I meet my refugee family.

The only background you need is that I've become an official volunteer with the Twin Falls Idaho refugee program. I find it surprising and unexpected that this most sheltered of places has opened its doors to people from all over the world. And also, I sometimes feel a misfit here, too, so why not seek out the company of other aliens?

The volunteer organizer, Michelle, set up a meeting with a refugee family, and all she really told me was that they were Bhutanese. All I really knew about Bhutan was that it is near Nepal and Tibet, and it measures its "Gross National Happiness." I was expecting an Asian-looking family, Buddhist, maybe with prayer flags hanging over the door.

When I knocked on the door of the small brick apartment, a smiling man with coriander skin and large black eyes answered it. His two children, thin and glossy-haired, showed obvious excitement to meet me. His wife came out of the kitchen with a cup of chai for me, wearing jeans, a string of beads around her neck, and a bindi on her forehead. Hmm? They didn't match my conception of "Bhutanese." How do I even have a conception of Bhutanese? I asked, actually, if they were Nepalese, meaning if that was their ethnicity. Michelle explained calmly, but clearly, that they were Bhutanese but had been in a refugee camp in Nepal. On the drive home, I thought about how excited I was to meet them, but it was tinged with just a little of, "I wanted them to be Buddhist."

Which got me to thinking, and Googling. The truth, I learned, is that there are basically two Bhutans. One is Buddhist, and Asian, and wears the woven robes of the Asian steppes. And the other is Hindu, and Indian/Nepalese, and, incidentally, was kicked out of Bhutan almost twenty years ago by the government. Basically, it was an ethnic cleanse without the killing part--they just made life miserable until all the "Lahtshampas" (it means "southern-dwellers"--most of the Hindu/ethnically Indian population lived in the south) left. They ended up in refugee camps in Nepal, and then followed meeting after meeting after meeting between the Nepalese and Bhutanese governments, with Bhutan sticking to the line that they had simply deported illegal immigrants, and that anyone else who left the country did so of their own accord. Nepal refused to patriate the refugees. Bhutan refused to let them come back. Meanwhile, for seventeen years, they've been living in huts and cooking UN rice and waiting. 107,000 of them. The children of my refugee family were born in the refugee camp. Their parents may have met and married there.

Meanwhile, Bhutan is treated pretty well by the world media. On my first Internet search, I kept finding photos of Bhutan's young king, who was educated at Oxford and Wheaton college, of all places, and who has gained the media nickname "prince charming." The country has its own website, with glowing descriptions of its rich culture, traditional dress, and high quality of life. But that idyllic and, frankly, homogeneous picture has been created by kicking out an ethnic minority that made up about a sixth of the population.

Well, anyway, it's just another story of majority versus minority, right? They're pretty common. Meanwhile, here is this family, kicked out of one place because of their ethnicity and culture, because they were different, now placed in a country where their differences stick out even more. And I can't help but wonder if they will feel freer here to keep their own culture and traditions, their own identity, or if they will "Americanize" to the point that Bhutan will seem like a dream they had a long time ago. And if they do stick to their identity, will they always be lonely here? They have been in America exactly two months. They look healthy and happy, their children especially are bristling with the excitement of this new adventure. The full reality of their past is unknown to me, and their future is unknown to anyone.

Well, here goes.