Sarah spent nineteen years living in the refugee camp, during this time she had five children. She describes her life in the refugee camps as challenging. NGOs supporting Bhutanese refugees had limited funding which only supplied households with essential items (Hutt, 2005). Nepal’s Red Cross society provided a food ration basket once a fortnight to every house consisting of sugar, salt, rice, lentils, oil and vegetables. Families were housed in temporary shelters built from low cost and local materials such as bamboo. They had regular access to water, which was pumped through pipes to various tape stands throughout the camps (Hutt, 2005).
Sarah recalled her experiences living and working in the refugee camp in detail. After the birth of her youngest child, she divorced her husband and became a single mother, responsible for the wellbeing of six children. She described this stage of her life as tiresome and difficult, as she struggled financially to support her family:
“Very, very difficult! I don’t want to tell you about it, Jessica. Oh my heart hurts to
remember it. Very, very hard life to be a woman like me in Nepal. To look after six small children, to have to make some money to feed us, they [Red Cross] give only rice and some dhal and some salt, sugar and a little bit of oil. They give 5 kilos rice for 15 days!”
“Very hard! Then they give only that much, the other thing is young girls need a lot. I’m
not talking about makeup and things. But just clothing, they need more than boys in Nepal. Oh so many things shoes, school uniform and things. But there was no help. They not give us any money. Oh, it was very very hard. I had to go work in the morning everyday 7 to 8 just to make money to look after children. It was very hard.”
Lhosthampa communities predominately practice Hinduism. As a result, most of those forced into exile by the Bhutanese government were Hindus, and consequently Hinduism became the dominant religion within Nepal’s refugee camps. Sixty percent of those living in Nepal’s refugee camps were practicing Hindus (Hutt, 2005). Sarah was born into a Hindu family and she practiced Hinduism until she moved to New Zealand and converted to Christianity. As the
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majority of Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal’s refugee camps were Hindus, the Hindu caste system pervaded everyday life. Sarah describes her family as being low caste. Her stories reveal the difficulty of being a low caste single mother living in a society organised by Hinduism.
“I had friends and family, but many people are not nice to us. They think we are lower
than them because we are a family of women, and we are low caste. Many Hindu’s in Nepal who don’t like me and there was nothing I can do. I can’t change caste. I can’t change that I am a woman. So there’s nothing I can do. So I just look after myself and my family and not worry about them. I can’t change the Hindu’s minds no matter what.”
In 2001, the Bhutanese government agreed to reassess the national identity of the refugees in Nepal. They initiated an interview screening process in only one of the refugee camps. This was a slow process and as a result many Bhutanese refugees lived in Nepal’s refugee camps for eighteen years before being resettled in foreign countries. Aside from her eldest daughter all of Sarah’s children were born in Nepal. As a result, my participants have little connection to Bhutan other than the stories that have been passed down to them by family members. In conversation they often refer to Nepal as ‘my home country’. They explain:
“Sometimes it feels really kind of annoying to be constantly called Bhutanese. It’s like
that’s some country where my mum and grandparents were born, but it’s not where we’re from. I think we all feel more Nepali then Bhutanese. So when I talk about ‘my home country’ I always mean Nepal not Bhutan.”
Nepal’s refugee camps were considered international examples of well organised refugee camps. This is because the Bhutanese refugees adopted senior managerial roles in the day to day running of camp life. Elections were held annually to decide who would be involved in camp management. In addition to this, community groups were established early on within the camps to support women and children (Hinton, 1996). Schools were established and Bhutanese refugees were able to learn English to prepare themselves for resettlement (Hinton, 1996). My participants have bittersweet memories of Nepal. As children they have fond memories of growing up in Nepal amongst a close community, yet they also acknowledge how difficult life was for their mother.
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Sister A: “As a child, it’s pretty fun living in Nepal. You can just play all the time with
friends and your friends live so close to you. You can see them every day. Not like here where it’s a big effort to see them.”
Sister B: “Yeah that’s true. In Nepal everyone lives so closely together and because of that you don’t have to worry about bad things happening because you have so many neighbours and their houses are all really close. Not like here.”
Sister C: But Nepal was hard for our mum. It’s hard if you’re a girl, and it was really hard for our mum. She had to do so much working. She could never stop, and people weren’t always nice to her. I think Nepal is a really fun place as a child because everyone is kind to you when you’re a child, but it would have been hard to be a teenage girl there because of the caste thing. And it was especially hard if you’re an adult like my mum, like
with no husband.”
Sister A: “Yeah when you’re a child it is so much fun. We used to play all day. There are so many animals and so much stuff to do. We were allowed to play with fire and things; you can’t do that stuff here. It was so cool we used to play out every night with our friends until really late.”
Sister D: “Well... you got to play out. Me and Sister X didn’t. We had to do lots of work around the home, cooking, cleaning, giving you two a bath (points to younger sisters). Because in our culture the oldest children have to do like work around the house and stuff, and when our sister got married, it was really hard because then we had a lot more to do.”
A considerable amount of anthropological research has been conducted on the lives of Bhutanese children and youth in Nepal’s refugee camps. Hinton (1996) focused on the many ways children play an active role in maintaining camp life and social cohesion through domestic and childcare duties. She noted that children living in Nepal’s refugee camps learnt to be industrious and productive as they carried out important household duties, and they were high achievers at school. According to Hinton (1996) the capability of children within the camp to manage domestic and community responsibilities regularly defied Western NGO worker’s perceptions
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about refugee children and the vulnerable positions they were presumed to occupy. Although structures were in place to ensure children received an education, Evans’ (2007) research also noted that rebelliousness and social disobedience was common among young adult refugees. Young people often struggled to find fulfilment once they had completed school, as they were prohibited from working legally within Nepal and were unable to afford higher education. She noted that as many young refugees remained frustrated, rebellious behaviour was common.
“Young refugees expressed unhappiness and there was a perceived ‘increase in social evils’,
including young people abusing alcohol, smoking, taking drugs and dropping out of school”
(Evans, 2007, p. 183). My participants’ stories also reveal that Nepal was a difficult place for teenagers, they state;
Sister B: “Oh my gosh! We had so much to do when she [our sister] got married, but we
didn’t really mind because it meant that we were helping our mum. I think as we got older we could see more and more what life would be like for us there as teenage girls... like I don’t think we would have had much, what’s the word?. Opportunity! I don’t think we would have had much opportunity if we had stayed there, because it was really hard
for low caste women there.”
Sister C: “Yeah, there were a lot of teenagers that were sad in Nepal; they didn’t know
what to do with themselves and most of them would have been low caste.”
According to Evans (2007), the lack of opportunity available to young Bhutanese post-school stems from a variety of sources. Restrictions were placed on Bhutanese refugees that prevented them from gaining legal employment in Nepal and they had limited opportunities to make money in the camps. As a result, families had very few savings, which limited their children’s opportunities to receive higher education. Although the Nepalese government offered the safety of seven refugee camps for Bhutanese refugees they also denied citizenship or integration into wider Nepali society. During this time exiled Bhutanese citizens remained stateless.