Stephanie Saephan

I have many fond memories of growing up in San Francisco in the 80's and early 90's, and will always be a City girl at heart. However, growing up as a refugee trying to navigate a new culture and language was a challenge, especially when all I wanted to do was be more like my new American friends. Many people were nice and curious about me, my family, and our "unusual" lifestyle, but others were cruel. I was often called a FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) by other students in school.

Home life was sometimes just as frustrating and chaotic with seven of us living in a small apartment. Meanwhile, my parents had their own issues adjusting to life in the U.S., and didn't understand why I wasn't more interested in our own culture. Instead I wanted to be less Mien. I even tried to dye my black hair to light brown (BTW it didn't work, my hair turned orange). I didn't want to be called Ying anymore either. I wanted an American name. I wanted to fit in.

So, how did I come to choose Stephanie as my American name? Believe it or not, I picked it out from a phone book with the help of a guy named Dave from the local Baptist Church; who befriended our family through the Mien Christian family who lived next door to us. I will always remember him for the help he gave me and my youngest brother. Dave was a kind and generous man, who in his free time ran an after school program for underprivileged kids in the Tenderloin area (if you don't know SF, Tenderloin area was a low-income and gritty area).

I didn't have much growing up, but life in San Francisco was better than being in the refugee camp. I didn't know I was poor until other children made fun of me for buying food with food stamps at the neighborhood corner store. I was maybe around 10 years old then and had not know that being on welfare was not "cool". Looking back now, though, I don't think these kids were any better off than I was - we all went to the same elementary school that was next to a large housing complex for low-income families (aka housing project). The other kids were just savvier to not be seen by their peers using food stamps.

During this time, my oldest brother, Pao supplemented our family income by working at a bakery. I remember he would bring home bags of unsold, day old breads, and these would become hard as rocks as they got more stale each day. My mom would steam them to soften them back up - a favorite after school snack was steamed sourdough baguette dipped in Sunkist orange soda. It sounds disgusting, but that was our immigrant take on American food. For me, food was what brought the two cultures together.

The American dream of owning a house finally happened for us when I was in middle school - my family bought a duplex across the Bay in Richmond. I can remember the house vividly; if only for the fact we had Christmas lights year-round. One year, we hung Christmas lights outside the porch and my dad thought it was the coolest thing. He thought it was a great way to honor our ancestors' spirits, and would dutifully turn on the Christmas lights every night and burn incense in the small altar at the front door. My father was a religious figure, something like a master  shaman priest  in the Mien community.

During my high school years, I was fortunate enough to attend high school in the neighboring town of El Cerrito where the academics were better than in Richmond. I wanted very badly to get away from all the intensity and drama of life in a large immigrant, refugee family, and knew the only way out was to get myself off to college. In high school I made sure to take AP classes, and did summer programs at UC Berkeley for underprivileged high schoolers as a way to prepare for college.

One day, at a college fair at UC Berkeley I happened to walk pass a table for Clark University as I was leaving and picked up an application packet. Like many of my friends, I applied for in-state schools, but unlike most of them I also applied for schools on the East Coast, and eventually choose to attend  Clark University  in Worcester, MA. I wanted to be independent and see if I could make it on my own. 

After living and working in New England for a few years, I got tired of the cold winters. So, as a Valentine's Day present one year, I bought tickets to Hawaii. My boyfriend (now husband) and I spent two weeks hiking and camping around the islands. When we returned home I wanted to go back.

Around the same time, I started thinking more about re-connecting with my roots. I grew up watching my mom use herbs from our garden as medicine. I've always had an interest in medicine and discovered that the  University of Hawaii at Manoa  had an ethnobotany program.

As part of my graduate school application, I wrote about our family bath ritual - apparently Mien people are known for our traditional, medicinal baths (registered as an intangible cultural heritage in China).

I remember during the colder weather, my mom would make the medicinal baths for the entire family. It was pretty much an all day affair, usually done on the weekends. In the backyard, we had an old fashion, deep tub that my brother got from his construction job. There was a huge steel drum set on top of concrete blocks with a fire under it for heating the bath water filled with twigs, barks, and leafy plants. The water was a dark rust color and stained your skin. Everyone in the family took turns soaking in the bath, starting with the oldest male to the youngest female - of course this meant I was the last one to take a bath; but that was okay because I could take as long as I wanted without anyone hurrying me.

My graduate studies in the Botany Program didn't go exactly according to plan. Instead of studying ethnobotany, I ended up first working on the effects of climate change on the food resources of native birds and how this contributes to the larger bio-complexity of avian malaria on the Island of Hawaii. When this didn't pan out,  I ended up doing an agent-based computer model for testing seabird foraging patterns, based on the principles of search theory. The lessons learned for me here, is perseverance and having a good mentor/advisor to help me along the way is crucial to accomplishing my goal (thank you Duffy for your guidance).

After graduating, I continued to run the joint Botany-Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit GIS lab for a few years, as well as working in various positions within the University system. Until recently, I worked at  G70 , where I have been the GIS Lead/Manager for the past 9 years.