Lowell Whiteman School

India - Sikkim

My home-stay mother’s name is Laden Sherpa, she is 24 years old. When I asked her what her job is she plainly said, “housewife”. Laden’s home is large and new in comparison to other homes in Damthang, she takes pride in it. Everyday Laden swept the floors and she cleaned the stove after cooking anything. The mornings when Laden dressed her son, Pintshu, in his school uniform she was sure he was clean and impeccably presentable. The most important thing in Laden’s life was her family and home.
The first day I spent with Laden it was just the two of us. After I got settled into my room I went into the kitchen where she was serving immensely large piles of rice to some of the men helping with our bathroom project. After they finished eating and she began to wash the dishes Laden asked me if I did the dishes at home. I told her about my home and my mother. Laden wanted to know everything she could about my life in America, she wanted to teach me about hers. She and I went through the Nepali phrase book and she taught me pronunciations and asked me to correct her english. She also wanted to know what I cooked at home. I explained my kitchen with a fridge, a four burner stove, and an oven. She questioned why we have so much more than we need and wondered how we keep it all clean. I asked her about a bumpy cucumber-looking vegetable and she took it and cooked it for me, she called it karela. It was nearly inedibly bitter. Laden said that all good mothers feed their kids karela, her mother taught her how to cook it. Later in the week Laden had some young neighbor girls over and she taught the girls, Maddi and I to cook a traditional food called momo. She is proud of her family recipes and she said that she hopes to have a daughter someday so she can teach her to cook. Tradition is important to Laden. Laden takes pride in her cooking because it’s part of a self image that she works to keep up for herself and her family.
Also on the first morning of the home stay Laden told me that she wanted to fix my hair (it was a tangled nearly dreaded mess). She brushed it out and put it in a pony tail, “just like mine but shorter” she said. Laden told me it was important that her home and family were respectable, she said her mother taught her this. Later in the week we went to see the statue of the Guru Padmasambhava and Laden got all dressed up to go, she wore nice clothes and combed Pintshu’s hair. Laden works hard to Mother a nice family and keep a tidy nice house, she talked a lot about how this was important to her culture and parent’s family. Laden Pintshu and his father do not dress or act very traditionally but Laden likes to keep up some culture and history in her home for Pintshu.
I met some men in Damthang that told me they are refugees from Bhutan. Taming and Sunil stopped me when I was walking downtown and they told me about how they were forced out of Bhutan because of religious and cultural segregation. They talked about their journey from Bhutan to Nepal to Sikkim and all their different refugee camps. They hope to go to America, Canada, or Australia where they would be “safe from these problems”. Since I knew nothing about problems in Bhutan, I looked online for more information. I found that in Bhutan the government is trying to create and single language and mostly single cultured country by kicking out minorities. Nearly 125,000 Lhotshampas and Sharchhops have left or been forced to leave Bhutan. One sixth of the total population had been forced out in recent years, the highest per capita refugees in the world. These men were kicked out of their homeland because their culture and history are important to them. (I got my info for this from http://www.geocities.com/bhutaneserefugees/introduction.html.)

In and around Darjeeling there is currently a movement to create a state, including Darjeeling and much of the surrounding land, that is separate from West Bengal. This state will be called Gorkhaland, named for the Gorkhas who are native to the area. The day we were in Darjeeling there was a rally to show support for the cause. All large vehicles in the city (including our bus) were “borrowed” so everyone could have transportation to the event, it was hoped that every family could send one member. The entire city was shut off for the day. That night when everyone returned from the rally I spoke to a man who had been. This man owned a store near our hotel and told me that he would sell his store if it helped the cause. I think this was a weird translation thing but he did get his point across. The self governance Gorkhaland will allow these people is an extremely important hope for almost everyone in Darjeeling. Gorkhaland is a major goal and a big part of everyone’s life. They are all willing to do all they can do to make Gorkhaland happen by 2010, their ultimate goal.