LittlePurpleCow Productions

I rolled up to the unfamiliar apartment complex with a Tahoe full of boxes to meet my friend Pabitra, organizer for the Bhutanese refugee community in Atlanta. I was running late and she had a wedding reception to attend in an apartment complex across town, so we decided to just meet there. I jumped out of the car and we quickly started transfering boxes to her vehicle. I didn't want to interupt the reception and I didn't intend to stay, but... "Come in," she coaxed.

"Like this?" I asked looking down at my jeans.

"It's okay, it's okay," she fluttered. So I followed her up the steps and through the door flanked with faux flowers in clear vases and into the small space to find a beautiful young bride surrounded by her family and friends. Instantly swept up in their joy, I watched the bride and her groom (a young man she met for the first time that day as their marriage had been arranged) seated in plastic chairs receive blessings in the form of tika painted on their foreheads and rose petals placed on top of their heads. The image below shows the father and mother of the bride saying goodbye to their daughter, as she will leave them to live with her new husband and his family (a Bhutanese custom). Just minutes after this image was made, the bride and groom hopped up on the backs of two attendees and left through the front door to begin their new life together.

Quietly, she entered the kitchen to slice the apples and prepare the chai tea during my visit with the Regmi family in their home. Not long ago she and her Bhutanese family lived as refugees in Nepal. This nineteen year-old beauty clad in her skinny little jeans. A blue cell phone nestled in her hip pocket. Slipping smiles. I loved it when the ladies tried to guess her weight. This made her laugh.

"You will stay for tea?" they asked Pabitra in Napalese in the first Bhutanese home in Atlanta we visited that day. She translated the question swiftly for us.

"Oh, no, no, it's no problem. We should really go," we answered not wanting to over-extend our welcome. A flurry of words batted back and forth between Pabitra and the grandmother of the family as they pushed clothing aside to make room for us on the sofa.

"They said, 'First, you will stay for tea, then you will go,'" Pabitra explained with a smile. Of course, we should stay for tea. I took a seat on the floor in the center of the room and as the chai tea was being prepared, Craig asked the grandfather what he did for a living in Bhutan, before life in the refugee camp. At this, our new friend shared that he had been a farmer when he was a young man and explained how he had carved out steps in the trunks of trees to make it easy to climb and pull leaves to feed his cows. He talked about milking the cows by hand and tending his gardens before they were taken from him. "He is saying that it was very hard, to lose everything," Pabitra explained. "But he is happy now. To be here. To begin again."

Tilchand (age 16), the youngest of four children, with his parents in their apartment home. Until two years ago, Tilchand spent his entire life in a Bhutanese refugee camp in eastern Nepal.

"I should go with you," I said to my friend Tamar one day as she shared the latest story of her volunteer work with the Bhutanese community in Atlanta and Clarkston, Georgia. I didn't think much before the words formed the phrase and left my lips, but I knew I had to go. I had to make the time. I had to meet these gentle people, my new neighbors who spent nearly 20 years of their lives in refugee camps in eastern Nepal  — victims of ethnic cleansing in Bhutan.

Earlier this week, Tamar and I spent the day visiting several Bhutanese families in their apartment homes. They welcomed me with such kindness, serving chai tea, and sharing themselves with me. Tamar had explained to them that I was a photographer and interested to document our visit, and naturally, I was well-armed with a backpack full of heavy equipment, but I held back. It just didn't feel like the time to make images. I found that I really wanted to just be with them. To look in their eyes and ask them questions. To listen. To give them my full presence. And I learned a lot that day.

I learned that their refugee homes were made of bamboo and that the Bhutanese were not allowed to leave the camps in Nepal. I learned that it's common for several generations to live together and that small doses of income are generously shared within a family. I learned that you leave your shoes at the door and that heat is a luxury. I learned that teenagers actually love school and take great pride in teaching their parents English. I learned that Tilchand's parents married because their parents arranged the union. I learned that Buddha's male spirit can take the form of a woman when depicted visually. I learned that handmade Kudzu baskets, like the Bhutanese, are beautiful and strong, and built to endure. And I learned that this is just the beginning.