Personal Narrative: Goldhap Refugee Refuge

I lived in Goldhap, a refugee camp in Nepal, for nearly half of my life; My family’s hut was bamboo wall and a thatch roof. While in Nepal, I experienced the everyday struggles of living under the threshold of poverty, sometimes eating lentil beans and rice for two of our meals, breakfast and dinner, for four to six weeks at a time. In the camp, families were granted farm land to grow food. My parents worked in fields from morning till dark, earning a dollar a day to provide a household of six with adequate food and money for education. My family was dependent on agriculture and when we had dry seasons very little food was grown, thus the community pulled together and shared food so no one went hungry. However, my community was destroyed in few hours, when the fire in the Goldhap Refugee camp in Jhapa district destroyed all 1,284 dwellings and left my family destitute. My family escaped with only a few blankets and no future in Nepal. My grandparents lived in America at that time, so in hopes of better education and more economic opportunity, we moved to join them. …show more content…
I felt I was going through toddlerhood again, learning a new language and struggling to communicate my thoughts thoroughly. Not having the words to ask my second grade teacher if I could use the restroom was embarrassing. Culturally, I felt isolated and disheartened when my family first settled here. There wasn’t the sense of community I had in Nepal. In Nepal, my parents knew almost everyone in the camp -- so adults in the community knew me, cared for me as if I was their child, and I felt accepted. In my new community I felt like I was missing a chunk of my heart. However, during elementary school, I gradually acclimated to the environment, made friends and got used to the U.S. educational