Blending worlds ?  A Laotian-American grows up in Fairfield

Linda Lewiston recalls the rich fragrance of ripe fruit, cow manure and the sight of smog blanketing dirt roads as symbols of her unconventional homecoming.

?I was in a foreign country, but it was home,? said Lewiston. ?Everybody knew me.?

Lewiston was traveling to Laos for the first time, to the village of Thabok where her mother, Khamfone Sysouchanh grew up. The trip was a graduation gift from her mother after finishing her bachelor of arts in art at University of Iowa.

?She wanted me to visit my family and see where I came from,? said Lewiston, whose family settled in Fairfield in 1985.

She brought her husband, then-boyfriend Troy Lewiston with her on the trip who she said received a lot of attention for being American. ?He was a spectacle,? said Lewiston, amused. ?He loved it.?

While in Thabok, they stayed with her aunt in a home with no running water or electricity.

?It was a huge culture shock,? Lewiston said, who struggled to communicate with them in broken Lao.

Lewiston visited the market where her mom sold produce from the farm and was surprised to find the women there knew who she was.

?They told me stories about my brothers and my mom,? she said.

She and Troy experienced the full spectrum of the country while traveling Laos, from rich estates to small villages.

?Laos is a forgotten country ? it is still under the radar when it comes to tourists,? said Lewiston. ?It?s a very serene and spiritual place, a quiet place.?

Lewiston, now 29, lives in Fairfield and has been married to Troy Lewiston for five years. He is a manager at Everybody?s Whole Foods grocery store, and she does accounting for a local Internet service provider, Natel. They bought their first home last year in Fairfield.

Lewiston?s life is similar to other girls her age in Fairfield, but her background is far from it. Though Lewiston doesn?t remember it, she spent the first years of her life in a Thai refugee camp.

Laos was politically volatile after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the Communist takeover of the country. Sysouchanh?s husband was a military policeman in the Prince Souvanna Phouma regime, and the couple fled across the Mekong River in 1982 to a refugee camp in Thailand to avoid almost certain death.

They crossed with three of their four sons. Sysouchanh?s husband returned to Laos shortly thereafter to retrieve their eldest son, Southep. He survived the journey back across the Mekong, but his father was shot while crossing and did not return.

Sysouchanh spent the next 2.5 years living with scarce food and supplies for herself and her children. She met Lewiston?s father while in the camp, where she gave birth to her. Later, he immigrated to America and lost contact with Sysouchanh.

Thousands of Southeast Asians immigrated to Iowa during the late 1970s and early 1980s under the leadership of Iowa Gov. Robert Ray. He was the only governor who responded to a request from President Gerald Ford in 1975 to help resettle refugees who had escaped communist regimes. The governor opened the Iowa Refugee Service Center that year, which continues today as a program in the Iowa Department of Public Health.

In Fairfield, St. Mary Catholic Church joined the humanitarian effort by sponsoring Southeast Asian families to resettle in town. According to Ledger archives, two families came to Fairfield in 1975, the Namuonglo?s from Laos and the Tran Van Ran?s from Vietnam.

In November of 1979, the church sponsored Lewiston?s aunt and uncle Buounnoy and Bouphanh Vongkaysone to move to Fairfield with their five children. The Vongkaysone?s consequently sponsored Khamfone and her children to come to Fairfield in 1985.

?My first memory of America is of sterile immigration offices,? Lewiston said. ?I remember them taking my thumbprints and hearing foreign voices.?

Lewiston?s name had been Anghkana, but her family began calling her Linda once in the United States.

They arrived in Fairfield on Halloween night. Lewiston was 3 years old, and her aunt told her how frightened she was of the children in costumes.

But Lewiston adapted to life in America quickly. She grew up learning English and Lao side by side, and soon had a stepdad to help raise and support her. The Vongkaysones introduced Lewiston?s mother to Vone Douangdy, a widower with children who had fled Laos for a Thai refugee camp. Lewiston?s mother and Douangdy married shortly thereafter.

?I?ve known him for as long as I can remember,? said Lewiston.

Lewiston attended Fairfield High School where she had many American friends, but said her parents socialized exclusively with Southeast Asians.

?They?re all best friends,? she said. ?They all came from the same village.?

Just a few Southeast Asian refugee families live in Fairfield, but Lewiston said her mom knew numerous families living in Mount Pleasant and Ottumwa who were from Thabok or the refugee camp.

?Their attitude was, ?If we?re going to move to the United States, let?s go where we know somebody,?? she said.

She remembers her mom using food stamps at the grocery store when they first arrived. Even with the help of friends, Sysouchanh was a single mother with five children, no job and living in a foreign country.

She became self-sufficient quickly though, Lewiston said. She began working as a cook at Thai Deli, which was housed within Sunshine Grocery Store. When the owner of the deli quit a few years later, she bought the business.

As soon as Sysouchanh had an income, she began sending money to her family in Laos every month, which Lewiston said she looked at as ?bettering our lives and theirs.?

In a 1985 Ledger article about Sysouchanh, then-director of the state refugee center, Wayne Johnson was quoted saying, ?One of the reasons that resettlement has generally gone well in Iowa is the values the Lao bring with them, they want to work hard, contribute and pull their own weight, and they?re friendly people.?

According to the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services, the average Iowan on welfare receives benefits for approximately 28 months, compared with refugees who receive benefits for less than 6.5 months on average.

Lewiston said she?s grateful her mom was able to own her own business compared with many families who were lucky to get factory jobs.

?When you?re an immigrant it?s hard to get a job,? she said. ?You don?t have writing skills and are often illiterate.?

?My mom was adamant about me learning the way of Lao cooking,? said Lewiston. ?So when I become a wife I would know how to take care of my husband and her.?

Lewiston complained at the time, but said she is happy she knows how to cook traditional Lao meals, if not for the reasons her mom had in mind. She learned to make crispy fried rice, barbecued meats with dipping sauces, papaya salad, minced meat salad and a variety of curries.

?Food is huge in the Lao culture,? she said.

It is central to Buddhist traditions as well, and she was raised as a Theravada Buddhist. Her favorite part of going to temple in Des Moines was the food, even though her parents made her wake up at 6 a.m. to go.

Lewiston said the Southeast Asian community constantly held blessing ceremonies to attract spirits and ancestors to bring one good favor. She attended such ceremonies for birthdays, funerals and baptisms, where she said everyone wore ample jewelry and served an overabundance of food, thought to entice the spirits.

?Anything you do, you do blessings,? she said. ?If you move into a new house, if you want cleansing, you do a blessing. We cater to pleasing our ancestors all of the time and to balancing our karma.?

Growing up, Lewiston had a hard time always keeping in line with her parents? wishes, and said her older brothers were naturally more traditional.

?I was a rather rebellious child,? she said. ?My parents expected us to have a certain demeanor and way we represented ourselves.?

At parties she heard her parents talking with friends about arranging marriages for her with other Lao boys.

?They would say, ?Linda would make a good wife for my son,?? she said.

Clearly Lewiston had her own ideas on the matter. But that?s not to say Lewiston has not maintained parts of her culture.

She considers herself a Buddhist, believing in reincarnation and karma. She also said Buddhist customs have become second nature to her.

?I never step on a pillow,? she said, explaining the head and feet are not supposed to touch. She also addresses her older brothers and stepsisters with a Lao prefix, a sign of respect.

There?s another Lao tradition Lewiston is open to ? multiple generations living under one roof. Her parents are currently living in Chicago, helping raise her stepsister?s children, but Lewiston is not opposed to having a turn one day.

?If I had a bigger house, I?d have my mom come live with me,? she said. ?She could take care of my garden, cook and take care of my kids. It would help keep the culture, otherwise I think it would be forgotten.?

But visiting the ?forgotten country? of Laos, Lewiston learned her family ties lived on despite long stretches of distance and time.