Bhutanese Youth in Iowa congratulates Hem Nepal for being the winner of the Personally Essay Contest and we also would like to thank everybody who participated. Below here is Hem Nepals Essay: A Refugee Life Back in 1991, when I wasn’t even born, I believe that the Bhutan government expelled the Nepali people from the country of Bhutan. I don’t really know why they did that, but trust me it wasn’t a good thing for the Nepali people. There were about 100,000 Nepali people looking for a new place, a new beginning of their lives. Some died along the way and some made it alive to the new place, a whole different country called Nepal. The UNHCR helped the refugees settle there in Nepal in 7 different camps. The camps were named Pathri, Goldhap, Kudnabari, Timai, Beldangi 1, Beldangi 2, Beldangi 3. My family along with some friends and some strangers settled in Pathri, the city where I was born. People barely had enough food to share with their family, but the UNCHR service I had mentioned earlier was as close as the almighties (gods) to us. They provided food for us, well it might have hadn’t been sufficient for all, but at least we did have food to keep us alive. People worked really hard to get money to celebrate religious holidays and buy utensils for their households. So, growing up in that small city was no fun as some of you might think, but I really had some of the best moments of my life there. My friends and I would go out in the rainy days all naked just to play some soccer in the rain with a homemade soccer ball (papers and plastics stuffed in a sock and covered again with some more plastics, which we would circle around tight with some thread). I miss those silly moments. When it came to shopping, it wasn’t that much of fun because we had to walk about a mile just to get to the street markets. We didn’t have enough money to buy all the items necessary for the households and for the kids. I remember that one time when I wanted a toy car, I was 9 years old, and my mom said no so I tried running away from her. I was mad crying just to get the stupid car for no reason. I made my mom run after me for about 20 minutes and when she caught me, it was not a good experience. She smacked the living hell out of me, and now I am very thankful for the actions she took on me. I would always want something unnecessary from those markets, sometimes I would get them and other times I wouldn’t. Ice pops were really delicious and all the kids would always buy one when the ice pops man came along. Education was really important and super helpful to me. I learned a lot from the teachers there, we had to study in a very tough situation because if we failed the tests we would get smacked by the teacher, which by the way was no fun either. But yet again I am very thankful for the smacking they gave us. That’s because now I can do the math and remember the vocabulary terms easily. I miss everything of Nepal except for the education system. As times passed and I became older, things started to change, the UNCHR gave us a choice of coming to the USA. People were shocked! Some were happy of course, but some didn’t want to leave Nepal hoping that the Bhutan government would take us back to our motherland, Bhutan. We chose to come to the USA and we made a good choice as everyone in my family believes. Just because we made it to a better place doesn’t mean that life is good and I can fold my arms and just do nothing. My parents expect big things of me and I have to live up to those expectations. But certainly life is easier and the education system is better. I have to become someone just for the fact those terrible things that had happened to my family and the others as well. I hope all the Bhutanese people fulfill there dreams and do something in life because we do have the opportunities we lacked back in Bhutan and Nepal, here in the USA. Lets go catch our dreams.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 01:02:42 +0000