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- Tibetan Refugees Do Crafty Business in Nepal
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- Laura Spero
Sonam waits near a steep curve of highway with a backpack, while Dawa sits with a large group of Tibetan women shaded from the sun under an awning, near the hippest part of Pokhara's tourist section. Both of these twenty-somethings were born and rasied in the Tashi Palkhiel Tibetan Refugee Camp in Nepal, where their parents arrived after fleeing Tibet in 1959. Many decades later, young adults like Sonam and Dawa remain closely tied to Tibetan culture in the enclave of their permanent-looking, insular refugee camp. But they have never seen their parents' homeland and they remain equally distantanced from their host country of Nepal. Without the benefits of citizenship or a diversity of job opportunity, Tibetan refugees turn to the same industries and compete with one another for business inside their insular community.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
Sonam waits near a steep curve of highway with a backpack, while Dawa sits with a large group of Tibetan women shaded from the sun under an awning, near the hippest part of Pokhara's tourist section. Both of these twenty-somethings were born and rasied in the Tashi Palkhiel Tibetan Refugee Camp in Nepal, where their parents arrived after fleeing Tibet in 1959. Many decades later, young adults like Sonam and Dawa remain closely tied to Tibetan culture in the enclave of their permanent-looking, insular refugee camp. But they have never seen their parents' homeland and they remain equally distantanced from their host country of Nepal. Without the benefits of citizenship or a diversity of job opportunity, Tibetan refugees turn to the same industries and compete with one another for business inside their insular community.
Broadcast History
Marketplace
Transcript
[Ambi]
Early in the morning, you can find Sonam at the bus stop by a bend in the highway. He’s carrying a backpack full of jewelry, figurine buddhas, and other small crafts. When a bus screeches to a halt beside two fruit carts, a few foreigners climb out among the Nepali passengers, and Sonam strolls over, hoping to strike up conversation. If he’s lucky, he’ll make a sale. But nine other Tibetan vendors are right beside him, trying to do the same thing.
Dawa, English: Tibetan necklace, yak bone with amber.
A few miles away, Dawa sits near Phewa Lake, just behind the Pumpernickel bakery in the tourist section of the city. Sitting next to Dawa are a dozen or so other vendors, hoping that customers will wander over from the bakery or one of the nearby streets.
Sonam, Dawa and the other vendors all live in the same Tibetan refugee Camp, where Sonam says the vast majority of res...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:It has been over fifty years since a 1959 uprising in Tibet led to the exile of the Dalai Lama and the scattering of Tibetan refugees into many nearby countries. In five decades, refugees have come to include adults in their late forties who have never been to their native land—but are still not integrated into the countries where their parents settled decades ago. At one refugee camp in Nepal, a generation of young people born and raised as refugees have found that they are almost all limited to the same trade. Laura Spero takes us to the Tashi Palkhiel Refugee Camp—a neat collection of very permanent-looking homes—to purchase some souvenirs.
OUTRO:
