Support Kim's Journey to Laos

Kim Sandara is organizing this fundraiser.

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Hi, I'm Kim and I'm raising travel funds to go visit my family's mother country of Laos with my partner. My family's refugee status to America is a result of the Secret War, a CIA bombing campaign on Laos for 9 years during the Vietnam War era. This year I turned 30 and have been reflecting on how it was always a financial struggle to go to Laos. I grew up with stories about the bombs and hardships of escaping the Secret War, which frightened me as a child but my feelings around visiting Laos changed once I could not afford to see my grandparents' funeral. My grandparents deaths in Laos happened during my college days. Originally, my Lao grandparents came to America to raise me from being a baby into my young adulthood. They took care of me, my siblings and all my cousins here in the USA only speaking Lao, which isolated them from building any American community outside of family. We had a language barrier so I can't say we had the closest relationship but there is a lot to explore about losing a family presence that was consistently with me in childhood. Even though we couldn't connect well in language, there's still a lot of memories I have of them. I always felt regretful that there was no way my family could afford for us all to see them off on their funeral days in Laos.

That happened in my early 20's and now as I start my early 30's I don't want to wait any longer to visit Laos. There is a house my mom's family fled from during the war that since has been turned into a French restaurant. I would like to see it to help start a creative documentation of my family's memories of that house. Since 2020, I have also been making art work about processing the war history and donating to Legacies of War and COPE, supporting their effort to education and advocate for a bomb-free Laos, along with survivor assistance. I've always wanted to visit COPE's museum to get a better idea of the organization I'm supporting.

This Lao trip is personal, it's for the hope and healing journey I'm on as someone in the Lao diaspora--but just like any diaspora visiting an origin country, this trip is a lot of emotional work. It's inevitable that art will be a byproduct from a trip like this.