Somphang Baccam: Transcript

Tai Dam dancer
Close Window

My name is Som Baccam. I originally came from Laos, which is in Southeast Asia right across from the Mekong River in Thailand. And I have been in the United States since October 27, 1975. I was 11 years old when I came here.

No matter where I came from or what my children--where they were born, they need to remember who they are, what their parents, you know, what product we are. So, that is when a group of us young people here in Des Moines, has came together. And right now currently, we are called the Tai Committee. That we are working towards--our big vision is promoting tolerance of all people regardless of your race, your sex or what ever you are, whatever you say. We want to promote for our children to know that they are equal, no matter who they are. And our other thing is to promote and preserve our Tai Dam heritage and tradition.

Our group has been--annually we put together a New Year’s celebration that we do during the Chinese New Year in February; most of the time it’s the end. And we rent the Tourism Building, and we invite the public. We just have the traditional food, the traditional clothing, the music, the traditional shows, and dancing. And we just left it at that for the past two years, but then this year we did something really special.

We’ve decided, you know, yeah--we have our tradition and heritage, but we want to draw more people so they would come and understand our culture. So what we did, was invited different ethnic groups. We had the Hmong dancers, the Lao dancers, the Vietnamese dancers. And next year I even have bigger plans as the president of the committee; I want to integrate into--like maybe get the Sudanese refugees that have been here, the Bosnians, the Mexicans, you know. So I am hoping to get more variety of different cultures than Southeast Asian.

We are also teaching the young children, ages from 5-12, to learn how to do traditional dances and dress in traditional clothes. They would go to public schools to perform when asked or whatever, any reason. We have done them at the state fair wherever anyone wants to ask. And we just feel we want to let the public learn and be aware of the cultural diversity we have in Des Moines.

The Tai Dam people, their home original country is Vietnam. Actually the Tai Dam people really never had a country to call home. They did have a tiny little country—it was taken over by the Vietnamese. So ever since then, there is this small group of people that they also have different—you know, like Tai Dam—the correct way to pronounce it is “Dty.” It covers the black Tai Dam, the red Tai, the white, you know. There is all different, but we are all Tai. When the Vietnam War broke out in 1954, that is when the Tai Dam people migrated to Laos.

Okay, they migrated to Laos and stayed there until 1975, when the communists started taking over after the Vietnam War after the American troops pulled out. The Vietcong started taking over the Laos, so that is when we migrated once again to Thailand. I remember, my mom and my dad always gave us this little bag. And where we would put clothes in the bag and put it at the foot of our bed, so if anything would break out—like we would hear bombs. We had a bomb shelter, like a big hole, where they dig a big holes, that we were supposed to grab the bags and go jump. And, you know, my parents always taught us how to hold hands and run together, so we always had that there.

And one evening I remember very well, that my dad just drove his car that he was—and I guess he just got done chauffeuring some important person to somewhere. And he just came and said, “well get your stuff we are going to go.” And that was the last time I’ve ever seen my best friends or anybody. I remember, waving in the back of, you know, my car and—and that was it. My parents had us stay with our cousins and went back to Laos to get whatever belongings they can move to bring back to us. And they came back a couple of days later. That’s when the Governor—Ray came and offered a place for the refugees, the Tai Dam refugees, to come.