the day had felt like three days in one, it felt so long.

Pwe Tee had me give Htee Moo her first dosage of pain medicine when we arrived home and she asked if I would return when her little was ready for her second dose, which I did that evening. Over the course of the next few days, I would periodically knock on their door to make sure Htee’s mouth was healing okay and to also make sure she wasn’t eating chips and candy and that she was actually brushing her teeth morning and night. Her mouth was looking really good and she seemed to be brushing too. I took her to her follow up appointment the next week and the doctors were pleased with the progress.

Htee Moo started Kindergarten in August and it’s been so cool to see her confidence grow with her new smile. She’s making lots of friends and starting to learn English now too. I love this family so much and am so privileged to spend these kinds of intimate moments with families.

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Robbie started teaching about four teenage boys in our complex how to drive over the summer. They’d go to a big parking lot either at a park or the high school or Baxter Arena and take turns letting the boys try to drive. They love it and one ended up taking his permit test and passing, which we were so thankful for. I’ve gone with them a few times and let a couple of them drive me in my car and to be honest, they’re not great drivers. So funny! But I guess what 15 year old is great at driving at first? Robbie is brave and has let them drive on the road a couple of times with him in it and they are learning quickly. Ler Htee Moo’s dad, Ler Htoo (Yes, they all have such similar names in this family), always asks us if we are taking his son driving that day because he doesn’t know how to drive himself, and is eager for his son to be the first in the family to ever drive a car and get a license. One day he didn’t know where Ler Htee Moo was. He was a little worried and found me and asked if I knew. I had Chat Htoo and Hser Gay Moo with me so I had them tell him I was so sorry and that his son was with my husband practicing driving. Apparently his response was, “Oh! Yeah, as long as he is with Chase or Rob, I don’t care what he’s doing. I know he’s safe.” And I felt so honored. Robbie and I had worked so hard for so many months to earn these people’s trust and to know we had it was amazing.

So Ler Htoo went and bought a car for their family. It is a beat up, grey-ish gold 1998 Honda Accord. Obviously it was their first car purchase ever and he was eager to get his son practicing driving in this car right away. He knew it needed insurance, so he asked for my help with that. In August I went over to their apartment and sat on their living room floor with Ler Htoo, Moo Paw and Moo Tee, his daughters, and his wife, Pwe Tee. I probably sat on the phone with All State, American Family Insurance, Geico and then Progressive for a combined hour and a half. It was so complicated to find anyone who was willing to insure them with no driving history and no person in the household with an actual license and not just a learner’s permit (Moo Paw also has her permit along with Ler Htee Moo).

Progressive was the only one who would offer any kind of deal and her agreement was that they would pay $220 every month to be insured. I told her their financial situation and that they only spent $900 total on the car in the first place and asked if there was any way they could reduce that cost. No and no. I wrote down her information and I proceeded to recommend to the family that they hold off on getting insurance for now, practice driving in Robbie and my cars and sadly let the car just sit in the parking lot until one of them got a license. Moo Paw thought that was a good idea but Ler Htoo, her father, was not as convinced. He had just bought a car and he planned to insure it like a responsible American would. I really really respected that but had my concerns about their financial situation with 12 of them living in their apartment and his factory work as their only source of income. But if he was sure, I was willing to take Moo Paw to see an agent in person the next day.

Day Mu came with Moo Paw and me and we drove over to see a Progressive agent. She was great and told us she would get the price down to $100 a month. God, as usual, was looking out for us. This wasn’t a small bit off of the price we had anticipated. This cut the price in half and then some. Praise God. Moo Paw was thrilled and couldn’t stop thanking the woman.

I took Moo Paw the very next day to the DMV so we could see about getting her some license plates. She asked me the day prior how much it would cost. It’s been so long since I had done this for myself that I couldn’t remember, but I told her maybe $150. So she brought with her the next day $200 in cash and I felt that it was more than sufficient. We waited in line and got up to the counter. After he asked us some questions, left the desk once to get something, and typed some things into his computer, he said, “Okay! Your total is 241 dollars.” What??? It was so expensive and much more than what Moo Paw had with her. Unfortunately his desk had a sign that read, “Cash only. No cards accepted.” Moo Paw looked so worried and knew we had just wasted all the time in line just to have to leave and come back another day.

As I began to dig into my purse, I said, “Hold on. I think I have a little bit of cash in my wallet.” Praying I had more than forty-one dollars, I start counting out the cash I had on me. Of course it was a disarray of fives and ones and maybe one ten. Slowly, I counted out exactly $41. I don’t know how to explain this. It wasn’t like I had 50 dollars or even 44. I had exactly 41. The exact dollar amount we needed on top of the 200 in cash that Moo Paw already had. It may seem small when you write it down, but it felt like a miracle in the moment. After a long week of every day trying to figure something out for this new car–worrying about the insurance, all the time we had spent on hold and trying to convince these companies to insure them, going to the agent’s office and spending two hours there also and then now to be here. God was with us. I’m constantly blown away by how present God is. There’s this enormous world out there with billions of other people, but God still cares about the one. He still finds time to see us, know us, and take care of us.

That afternoon Ler Htee Moo came home from school and our other high school buddy Thin Mwae helped the two us get their new license plates on with his handy-dandy tool kit. It felt so good to have it all complete and to see the car with plates on it, an apartment parking sticker, and well-insured. Praise God.

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In April the kids had a Friday off school and Robbie was going to spend the night in Lincoln that Thursday evening with a friend so they could both wake up the next day and take their professional engineering exams there. Chat Htoo, Eh You Paw, and Hser Gay Moo had been begging me for months to have a sleepover. They had never had one in their lives. I surprised them that week by inviting them to spend the night together with me on that Thursday after school when Robbie wouldn’t be home overnight anyway. Oh if you could only picture their elatedness. They were jumping up and down, screaming, hugging me, thanking me. You would have thought I just told them we were going to Hawaii or something. They ran to ask their moms permission and their parents had no qualms about it.

That evening, Brett and Jeff brought over their nice big air mattress with a convenient automatic pump for us and set it up to fill my entire living room. We got out blankets and the girls brought pillows and popcorn and we talked and shared stories sitting cross-legged on the air mattress for a couple hours. They were adorable, dressed in their pajamas and telling funny stories from Thailand and then about when we all first met in the United States two years before. As it got dark outside, they were set on watching a scary movie (mind you, this is long before the tradition of watching scary movies with the older boys started over the summer)–after all, they said, “Don’t all girls watch scary movies together at slumber parties??” So cute. So we watched Signs, that alien movie with Mel Gibson. It’s a family friendly one that I knew wouldn’t be likely to cause nightmares. The girls kept saying they weren’t scared but kept moving around on the air mattress to ensure that their toes weren’t peeking out of the blanket at all and wanting to be pushed up right against me so I could protect them.

I told them one of them could sleep with me in my bed and the other two could stay in the living room on the air mattress. But, they were arguing over who would get to sleep with me. So as you might imagine, I totally caved and let them all cram into my queen size bed. It was definitely a little tight with four of us, but they absolutely loved it. Chat Htoo and Hser Gay Moo were adamant about sleeping on either side of me, so it’s good that Eh You Paw is the more independent one anyway, so she had no problem with that. Adorably, the girls on either side of me grabbed my hands as they fell asleep with their heads on my chest. They told me over and over how much fun they were having and how much they loved me. I truly cannot imagine what it must be like to have your own children because I cannot imagine loving a child more than these girls. They’re my whole world.

The night went well and shockingly we all slept through the night with few issues. Chat Htoo woke up first but had no problem cuddling up next to me and staying in bed while the rest of us continued to sleep. She’s definitely the girl who is the most like me. The most sensitive, the most sentimental. Once we were all awake, the girls were giddy and acting crazy and having so much fun. They didn’t want to go home, so they all made their own scrambled eggs at my stove and then we watched another movie on the air mattress in the living room. Before long it was nearly lunchtime and I needed to shower.

The girls were already begging for another sleepover as soon as possible. It’s amazing how they remember and hold onto things. At the time I told them we could do another one over Christmas break in December (I don’t know why I chose that time. I just said it more to get them to stop asking so much). Funny enough, it’s almost October as I type this and even just this morning when I took Chat Htoo to the dentist, she said, “I can’t wait for December!” and I asked, “Oh really? Because of Christmas or why?” and she said, “SLEEPOVER!” I laughed so hard. I love these girls.

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Fourth of July at the apartments was so much fun. Robbie and I spent the whole weekend in Colorado with Robbie’s family on vacation but we intentionally left early because we knew we didn’t want to miss this fun holiday with our people. The kids were eagerly awaiting our arrival when we got home from being gone for days. They were so pumped to see us and admittedly we were so pumped to see them too. A bunch of us took a walk in the heat of the day down into Benson three quarters of a mile away to the big nice gas station called Bucky’s. The employees must have been in good holiday spirits because they told us our ice cream cones were free when we stepped up to the register to pay. We were all pumped. We sat outside at their picnic table and ate our ice creams (well they ate their ice cream while I drank a big ice cold green tea since I can’t eat ice cream. Stupid lactose intolerance). It felt so good to all be together again (even if we only hadn’t seen each other for four days).

We got back to the apartments and all the youth were outside with us testing out colorful smoke bombs and the flying parachute man firework. We were excited for it to get dark. As the sun started to set, Brett and Jeff (and our girlfriend Renee who moved to Texas at the beginning of the year and happened to be visiting that day) came over bearing gifts of more fireworks and ice cream. This 2018 4th of July was most memorable because as 25 of us all stood outside (youth of all ages along with their parents) watching Robbie and Jeff help the little kids take turns lighting fireworks in the parking lot facing Northwest Radial Highway, Ler Htoo (again to remind you this is Ler Htee Moo and Moo Paw’s dad) was acting crazy and was distractedly walking over fireworks that were going off. Kids were screaming “Ler Htoo!! Be careful!” and “Stop!” and everything else they could in Karen to make the guy stop scaring them half to death that he was going to get hurt. To be honest, he had probably had too much to drink (something that is looked down upon in their culture, as almost none of them drink, ever).

But you also just have to understand Ler Htoo. He’s just crazy and hilarious and loves to tease and get people laughing. His English is terrible but he’s always making us laugh by attempting to say English words or learn new ones. He knows it’s funny and he loves making fun of himself. Which knowing Ler Htee Moo and Moo Paw, his children, it all makes sense. Maybe they were shy when we first met them but now we spend so much time with them and know they are definitely Ler Htoo’s children. They’re just as crazy, wild, and energetic as their father. Their sense of humor is the same and Robbie got all the boys roaring one day when he commented on Ler Htee Moo’s “weirdness” saying, “Yep, he’s definitely got a little Ler Htoo in him” because everyone knows Ler Htoo is a little crazy (in the best way). I love that about him and I just love him so much in general because he’s one of about only 3 dads in the whole complex that even acknowledge my existence. He really cares for Robbie and me and is always asking us to visit his home any day at any time just because he’d be honored to have our company. He will hold Robbie’s arm and walk with him or sit on the curb with him in the courtyard and speak to Robbie in Karen as if he understands (even though Robbie’s equally as horrible with Karen as he is English), but it’s just funny and wonderful. We love him and he’s a perfect example of how love and relationship overcomes cultural and language barriers. The mutual respect is there and thriving and he has been so thankful for the ways we have helped his family. I just hope he knows how much value he and his family has added to our lives.

So anyway, the rest of fourth of July was awesome and everyone went crazy for the fireworks. The teenagers were setting off the fireworks Robbie and I had taken them to buy a week before and everyone was oo-ing and aww-ing. It was the strangest Fourth though because in a matter of seconds, the evening went from being hot and humid and still to chilly and misty with ridiculously strong winds that were blowing debris in people’s eyes. As the rains started coming in, 15 of us gathered in the underpass of the apartment building and lit all our sparklers. It felt magical. What a beautiful day it had been. Robbie and I were so happy to be home celebrating our freedom with the people who appreciate freedom the most. As the rain started to pour, many ran to our apartment to eat ice cream in our living room and finish the night stong. The perfect Fourth of July.

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On September 20, 2018, the city of Omaha shut down a primarily Karen and Karenni refugee apartment complex due to their slumlord (a different landlord than our own) keeping the apartments in awful living conditions. The story for that is for another time, but due to the shut down, 500 refugees became displaced that day. Most moved into a community center where people would help them find a new place to live soon. But other went to live with family or friends in the area. My upstairs neighbor, Hser Boe Paw’s sister had been living at those apartments that were shut down with her husband and children so they all moved in upstairs at our apartment for the time being.

That Saturday the 22nd, I was leaving for a baby shower when Hser Boe Paw knocked on my door. “Chase! COME!” Was all she said. So I put down my breakfast and went upstairs. There were the 11 people that were now all living in her two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. And then I followed her around the corner until I saw the toilet, as she pointed at it emphatically. “OH NO!” I said worriedly while I watched her husband fill up buckets of brown water pouring over the sides of the toilet. It wouldn’t stop. Thin Win filled the bucket, ran it over to their bedroom window and flung the nasty water outside and then repeated the process over and over again. I noticed the bathtub drain also had brown water coming up out of the drain and filling the tub. It wouldn’t stop and it smelled so bad.

This was Saturday and I knew calling our landlord’s office number would do me no good on a Saturday. They don’t take calls on weekends when I’ve tried in the past and even if they did, they would probably tell me something like, “We’ll try to get someone out there on Monday.” But this was an emergency even if only one person was living in the home, much less eleven. So I knew I had to call Gyung. Of course he answered on his day off and had no problem rushing to the apartments to try to fix the plumbing.

So the story should have ended there, as I left for the baby shower and Gyung came while I was gone and fixed it. But unfortunately hours later when I was back at the apartment in the afternoon, Hser Boe Paw and her sister told me the issue  had been fixed earlier in the day but that it was happening again. I had to call Gyung again and he told me he would call a real plumber and send him out there as soon as possible. Praise God for Gyung.

Robbie and I went to my sister’s house for a bonfire that evening around 7:30 and I gave my house key to Hser Boe Paw so their family could go use our toilet any time they wanted since they couldn’t use their own. We returned to the apartment around midnight. Robbie collapsed on the couch and I went to use the toilet before getting in bed that night. As I sat there, I was slow to recognize that something was dripping on me. My brain tried to catch up. What was dripping on my legs and shoulders and head? I looked up and much to my alarm, it was brown water dripping from our ceiling onto my face. “ROOOOBBIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!” I yelled as I got up and ran out of the bathroom as quickly as I could get my pants up. Robbie had fallen asleep and he had no idea what was going on as he groggily got up off the couch. “Robbie!! Hser Boe Paw’s toilet water is leaking through to our ceiling and into our bathroom!!” We weren’t sure what to do. At this point it was past midnight and we didn’t want to go upstairs and wake up her family. I didn’t have a choice to shower because the nasty water was coming down in the shower too. I was so grossed out, and tried to soap the parts of my body that got exposed to it using the kitchen sink water. We moved everything out of the bathroom that might be exposed and that wasn’t already safe inside cabinets.

We tried to sleep that night but to be honest, I had a really hard time falling asleep thinking about what our bathroom may look like or smell like in the morning. We woke up for church and immediately checked the bathroom. The leaking and dripping appeared to have stopped at some point in the night, thank goodness. But we had light brown streaks lining the walls ceiling to almost floor, the floor had a disgusting film on it, and the whole room reeked like a port-o-potty. I was so grossed out and decided to wait to use the bathroom until we got to church that day.

After church was over, we didn’t make lunch for the kids like normal. Instead we drove straight to Walmart for a jug of bleach and some heavy duty cleaning gloves. It was time to bleach the whole bathroom floor to ceiling. Robbie was kind enough to do the honors. Our bathroom smelled sterile for days. I called Dave’s office on Sunday asking someone to check on the plumbing one more time and to maybe do something about the ceiling—considering now there are feces soaked into the surface of it (that has to be some kind of health risk/violation if not fixed?). There was no answer, as unfortunately expected on the weekend, but I left a lengthy voicemail explaining the issue.

On Wednesday two maintenance men showed up to my apartment while I was teaching. I was thrilled someone even came that fast. I relayed the issue and told them I knew the bathroom appeared very clean right now because we had bleached it a few days ago, but that they may want to do something about the ceiling/Hser Boe Paw’s floor since it was contaminated with sewage water. They verbatim said, “I think it is fine now” and left the apartment.

So I tell this story mostly just to explain some of the conditions we live in and to try to paint the picture of how slow things are to be fixed here and how many problems are overlooked or ignored. I try not to think about the idea of sewage water in our ceiling molding and us breathing that in. I have to imagine that this cannot possibly be the first one of these issues, and how maybe in many other apartments, they are also breathing in germs, potential mold, and fumes from past or present sewage leaks. It really is disgusting and I do feel powerless to change it.

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Things I don’t want to forget:

All the times I dyed different young moms’ hair, whether in someone’s living room or outside in the courtyard. People love to watch and just hang out together around us.

Getting to celebrate the kids’ birthdays for the first time in their lives has been impactful to me. I have always personally felt like birthdays were so wonderful. Treating them to special meals, ice cream or outings away from the apartment. In Karen culture birthdays are not acknowledged or celebrated, neither are anniversaries. So even just acknowledging that it was Chat Htoo’s birthday in September was incredibly special to her, but even more so because we took her and the other girls out to see Christopher Robin at the theaters and then they rode the Ferris wheel at Scheel’s and then we had ice cream and a bonfire in the evening with all the boys and Brett and Jeff too. She turned twelve this year and she couldn’t stop telling us how special the day was, how much fun she was having, and maybe thanked us a thousand times throughout the day for making her birthday worth celebrating. I told her again and again that she was so worth celebrating and that we were so happy she was born. I also got to celebrate Day Mu’s 23rd birthday with her and took her to a coffee shop for the very first time. She tried some chai tea and I think she liked it but she ultimately was so excited to have her birthday acknowledged too. We have celebrated Hser Gay Moo, Eh You Paw, Chat Htoo, Ler Htee Moo and Day Mu’s birthdays. I think we will have to have a big celebration in January because most people in our complex, youth included, have “January 1st” as their birthdays because they didn’t know their real birthdays when they arrived and so the government assigned them all the first day of the year. It is sort of sad but I think it’s only sad because I’m American and I’m culturally affected by how in America most everyone celebrates birthdays. They aren’t that sad about it but many of them have expressed wishing they knew their real birthdays.

Getting to go to Chit They Oo’s high school graduation and even attending Nay Lay Htoo and Eh You Paw’s 6th grade graduations in May 2018. They had each asked me to be there and were so honored to see me cheering them on in the audience. Eh You Paw cried because she would miss Rose Hill Elementary so much. But getting to watch them enter 6th grade at Monroe Middle and just as expected, they are both so capable and doing so well, and it has been so great to see.

All the days moms have brought their children to my apartment just to simply play with their kids on my rug. They feel safe here and I feel safe in their homes too. Even one mom came to my apartment just to cry on my couch when she was hurt by someone else’s words. She found refuge in my apartment and I sat and rubbed her back and gave her tissues. I understood what the conflict was with the little Karen I know, but I called my neighbor over who could talk with her in Karen to console her better with words. I feel so honored to share these moments with these women, all the highs and all the lows.

The nights Robbie and I have come home from weekend trips and we can hardly make it in the door before a neighbor kid has run out of their house in the dark of the night without asking their mom, and has knocked on the door in a hurry in order to squeeze us, tell us they missed us and give us cards telling us how much they love us.