The Lhotshampas (Nepali-speaking Bhutanese) are people of Nepali descent who migrated to southern Bhutan starting in the late 19th century.
History and Expulsion
• Settlement: Nepali-speaking communities settled in southern Bhutan to cultivate land and work with the government. They were granted official citizenship under the 1958 Nationality Act.
• "Bhutanization" Policy: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bhutanese monarchy instituted a "One Nation, One People" policy to protect Drukpa majority culture. This included strict citizenship laws, bans on the Nepali language, and mandatory national dress.
• Refugee Crisis: The government stripped over 100,000 Lhotshampas of their citizenship and forced them out or caused them to flee. They spent decades in UNHCR refugee camps in eastern Nepal.
Resettlement and Diaspora
• Third-Country Resettlement: Starting around 2007, more than 100,000 of these refugees were resettled globally through the United Nations, with the majority moving to the United States (including notable local communities in states like Ohio and Minnesota), as well as Australia, Canada, and Europe.
• Identity: Many Bhutanese individuals in Western nations identify strongly with or as Nepali because of their shared ancestry, language, and years spent growing up or living in refugee camps in Nepal.
Life in the eastern Nepal refugee camps (such as Beldangi and Sanischare) for nearly two decades was a complex mix of harsh physical restrictions, structured international aid, and an extraordinarily resilient community.
Camp Conditions
• Densely Packed Infrastructure: Over 100,000 refugees were housed across seven primary camps in thousands of tightly packed bamboo and plastic huts. The close proximity created a vibrant neighborhood feel but also presented significant fire and safety hazards.
• Meager Rations: The United Nations World Food Programme distributed strict food allotments. Baskets primarily consisted of rice, lentils, sugar, salt, and vegetable oil. Fresh vegetables, fruit, and meat were rare luxuries. Many refugees supplemented their diet by taking under-the-table labor jobs nearby.
• Resource Deprivation: For most of their duration, the camps operated without electricity or indoor running water. Early years were plagued by major disease outbreaks like scurvy, beriberi, and malaria before international infrastructure stabilized the environment.
• Legal and Movement Restrictions: The Nepalese government did not grant refugees citizenship or the legal right to work. They were formally restricted to the camps, leaving them entirely dependent on international aid.
The Education System
The education system is widely remembered as the crowning achievement of the camps, often recognized by the UNHCR as a global model of success.
• Refugee-Led Operations: Managed primarily by aid organizations with UN funding, the camp schools were staffed almost entirely by the refugees themselves. Educated Lhotshampas served as teachers and administrators for minimal stipends.
• High Standards and Curriculum: The schools operated primarily in English and initially followed curricula aligned with Bhutanese and Indian academic standards. Classes ran up to the 10th grade. For higher education, exceptional students sought further schooling or university placement in Nepal or India.
• Values and Equality: The schools maintained a very low dropout rate and near-perfect gender parity between boys and girls. Because many of the refugees had been expelled for advocating democratic reforms, textbooks heavily emphasized human rights, civic responsibility, and democratic values.
The "Marvels" of Camp Life
Despite the severe hardships, the community managed to build a thriving, self-sustaining society within the bamboo walls.
• Flourishing Micro-Economy: Refugees turned the camp interiors into bustling hubs of trade. They established vibrant tailoring shops, bicycle repair stands, metalworking businesses, and small corner markets to trade goods.
• Rich Cultural and Religious Life: The community preserved their heritage by building temples, churches, and shrines. Major Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Kirat holidays were celebrated collaboratively, fostering deep interfaith harmony and mutual respect.
• Social Safety Networks: The refugees organized their own internal governance, youth mentorship programs, and medical volunteer networks. Neighbors casually looked out for one another, creating an ironclad social fabric that prevented the community from collapsing under the weight of decades-long displacement.
This high level of internal education, professional drive, and community resilience ultimately became the key to their highly successful global resettlement in places like the United States.
The Architecture of the Huts
The camps were a sea of thousands of uniform, closely packed shelters. Because the Nepalese government viewed the camps as strictly temporary, refugees were legally forbidden from building permanent structures using brick, stone, or concrete.
• Building Materials: The huts were constructed entirely from organic, semi-permanent materials. The primary framework was made of split bamboo woven into walls, supported by wooden posts. Roofs were initially made of thatch or straw, which were later supplemented or replaced by blue plastic tarpaulins distributed by the UNHCR to prevent leaking during the monsoon season.
• Size and Layout: A standard hut was roughly 10 by 12 feet or slightly larger, designed to house an entire family (often 5 to 8 people). The interior was typically divided by thin bamboo screens into two or three tiny sections: a small cooking area and a shared sleeping/living space.
• Flooring: The floors were made of beaten earth. To keep the dust down and maintain cleanliness, families meticulously plastered the dirt floors with a smooth mixture of mud, water, and cow dung, which dried into a hard, clean, and surprisingly durable surface.
Construction, Maintenance, and Logistics
Building and maintaining these shelters was a constant, collective effort that required immense manual labor.
• Community "Dashain" Construction: When the camps were first established, and whenever new sections expanded, the refugees organized into communal labor teams. Neighbors helped neighbors raise frames and weave bamboo walls, transforming construction into a social event.
• The Monsoon Battle: The weather was the greatest enemy of the huts. The intense summer monsoons heavily degraded the thatch roofs and rotted the bamboo pillars. Every year before the rains arrived, families had to re-thatch their roofs, patch holes in the woven walls, and secure plastic tarps with heavy stones or bamboo poles to keep them from blowing away in storms.
• Resource Distribution: The UNHCR and its partner agencies ran regular distribution cycles for building supplies. Families received specialized tokens to collect allotments of fresh bamboo, plastic sheeting, and twine to perform their annual repairs.
Hazards and Daily Challenges
Living in a bamboo city came with severe physical vulnerabilities that impacted daily survival.
• The Constant Threat of Fire: Because thousands of huts were built touching one another, and every family cooked over open flame or small kerosene stoves inside, fire was a terrifying and constant hazard. A single spark could trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. Over the decades, massive fires periodically swept through camps like Beldangi, wiping out thousands of homes in a matter of hours and forcing families to rebuild from scratch.
• Pest and Weather Exposure: Woven bamboo walls offer very little insulation. The huts became stiflingly hot in the summer and damp and cold during the winter. Additionally, the organic materials easily harbored pests, including rats, mosquitoes, and occasionally dangerous snakes that crawled in from the surrounding tropical forests.
• Lack of Privacy: The thin, woven bamboo walls provided visual screening but zero acoustic privacy. Conversations, crying babies, and daily family arguments could easily be heard by neighbors on all sides, forcing the community to develop a high degree of social tolerance and collective understanding.
Camp Conditions
The Education System
The "Marvels" of Camp Life
The Architecture of the Huts
Construction, Maintenance, and Logistics
Hazards and Daily Challenges