In 1978, Peter Sareth Pen searched a refugee camp for seven months before finding his family and starting an international journey that brought him to Modesto. This week, Pen will move back to one place he thought he could never return: Cambodia. He hopes to work at the U.S. Embassy.
"It would be my dream job," Pen said, though he also would consider teaching university English or social science, or even volunteering for aid organizations.
"My intent is to serve, and I want to work with people in the rural areas, especially those who cannot afford to send children to college," Pen said.
Of 11 million people in Cambodia, 80 percent are poor -- "and by that I mean they do not have enough food to eat and do not have enough money to send their children to elementary school," said Pen, 51.
He estimates that 4,000 Cambodians live in Modesto, including him, his wife, oldest son, father, three sisters, and his only brother to survive the Khmer Rouge.
The Khmer Rouge regime, which left at least 1million dead, and the subsequent Vietnamese invasion set off a mass exodus from Cambodia in the late 1970s.
Wednesday was Pen's last day as a social worker for Stanislaus County's Community Services Agency, where he went to work in 1988 during a surge in Cambodian immigrants.
He also later served on the Modesto Police Department's Asian Advisory Committee, where he proved "a great community leader," Assistant Police Chief Mike Harden said.
"He allowed us to get into the Asian community where there is a lot of distrust of law enforcement based on experiences in other countries, like Cambodia, Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia," Harden said. "Sareth brought mutual understanding to the committee and brought the perspective of the Asian community to law enforcement. He's been terrific."
Pen became a U.S. citizen, campaigned for the Republican Party, served on Modesto's Human Relations Commission and founded Modesto's Cambodian Cultural Learning Center.
"I'm going to miss him when he goes," said Stanislaus County Supervisor Jim DeMartini, a fellow member of the county GOP. "I admire the guy. Here, we are arguing about trivial things, like how Social Security is running into trouble. And there, these people have had their property taken away. Politics there is pretty serious business. People get killed. It just makes you feel very fortunate."
Few comforts of U.S. home
Phnom Penh offers few of Modesto's comforts, but Pen said he wants to blend into society.
"Living in America for 25 years, everything I have experienced is easy and good to go: everything from schooling to working to anything I experience, my life is easy," Pen said. "In Cambodia, I'll have to be patient."
When he arrives next week with his wife and oldest son, 27, they will start looking for a home with electricity. Pen said most likely, it will have no insulation or air conditioning and might have a wood-burning stove. He doesn't know what kind of car he will drive.
"It won't be a Jeep Cherokee," Pen said.
In February, he sold his 2,500-square-foot house in Modesto. He tossed out some belongings and gave away most of the rest.
He'll return to a place he described as changing forever in 1970, the year the Khmer Rouge took over the government.
Pen was 18. The grandson of the village mayor, Pen set his sights on studying in the United States to become a teacher.
Instead, to defend his country, he joined the Republic of Cambodia Army. When the Khmer Rouge declared victory in 1975, the regime imprisoned Pen in a jungle compound for two months before he escaped to his village, Thmarkaul, near the border with Thailand.
It took until August 1978 for Pen to make it to a refugee camp at the Thai border, where he was reunited with his parents, wife and nine-month-old son. The
Khmer Rouge killed his grandfather and two of three brothers.
"Probably one day, I'll go back to my hometown, but I don't plan to live there," Pen said. "I don't see the people I used to know. I don't see the place I used to live -- it's not there anymore. The school I used to go to isn't there."
In 1980, Pen, his wife and son reached the Philippines, and then, with help from a Catholic group, immigrated to the United States. Five years later, they moved to Modesto to join a growing Cambodian community.
Pen, struggling to learn English, enrolled in a course for non-native speakers at Modesto Junior College and earned his associate's degree in 1988.
Pen landed a job the same year with the Community Services Agency. He later earned a bachelor's degree in multicultural social work and master's degrees in cultural anthropology, geography and social work from California State University, Stanislaus.
Boosted cultural awareness
As more Cambodians moved to Modesto, Pen worked to bring awareness about their culture to the community at large.
He founded Modesto's Cambodian Cultural Learning Center in 1999. The group led to Pen's weekly television broadcast, a wrap-up of Cambodian news.
Pen still plans to speak to Cambodians in Modesto via mailed videotapes. It will be scaled back from weekly to monthly.
"American democracy is freedom. This is heaven to me," Pen said. "I like my life here. . But then I saw how poor people are, how the government isn't stable. How they still need help. People have nowhere to go. I hope I can go and do something to help them."
Even now, he said, the prospect of reform is bleak.
Pen came in third out of eight candidates to represent the northwestern province of Battambang in 1998 parliamentary elections. He said he would run again in 2008, but has since iced that plan until the country abandons its current party system.
He belongs to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, whose leader is in exile. The former communist Cambodian People's Party, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, holds the majority of seats in parliament and maintains a tight grip on power.
He is set to take the State Department's Foreign Service exam April 23, a precursor to an embassy position.
"If I don't pass, I'll try to apply for some school jobs, and if I don't get a job, I'll volunteer," Pen said, and live on his monthly pension from the Community Services Agency, about $1,500.
In a country where a top government official makes between $250 and $300 a month, Pen's pension is more than enough, by his estimate, to live on.
"They raised me here. They changed me and made me think about how to be better and to think about becoming a leader."
Bee staff writer Inga Miller can be reached at 578-2382 or imiller@modbee.com.
Message: 2 Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 09:01:51 -0500 From: "Suykry Path" <suykrypath@mchsi.com> Subject: Cambodia asks Thailand to help with rain-making
Cambodia asks Thailand to help with rain-making
Cambodia asked neighboring Thailand, whose top diplomat was on a one-day familiarization visit here, to help it with rain-making in a bid to ease a crippling drought.
Fourteen out of Cambodia's 24 provinces and municipalities have been badly hit by drought, with up to 700,000 suffering from food shortages due to poor rice crops.
Cambodia's Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters that he had asked his Thai counterpart Kantathi Suphamongkhon for help after hearing about the rain-making efforts of Thailand's king.
Cloud-seeding in Thailand, which is also suffering from a severe drought, is being overseen by the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has a patent for a technique using two aircraft flying at different altitudes.
"I have told the Thais that if they could help Cambodia, then it would be good. Cambodian people will be very happy with that," Hor Namhong said.
Thailand's Kantathi said he would take the request back to Bangkok.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has already appealed to the business community, government officials and philanthropists to help to build irrigation systems to help farmers.
Dith Pran / New York Times DithPran@aol.com www.dithpran.org
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