Don't Forget the Motherland

This quote is what one of the camp directors, not the one whose desk is behind this map of Bhutan, told me when I asked him if he had any message he'd like me to take back. You can also see the pictures of the kings of Bhutan they have up on the wall. The idea of Bhutan is still here. Children here in school start the day with an assembly where, among other things, they recite the Bhutanese pledge. They study Dzongkha in school. That used to be just one of several languages spoken in Bhutan, which is home to people from a mix of different ethnicities. That changed, according to what I've read and what I've heard here, with the 1988 One Nation One People policy because after that only one language and one style of dress, among other things, were allowed. The use of the Nepali language in schools was outlawed. Again, according to what I've read, in 1985, citizenship for the Lhotsampa (read: Bhutanese folks in the camp) people was revoked unless they had both tax receipts showing that they'd been in the country since 1958, and if they'd been counted in the census. That, among other reasons (see Human Rights Watch reports for the gory details of persecution), is why the Lhotsampa people headed for Nepal.

When I asked one man about what he remembered his parents telling him when they decided to leave Bhutan, he said they explained it to him this way: 400 years ago (I'm paraphrasing, when this was told to me, he put it "in the time of the Nepali King X"), our people lived in Nepal. So, we're going back. He said it made sense to him at the time. He said that his family had been farming oranges and cardamom, and he'd gotten used to carrying heavy things with his head, he said, because during school holidays he would carry big sacks of oranges to sell. So, when they left Bhutan, he walked for four days with 24 kgs of rice on his head. Then there were truckers in India who took them to Nepal for 200 Rs per person (Others have told me that kindly truck drivers in India took people across for free). Then they ended up near the Mai river, then finally in the camps. (The next stop is the US, in a month.) I asked him what he's telling his kids about the move (since the line about how their people were there 400 years ago isn't really an option!) and he says that he told them that their uncle in the US has a car. Can this be true? he asked me, marveling at the idea. He'd said he'd given up on the idea of going back to Bhutan, and instead was very excited about his family's prospects in the US.