In Karen, Lah nay htoo means moon,get, and gold. In American it has no meaning other than number two which is good I guess.

My mother chose this name because it reminded her of when the Burmese Army try to kill her at night and burn her house.

She was lucky she didn’t get caught. If she had been caught by the Burmese Army, they would kill her or make her carry weapons for them. If you are not healthy, they will kill you.

She had to run in the darkness, not just my mom, other people had to run with no lights and no food. After i was born she named me Lah Nay Htoo and moved to Thailand camp so we could be safe. When I turned 7 and 8, I worked and i had to take care of my little brother.

One day, there was this flower and I drank the water inside the flower it was sweet and one of my brother didn’t know about the flower, and He ate the flower and pass out. Few hours later he pass out and don’t remember anything. My mom asked people for help but no one could help her. They told my mom that some people said if you ate the flower after 2 weeks you lose your memory.

My mom was scare. She didn’t want to believe what other people were saying. After a month later we all got better. Then after few months later when my mom had my baby brother, he passed away.

We decided to move by a big tree. During that time I had to work so hard so that I can survive.

I had to work in the morning at 6 and go to school at 8, it was really hard for me.

Sometimes my mom would tell me a stories about my brother. I asked her for his named but she never told me. She would only tell me about how my big brother passed away and how she survived.

Mostly we were trying to get away from the Burmese people. If you get caught by them, they will do anything to kill you. They made us suffer. We had no food and no places to go to because we had to run away from them.

I was really angry at The Burmese people because they took my home land and burned my home land and kill children’s  and i know that they are still doing it today and i’m sure they will in the future too. I had to run to many places and it’s really hard when someone asked me where are you from? I want to tell them where i’m from but refugee was the only answer i could tell them.

At that time it was not a big thing to me because i was young and i didn’t understand everything. I had to move to other country.

When I was young I didn’t know I was in the camp and I didn’t like it there because there was no job so it was hard to make money.

Three years later when I was 11 years old, my parents decided to come to America for better living life. We were tired of running away and wanted to live a free life where we could go to school and be with our families and friends instead of suffering.

I lost all my friends Again. We always wanted to go to American. It was our dream because we felt like it was the only place where we could be safe and calls it home.

We heard it’s better to live there and called it home someday. After i was 17 and 19 years old I was able to understand the problems that my friends and my families had to go through.

Some of us wanted peace, some of us wanted revenge, some of us wanted war but me, I didn’t know which was better. I want peace but there is no such things as peace to me. All i can think is war and revenge because I lost my homeland while running away and seeing others having a hard time and all I could was watch them in tears and my homeland tearing apart.

When everything you know and love is being taken away from you, all you can think of is that hatred inside of you and you just wanted them to feel the same way as you did.

My only goal in life was revenge and help others but i know as time goes by things change.

Right now where i’m staying at, I don’t want to call it home because i do not own the house yet. I do hope one day i can have my own house.

If you understand my pain, came from another country, Knowing that your family and your people are being killed, and don’t have food, I think it’s really hard for them to survive.

I haven’t lost all of my families but i do understand true pain And hope one day, I can have my own house.

One day I will have a house, a family, and live a peaceful life. I want to help people and make them feel it’s their home. I also want other to know the pain that i went through and everybody else that went through it.