Immigrant of the Day: Chansitha Ouk (Cambodia), College Graduate
College graduation season is upon us. Our Immigrant of the Day will be graduating from UC Berkeley on May 12.
As a young girl, Chansitha Ouk didn’t go to school. “There was no school,” she says. “I didn’t know what it was. It just didn’t exist. Life was on the run.”
Ouk was born in Cambodia in 1968. The civil war between the Cambodian government and the communist Khmer Rouge had begun the year before. As early as she can remember, she and her family — her two younger sisters, mother and grandmother — were on the move. “We would move at night from shelter to shelter,” she says. “I grew up always hearing guns shooting and bombings. We just didn’t have anywhere to go. It’s how all families were — alert, always moving.”
“ There was no school,” she says. “I didn’t know what it was.” It just didn’t exist. Life was on the run. It wasn’t until Ouk was 12, living in a refugee camp in Thailand, that she realized what she had been missing. She finally had the chance to go to school — to learn to read and write in her native language, Khmer. She even learned some basic English phrases and became an interpreter for the U.N. “It was like a new world,” she says. “It was like the light went on. I was so hungry to learn.”
On Saturday, May 12, Ouk is joining more than 5,000 graduating seniors at UC Berkeley as they make their joyous walk across the California Memorial Stadium stage — a feat she never dreamed possible. She will receive a bachelor’s degree in media studies. It’s her time at Berkeley, she says, that has given her the courage to share her story — one that she hopes will inspire people to push past any obstacle, no matter how big, to follow their dreams and pursue an education.
For more on Chansitha Ouk’s amazing story, click here.
KJ