During my time as a volunteer at Big Brother Mouse, I met a Laotian woman in her late twenties who shared her story. She grew up in a rural area and when she was 18, her parents chose a husband for her. In her community, 18 was old to get married. She did not know at the time of her marriage that her husband already had a girlfriend whom he did not give up. She and her husband had two sons, who are now 9 and 7 years old. After six years of marriage, she was able to divorce her husband. At that time, she renounced Buddhism as her religion and became a Christian. After the divorce, her sons lived with her husband and his new wife because she couldn’t financially support them. The new wife mistreated her sons and she was motivated to earn a living so that they could live with her.
For a year she trained to be a cook and then got a job in a restaurant in Luang Prabang. She brought her sons to live with her and studied English at Big Brother Mouse. She now works at Sister Mouse outside of Luang Prabang and her sons receive scholarships to study there. They are thriving and she is pleased because the quality of the education is superior to that of the public schools.
