Seven-year-old Sagar sits with his mother Purna in their St. Boniface apartment. Purna says her kids love going to school in Winnipeg so much they even want to go when they’re sick.
WINNIPEG - Canada is so cold, it will make you infertile.In Canada, immigrant men are sent up north to take care of the sheep.
The Biswa family: (left to right) Bal, Sagar, grandfather Suk Bdor, grandmother Suk Maya, mother Purna, father Gopal, and Tirtha moved to Winnipeg a year ago from Bhutan. (JOHN.WOODS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)
"The focus was on the children," Gopal Biswa said recently, through an interpreter. "Life would get better."
Gopal, his wife Purna, mom Maya, dad Bder, sons Bal (in Grade 5) and Sagar (in Grade 1) and daughter Tirtha (kindergarten) arrived just more than a year ago and live in an apartment in St. Boniface.
The couple wanted to be sure their children would have opportunities to learn and succeed, said Gopal.
Their family is among 200 Bhutanese refugees living in Winnipeg.
Many more remain stuck in camps.
"The government of Bhutan is not letting them go home," said Chitra Pradhan. He was one of the first to arrive in Canada in 1992. Now, he is the community's go-to guy, interpreter and president of the Nepali Cultural Society of Manitoba.
The Biswas say they have no regrets about leaving the crowded, hopeless camp. But life in Winnipeg hasn't been without its challenges either.
It's tough for them to get work, said Pradhan. They barely speak English and spent the last 20 years (in the camp) unable to farm, work for a living, get job training or get ahead in any way.
"Their skills are limited," said Pradhan. The parents and grandparents have been taking English-language classes several times a week for a year. Surrounded by other newcomers with no grasp of the language, they're not picking it up very quickly, said Pradhan.
But they persevere because they want to work.
"If you're not speaking the language, you're not able to get a job," Gopal said through Pradhan, who interpreted.
"Language is the No. 1 challenge," Purna added in Nepali.
Pradhan knows it.
One day he got a call about a Bhutanese man missing in -37 C weather.
"I was really scared," said Pradhan. The missing man had got on the wrong bus. He was found alive and well in St. James after riding the bus all day.
Other times, the challenge is conducting important cultural rites for the Nepali-speaking people in this foreign land.
"We had our first death in the community last year," Pradhan said. "I had to go to the U.S. to get a priest."
Now there are marriages on the horizon.
"I'm trying to get a minister here for two weddings."
For the children of the Bhutanese, life is less complicated. They're picking up the English language quickly because they're surrounded by English speakers all day at school.
"I learned a lot from my friends," said Bal, "and a little bit of French." The Grade 5 student attends Marion School.
The Bhutanese were warned by fellow refugees in the camp that they'd have many problems in Canada, but no one mentioned language would be one of them.
They were told Canada is so cold, their Butanese reproductive systems would seize up.
"The girls wouldn't be able to get pregnant," Purna said, through the interpreter.
"There were many more rumours. The men would be sent up north to take care of the sheep." While they were away shepherding, Canadian "men would steal their wives."
One rumour they heard through the refugee grapevine that turned out to be true was that Canada is a more welcoming place for newcomers than many countries.
"People are extremely helpful," said Purna. "They don't talk bad about people."
The Biswa family was befriended by Jeanie Dalman, who met them at a gathering at Knox United Church not long after they arrived.
She's especially close to Purna although they communicate with lots of hand gestures and intuition. Dalman has helped the family get accustomed to their new home and appliances and customs.
She's getting cakes and candles for boys who have birthdays this month. The Bhutanese don't acknowledge birthdays the way we do.
There's lots of excitement to see what blowing out the birthday candles is all about, said Dalman.
She's gone to the Biswa home to cook pancakes. The bacon served as part of a "Canadian breakfast" was a hit but the grown-ups didn't care for the maple syrup. "None of the adults like the sugar," said Dalman. "Their cooking is 10 times healthier."
The Bhutanese are used to cooking with raw ingredients and unprocessed food, she said. Members of the community try to be sure their chickens are free-range from area farms.
The elders like to watch Nepali movies when they can get them. Life could be worse.
After being pushed around and kicked off their land by the Bhutanese government, they appreciate the help Canada has offered.
"We never dreamed we'd be going to school and learning things, with the government spending so much on us and the children," said Purna.
And they appreciate Canada's universal health-care coverage. A Bhutanese family they know who settled in the United States a while back is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt after one of their children got sick, Gopal said.
His wife is thrilled with the children's school here. The refugee camp's classrooms were overcrowded with few resources and poorly paid teachers, said Purna.
"Here the kids want to go to school," even when they're sick, she said.
"It's 1,000 times better. There's no comparison."
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Why are Bhutanese folks here?
Since the early 1990s, about 108,000 Bhutanese refugees of ethnic Nepalese descent have been living in seven camps in eastern Nepal. The government of Bhutan kicked out people of Nepalese descent when it enacted citizenship laws directed against ethnic Nepalis. The laws stripped about one-sixth of the population of their citizenship and paved the way for their expulsion.
In May 2007, the Canadian government announced it would resettle up to 5,000 Bhutanese refugees over the next five years.
As of November, 2,200 have been resettled in Canada.
Sources: Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Rights Watch
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 8, 2011 B1
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