Sa Hay Dar’s only memories of her childhood in Burma are fire and fear as soldiers uprooted families and burned villages in her homeland.
Her family fled to Thailand when she was 3, and she spent most of her life in a refugee camp patrolled by armed Thai soldiers. Everyone slept in tents, and no one was allowed to leave.
What she likes most about her new home in Bowling Green, Ky., is the freedom. Two maps of the United States are hung by her front door; another is perched in the living room next to a poster of the American presidents.
“It’s a free country,” says Dar, now 16. “You can live wherever you want. And there you have to run every time it’s fighting, fighting … and everything.”
She has been in the U.S. for nearly two years, and her English is improving. Her frequent use of the word “like” makes her sound like many an American teenager.
Dar misses the friends left behind in Thailand, but has made new ones here. Her people, along with new arrivals from Korea, China, and other countries, reflect the increasing diversity of Bowling Green.
Dar, a high school sophomore, spends her free time reading and doing homework. Her goal is to go to college and become a nurse.
“I like helping people,” she says.
