Born on the same day, but worlds away. Me to hospital lights and smiling American faces, you, to a Bhutanese family ready to flee.
You came out of your mother’s womb, straight onto her back because she had to run. The daughter of a protestor, you were carried away from your home after just a few days in the world.
I came out of the womb, into a new room just for me, filled with clothes lovingly gifted from friends and family.
They named me Rachel, after the Hebrew woman of the Bible. They named you Rachana, after the word in their language for Creation.
Before your vision was even formed, your family landed in a new country. The first sights you saw were the colors of Nepal.
We made forts in the living room and backyard. You helped your family repair your hut in the camp.
I went to art classes. You drew masterpieces in the dirt.
My parents went to work every morning to provide food and clothing for us. Your parents were stripped of the opportunity to do the same.
For 18 years, you remained stateless, with no country to claim you. Those same years, I recited America’s pledge of allegiance every morning.
In 2008, I graduated high school. The same year, you found out you would move across the world. After spending your entire life in the camp, you and your family would now move to America.
While I was starting college and “finding myself” you found yourself in America- asking, “who am I?” “where am I?”
Flooded with so many different cultures, faces, opportunities, you were dizzy with all the newness.
I found friends at school from other states, you found friends from other countries.
I was homesick for my family and your family was homesick for familiarity. The only home you ever knew was the camp- devoid of opportunities but rich in relationships with people like you.
You learned English, got a job, and after five years, you became an American citizen.
At the age of 23, a country finally claimed you as their own. I was born belonging, born with citizenship in this land though I did nothing to deserve it.
I could have been you, you could have been me.
But God’s Providence gave us each our own story. Now I pass you in the grocery store, I see you at the clinic, your kids will play with my kids at the park. You are my neighbor, my friend.
Though worlds away, we were born on that same September day. Both of us, created by God, made in the image of God.
Our Creator wove us both in the depths of the earth- deeper depths than any country and its worth.
He saw us both, our un-formed bodies, waiting to be birthed into the world. He wrote our life’s stories before we took our first breath.
Although it may take you years to feel like you belong, I hope you know that you do.
May you find peace, dear Creation because you were made as you are on purpose. May we embrace you, sister, because your story matters.
In the year 1990, I was born into the world to a loving family in a small town in Arkansas. The same year, many Bhutanese refugees were told they had to leave their country. I likely share a birthday with a southern Bhutanese child who fled to Nepal as an infant. After arrival in Nepal, he or she then grew up in the refugee camp before coming to America. This realization inspired me to think about the differences between life for me, an American girl and life for a Bhutanese refugee. I wrote the above poem based on these thoughts. Rahana is a fictional character I made up, based on the stories of the Bhutanese people. She represents the many women that we see in our clinic day after day who likely have similar stories.
For the next few months, I will be writing a blog series about the backgrounds of the refugee populations we see at our clinic. Many people, when they learn what I do, ask what refugees we see and then ask why they are here. We all likely have heard about Syrian refugees. But many of you have not heard about Burmese refugees, Bhutanese refugees, or the Rohingya genocide. I want to share with you the answers to these questions: who do we see in our clinic? why are they refugees? First up, Nepali refugees from Bhutan. For simplicity, I will call them Bhutanese refugees.
Bhutanese refugees make up the largest portion (26%) of our patients at Ardas Family Medicine. So, for the series on refugee backgrounds, I thought it appropriate to start with this group.
2,273 refugees per year are settled in Colorado. 50,000 refugees currently live in the Denver area. Out of those, around 3,550 are Bhutanese refugees.
The majority of the Bhutanese refugees we have in Colorado, which we see at Ardas Family Medicine are descendants of a group of Nepali people who immigrated from Nepal to southern Bhutan in the late 1800s. The area they immigrated to was the lowland of Bhutan, malaria infested farmland. They became known by the Druk Buddhist majority as Lhotsampas or “people of the south”. The Lhotsampas kept their native Nepali language, their culture, and their religion throughout the decades in Bhutan. In the 1950s they were able to gain citizenship.
Things took a turn for the Lhotsampas in 1980. The King of Bhutan and the Druk majority became concerned because of the increasing number of Lhotsampas from the south. Because of their concern, they started something called “Bhutanization”. Bhutanization policies forced Druk dress code and customs on the Nepali people in the south and prohibited the use of Nepali language in schools. “Nepali teachers were dismissed, and Nepali books were reportedly burned.” New citizenship requirements also came into practice by the government which took away many of the Nepalis citizenship and civil rights.
The Lhotsampas began to protest the Bhutanization policies, instead advocating for a more democratic system. In 1990 large scale protests resulted in violence and mass arrests. “Ethnic nepalis were targeted by the Bhutanese authorities, who destroyed the Nepalis’ property and arrested and tortured activists. Individuals were forced to sign ‘voluntary migration certificates’ before being expelled from the country.”
In December of 1990, Lhotsampas who did not have paper proof that they were citizens in 1958 (and even some who did have proof) were forced to leave their homes in Bhutan. Tens of thousands of Lhotsampas fled to Nepal and to West Bengal.
In Nepal, the people were placed in refugee camps, where they stayed for the next 16 years. Bhutan did not permit a single refugee to return home. Nepal did not allow for integration into their country because they denied two basic rights to the refugees “freedom of movement and the right to work and earn a living“. So the Lhotsampas stayed in the camps, rejected by both the country they had grown up in (Bhutan) and the country of their ancestors (Nepal). Resettlement to the United States and other third countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway) became the only durable solution. They began resettlement in 2007 and by the end of September 2008, 5,300 Bhutanese refugees (out of 108,000 in the camps) were resettled into these third party countries.
The latest update from the UNHCR and IOM on November 19, 2015 celebrated the settlement of the 100,000th Bhutanese refugee from Nepal to third countries since the launch of the program in 2007. Out of these 100,00 Australia has settled 5,554, Canada 6,500, Denmark 874, New Zealand 1,002, the Netherlands 327, Norway 566, the United Kingdom 358 and the United States of America 84,819.
In 2007 there were 7 refugee camps in Nepal. Today, just two camps remain with fewer than 18,000 refugees. “As resettlement reaches its end, it is estimated that around 10-12,000 refugees will remain in the camps in Nepal.”
Some of the most recent Bhutanese refugees we see in our clinic who come to the US from Nepal have been in refugee camps for nearly TWO DECADES. It is hard for me to fathom what this would be like. They had little opportunity to work while there, but some did work. The children did have school, and they were given food and shelter.
This is a short version of their story, but I hope this post is helpful for you in answering the questions: what refugees do we see at our clinic? and why are they here?
Maybe you even have some nepali refugees from Bhutan in your area. If you are in a larger city in the U.S., you likely do!
Check out the following sources to learn more:
1) http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2015/11/564dded46/resettlement-bhutanese-refugees-surpasses-100000-mark.html
2) http://bhutaneserefugees.com/timeline
3) http://culturalorientation.net/learning/backgrounders
I want to know… Have you ever heard of this refugee group before? Do you know if you have any Bhutanese refugees in your area?
