From Cambodia to Columbia

By Nettra Pan


Through the phone, the voice sounded cracked and distorted, heavy with genuine concern, aged by more than enough traumatizing experiences for any one lifetime. Thinking of the crime, violence, and general danger present at the time in a war-riddled nation, my grandmother wasted no time making herself clear regarding an offer my father had received. She told him, “I want my granddaughter to still have a father.”

This was my grandmother’s reaction to my dad’s announcement that he would be accepting a position in Cambodia’s United Nations Transitional Authority in 1992. At a time when refugees were still fleeing from the postwar conflict in Southeast Asia, seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness anywhere but home, my father was among those headed in the opposite direction—to help, toward home (if you could even call it “home,” seeing as he had not been there in 20 years). To my grandmother, I imagine that my father’s acceptance of this job encompassed many negative doubts and fears. Accepting meant to abandon his stable post at Unocal, an oil company now absorbed by the corporate giant Chevron. It meant leaving Southern California, the place where most of the surviving members on my father’s side had sought refuge from the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975-1979.

For my mother, my father’s choice didn’t translate easily either. She had just recently moved to the United States from France, where her side of the family found protection from the war. For her, it was only after countless garage sales, selling our car and our house, and transits in France, Switzerland, and Thailand, that she and I, a wide-eyed toddler at the time, finally reunited with my father in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh.

Here in New York, nearing the end of my first year at Columbia, I’ve been flattered to see a rise in the number of people curious about my past, especially given the great diversity on our campus. Like high school students will be asking themselves this month, I’ve had my share of the typical “Why Columbia?” question. True, a lot of students choose their colleges because of the distance between their school and home. New York City is the ultimate destination for students who may be habituated to a small town—students thirsty for more everything, especially more freedom. But my grandmother had a point when she spoke to my dad 30 years earlier. Isn’t moving halfway around the world a bit much?

The international student would know: College abroad means trading in real phone calls for Skype and IM at odd hours of the night. For some, this difference means sacrificing frequent visits from home for frequent packages from Lerner. It involves exchanging long transit hours at airports for even longer winters away from home. For my parents, their only child’s choice of college probably led to a more severe case of Empty Nest Syndrome and accentuated their characteristics as protective, demanding parents. (Yes, Cambodians fit the Asian stereotype as well.) My father seemed most convinced that the crime, violence, and general danger of a big city automatically dropped Columbia from the list from which I was choosing. He also preferred Stanford and Berkeley for the fact that I would be closer to family. Ironic, no?

Maybe not. As the sun, squirrels, and acceptance letters come out again, existential questions begin to resurface in the classic Columbia fashion as I ask myself how I got here. I remember the plane ride, the excitement, how new and not quite familiar everything felt at first but how natural and comforting everything ended up being. Columbia helped, of course, by arranging a dinner for international students on our first night at school. Six months later, the friends I made there are still some of my closest friends, hailing from Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. These friends helped as well. I was lucky enough, as an international student, to be adopted by an American family for a weekend and get a chance to indulge in the American traditions of Thanksgiving and Christmas, or Hanukkah.

Looking back, perhaps the parallel between my father’s move to Cambodia and mine to New York is not that unexpected. It’s likely that the same thing that lured my father to Cambodia was exactly what I found in the City that Never Sleeps; a dynamic life, internationalism, and the ability to give back to our land of origin, still in dire need of assistance. I guess you could say the United Nations headquarters located here was also factor in my decision. But most importantly, another similarity is how well our seemingly arbitrary choices worked out. Raising me in the international environment of a developing country provided me with an interesting perspective. I feel lucky to have gotten the best of all three worlds, compared to American or French cousins whose parents did not return to Cambodia. Thinking of how strongly these three countries influence me now, I don’t know how I ever imagined myself elsewhere else. Riding the subway downtown, walking across campus, or even just sitting in John Jay, I realize New York is the one place where nearly everyone here is also from somewhere else. But the fact I cherish most is this: It feels like home.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.