A Story Of A Bhutanese Refugee In US

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

“I am a Bhutanese,” announced the man in his early fifties: Madhusudhan Dahal working as a part-time Hindu priest in the US. He came to us to perform the 11th-day-birth ceremony to our grandchild on December 21, 2012.

As soon as he took the seat on the sofa, Madhusudhan asked me, “What benefits do you get here?” “We don’t have any benefits, we are visitors here, and we are going back to Nepal soon; we even don’t get driving licenses,” I said. He stopped asking any questions but he started off talking about him.

I am already here two and a half years. I live with my spouse and three grown up children; one goes to a college, another to a school. In the beginning, I worked as a priest but now a days, I worked for the FedEx, too. We live in a colony where the refugees from Nepal, Spain and Iraq are settled. We could make out at least a word or two when they (Americans) speak but the guys from Spain and Iraq could not understand even a single word. They also came to the US as we did.

We have a good Nepalese community in Worchester. We sit together for bhajan (chanting, singing and praying) for two hours every Saturday but on Sundays we work. I am Vaisnavi. So I worship Lord Vishnu in thousand names. Every day, I recite 24 names of Vishnu.

We have made a community ‘trust fund’ each household contributing $5 a month. We deposit this money in a bank. We use this money to help someone in need. For example, when someone dies if the family has not sufficient money to perform funeral rites, then we help the family. If someone’s house is burnt down we pay rent for the family to live for some months. If someone loses a job and then we give him/her some money to carry on the life for some months.

We live in a large Nepalese community of about 150 people. Even a small store catering mainly the Nepalis’ needs has moved from Shrewsbury to Worchester where we live in. The storeowner is Punjabi. He is a good man. He delivers the goods to our home if we buy supplies for more than $50. Sometimes, our friends help us to bring the products we buy at the store.

We don’t have the problem of going to work. I don’t have a car and I don’t drive, too but one of us working at the FedEx takes us all together to work and then drops us off back home. We give him $5 a day for gas. He takes at least five people in a car. Some of them have seven-seated cars, too. So, they don’t have the problems of filling their cars even make some money.

My son also works and earns, and gives us some money for paying rent and other utilities bills. He needs to pay for the car insurance, and monthly installment of the car. So, he keeps most of the money. I think it is ok. We live together and happy. I pay $ 900 for the house rent for three-room apartment. Our area is cheap. I earn about $ 800 a month, and get some allowances, too from the government.

After two and a half years, we are supposed to receive the US citizenship but we don’t speak English enough to qualify for the citizenship. However, we are almost old enough that they would not refuse us the citizenship. After becoming the US citizen, I would like to go to Nepal for a visit but not Bhutan. We had so many beautiful things there (in Bhutan) but we had to leave everything behind. We lived nicely there but they made us very hard to live there and forced us out of the country.

My grandfather was born in Bhutan, my father and then I. My great grandfather went from Okhaldhunga in Nepal to Bhutan. Since then, we had been living in Bhutan. We had our schools. We taught our children in Nepali. We could write official documents in Nepali. Then, in 1980s, the government of Bhutan started off making our lives hard stopping our school to teach in Nepali. Then, they stopped us writing official documents in Nepali. They made the law that we also needed to wear the Bhutanese uniform.

According to the Bhutanese law, the government needs to send the students scoring first and second positions in the school-leaving-certificate examinations to foreign countries to study further. Only the students scoring third position stay behind to study further. Most of the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese students secures the first and second positions but the Bhutanese-speaking students even though secure the third position go to foreign countries to study.

Madhu is wearing the Nepalese traditional dress even in the US. I don’t know whether he wears the dress everyday or just for going to perform ceremonies. He did not clearly reply how he managed to have such dress in the US. I even asked, “Do you have anybody that could make such a dress as you are wearing?” “We might have someone to do such a job in the future,” said Madhu.

Madhu continued his story. They made our lives difficult to continue in Bhutan. We live in the southern part of Bhutan conspicuously different from the indigenous Bhutanese. We have fertile land. We grow everything. Our family grows one hundred muri (one muri = 50 kg) of rice; we have a number of cows and other small livestock. We have orange orchard. We lived very well but we had to leave the country to escape the persecution from the Bhutan government. The international community did not help us.

The population of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese was 300,000 in Bhutan but a half of the population had been forced out of the country. The remaining half of the population have been facing difficulties to live there. Even the rich people could not escape the persecution, as the Bhutan government put them behind bars saying they must have given money to the people seeking justice in Bhutan. Nepalese labor had built the Bhutan but the same laborers were squeezed out of the country.

I told Madhu that when I was in Mechi in early 1970s in the course of mineral exploration fieldworks, there were the waves of Nepalis going to Bhutan for work. Most of the Nepalis aspiring to go to Bhutan were the young people without families and land to work on. Probably, thousands of Nepalis must have gone to Bhutan for work at that time. However, in 1990s, they came back in 100,000s. The government of India let the Nepalis to come to Nepal as refugees but restricted them from going back to Bhutan. There was no other way to go back to Bhutan. The government of India has its political and economical interest in Bhutan. India has made large investments in the huge hydropower plants for lighting northern states. India takes care of the defense and foreign affairs of Bhutan. So, sending back the Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugees to Bhutan, India did not want to create political problems in Bhutan. Indian leaders believed that the democratic Bhutan would be a headache for them.

After talking for some time, Madhu started off doing something for performing the 11th-day-birth ceremony to our grandchild. He has brought a piece of white cloth (5’x 3’) printed with a large red symbol looked like a lotus flower. Madhu said that it was the symbol of the spinning disc Lord Vishnu held in his index finger of his right hand. It has eight, sixteen and thirty six boxes around the rings. Each box has one deity or another but I did not show them because I know them by heart. However, the author of this writing believes that the symbol is the symbol of Lord Vishnu rather than his spinning disc. Each deity has such a symbol called ‘yantra’. The supreme yantra called Shree yantra is the yantra of all deities. Keeping Shree yantra at home wards off evil spirits from the home. This is the belief of Hindus.

Madhu said, I worked as a priest in Bhutan. I went with my maternal uncle Acharya. Going with him, I learned the process of performing ceremonies.

Madhu: the priest unfolded the cloth with the symbol of Lord Vishnu and spread it out on the floor. Our son-in-law brought a transparent plastic sheet and put it over the symbol. Madhu sat on a small black cushion facing east. Our son-in-law sat facing him at the other end of the cloth. As the father of the newly born child, he has to perform the ceremony following the instructions of the priest. Madhu started off instructing our son-in-law to do one thing or another. The first thing is setting the symbol of Lord Ganesh. Hindus need to worship first Lord Ganesh then only they could perform other ceremonies. Then, the priest set other different deities on the right and left sides. The center is the reserved for the fire god called Agni. The priest asked our son-in-law to put a handful of rice at different places on left and right sides, and then on each rice a glass with fresh water. At home, we put holy water freshly brought from a stream in a baked clay pot to invoke a deity in it. Here in the US, the glasses replaced the clay pots. The priest invoked different deities in each of the glass with water.

Then, the priest asked me to bring a big apple. I thought that it must be for offering a deity. So, I took a nice polished apple skipping the big one but little bit dried and wrinkled. Don’t you have a larger one?’, asked Madhu. “Yes, we have one but wrinkled,” I said. “Let me see,” said Madhu. I brought him the wrinkled apple. He took it. He took out a knife from his pocket, and cut the upper portion of the apple and set it aside. Then, he scooped the inner parts of the apple by the knife making it like a cup. He filled it up with rice, and then inserted wicks soaked in oil into it, and put it on a steel plate kept at the center of all deities invoked on the holy water glasses placed on the symbol of Lord Vishnu. He poured some ghee on the wicks in it, and lighted the wicks.

Everyone in one voice said, “It might trigger the fire alarm.”  “If the light remains small as it is, it might not trigger the fire alarm,” I said. The priest begun to work on it offering mustard seeds soaked in ghee in one name of deity or another to the light. The offerings made to different deities have kept the light low. So, it did not emit smoke and heat enough to trigger the fire alarm. Then only, I understood that the apple with a little wick lamp the priest made was actually a fireplace, and the light is actually a fire god. In Nepal, Bhutan or India elsewhere in South Asia, we make a fire on a special altar made for it for such a fire worship called yajna but in the country like the US, we cannot make a fire in an open place due to the cold weather in the winter. We need to do everything indoor. Seeing the innovative idea of making a fireplace in a house during the winter in the US, I really appreciated the priest making a fireplace for yajna suitable to the home condition in the US. I did not ask him whether it was his own innovation or he learned from someone.

After completing the yajna, the priest offered the black soot coming out of the fireplace to the child, then the parents, and all others present at the ceremony at the middle of nose. He also offered the red tika on our brow as the blessing from the deities. The priest is of the Vaisnavi sect. So, the deities are the different deities called in the different names of Lord Vishnu.

The 11th-day ceremony is for introducing the newly born child to the deities, and to introduce the child to the religion. In the Christian religion, they called it baptism. Our children get the religion of their parents by birth. So, we simply need to introduce our children to the deities. Actually, it is the act of informing the deities that we have a child in our family. On this night, the demigod called Chitragupta comes to the child and writes the future events the child will meet with. This is called ‘luck’. Whatever Chitragupta writes none could erase them. Thus, all the future events are set on this night. So, whatever happens in the future, we call it our ‘luck’. This is our belief. Some people keep a pen, and an inkpot and papers for Chitragupta to write the future events of a child.

One of us offered Madhu a cup of tea. Madhu asked for a tea with milk but not with sugar, as he was a diabetic. He did not accept the tea in a cup but in a glass. Probably, he believes that glassware is clean whereas Chinas are not. He said, “I don’t eat garlic and other prohibited items.” He did not specify other items. Probably, he tries to keep his body clean not eating the foodstuffs that pollute the body according to the Hindu code of food. However, it is very difficult to strictly follow the Hindu code of food here. He did not like to eat the rice but eat whole wheat bread probably to keep his body clean and healthy, as he is both the diabetic and the Hindu priest.

The Hindu code of food is made so that the priest class people don’t eat garlic, onions, meat, eggs, mushroom and so on. Eating spices like garlic and onions makes everyone foul smelling but priests have to be clean and clear so the restriction on eating such foodstuff but mushroom is not fouling anybody but it might kill you if you eat a wrong one. So, the Hind food code restricts the priest class people to eat mushroom, as they are not for taking any chance of eating poisonous mushroom, and then dying. Even now in Nepal, we have at least one or two cases of some people dying from eating wild poisonous mushroom every year during the mushroom-picking-up season.

Then, I wanted to know few things about how he came to Nepal and then the US. Madhu said, “Many of us came to Nepal without anything but some people living on the border areas could drive their cattle and small livestock out of Bhutan. Most of us let loose the cattle and other livestock and left the home country for Nepal. At the refugee camp in Nepal, we received the space according to the number of family members we have. For the family like me of five members, we received a space 18’x25’. We have to manage everything in this space. We made the sheds from the fresh bamboos, and roofed them with thatch. Sometimes, the thatch we received is not enough to cover the shed when the thatch is shorter than regular one. We shared the toilet with the neighbor. We received rice and lentil, and a stove, and one and a half liter of kerosene for a week. We needed to cook our food with this limited quantity of fuel. Later on, we received a sack of briquette for a fortnight. We lived like this for 18 years. Initially, they did not allow us to go out of the camp but later on they relaxed it, and then we could go around and even work for wages.

My brother and mother live in Nepal. They did not want to come to the US. My mother needs to make a pilgrimage to different famous religious shrines in Nepal and India. My brother drives a microbus for pilgrims and earns living from it. He is doing fine in Nepal. So, he has no reasons for coming to the US.

It took us six months to process our applications for coming to the US. They came to interview us, then took our pictures, fingerprints, and sent us to the hospital for the health checkups. After completing all interviews and checkups, and taking our fingerprints, they gave each one of us a sealed folder and asked us not to open it. They also gave each one of us an identity card, and a token. We kept the token safely. We hung ID cards from our necks on the way. They gave us a five-day orientation class to make us know how people live in the US.

IOM (International Organization for Migration) people took us to Kathmandu and lodged us in a house. Then, the same IOM people took us to the airport and put us on the plane and sent to New Delhi. The IOM people were at the Delhi airport to pick us up and feed us there and then next day put us on the plane to Brussels. At the Brussels airport, too, the IOM people were there to take care of us, and put us on the plane to New York.

At the New York airport, the IOM people took us to the custom officials; we presented our tokens, and the sealed bags to the custom officials. They took the tokens and opened the sealed folders, and took our fingerprints. Then, they gave each of us a document. Then, the IOM people took us to our respective places. Thus, we came to the US. After a few weeks, we received the green cards (permanent residence cards).

Madhu has a vague idea of the UN paying them and doing everything for them but he does not know actually which agency of the UN has been doing everything for them and paying for them. He knows only of the IOM people because of the close interactions with them while coming to the US. I understand that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has paid for them for 18 years they lived at the refugee camp in Nepal. The UNHCR continues to pay for those Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal. The US, the EU Japan and other countries provide the UNHCR with the fund required for running such refugee camps in Nepal and elsewhere in the world.

I got the following information from the http//IOM.int: IOM works closely with governments, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), non-government organizations and other partners. The process begins with UNHCR. UNHCR identifies, interviews and submits refugee cases to countries for resettlement consideration; subsequently, under cooperative agreements with those same countries, IOM resettlement services — Case processing, Health Assessments, Pre-Departure Orientation and Movement — take place. Upon arrival, resettlement countries provide refugees with legal and physical protection, including access to civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights similar to those enjoyed by nationals. Most refugees eventually become naturalized citizens of their country of resettlement.

December 23, 2012