Untitled Document

Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
January 26, 2003, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: CITY WEEKLY; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 673 words

HEADLINE: CITY WEEKLY / SOMERVILLE;
A BRIEF AFFORDABILITY, AND CLUSTER PLANNING, LED TO TIBETAN ENCLAVE

BYLINE: By Lesley Bannatyne, Globe Correspondent

BODY:
Sonam Dorjee's house looks much like the others on his quiet East Somerville street. Step inside, and you're transported to a faraway place: seven polished metal bowls filled with water share an altar with candles and incense burners. Wood carvings edge doorways draped with gorgeous fabric. On one wall hangs an enormous black and white photograph of a young Dalai Lama - his ingenue shot, jokes Dorjee - taken in 1959, the year he left Tibet during a violent Chinese military occupation. Dorjee's family followed, fleeing their homes to new lives in India.

Thirty years later, he made another life-altering move.

Dorjee was one of 1,000 Tibetans granted special visas as part of the 1990 U.S.-Tibet Committee and Resettlement Program, legislation spearheaded by US Representative Barney Frank and Senator Edward M. Kennedy. About 90 Tibetans originally were sent to the Boston area; there are now 368, nearly half of whom live in Somerville.

"I thought I was in heaven," says Dorjee, recalling his first impression of America. "It is quiet here, peaceful." Compared with India, he reports, Boston drivers are calm and reasonable. "In India there is so much noise, too many drivers honking their horns, everybody elbowing. Here, and this is very important to me, people see each other. They take turns."

The growing enclave of Tibetans in Somerville exists largely because many found affordable housing here 10 years ago.

"We lived in a house in Davis Square when we first came," says Dorjee. "We didn't have our families with us, so we shared. We ate all together. Then my family came and I bought this house."

Now he spends time searching East Somerville - what he considers the city's last hope for reasonable real estate - for properties for his Tibetan friends. Some now live directly across the street from him; others around the corner. Businesses have grown up around them - Tibetan herbal healers, restaurants, and craft stores and resources such as the Sahngha Tibet Center, which offers classes in language, calligraphy, meditation, and Tibetan Buddhism.

Dorjee's success, and that of other Tibetan immigrants who've been able to buy homes and bring their families to America, is due in no small part to the design of the resettlement program.

"There was a feeling then that people should migrate in clusters to preserve their language and culture," recalls Tim McNeill, CEO of Wisdom Publications and one of the volunteers for the resettlement program in Boston. "And we looked for communities . . . where there'd be empathetic volunteers to support the Tibetans once they were here, to sponsor them, find them jobs." He cited Ithaca, N.Y., and Madison, Wis., as other cities chosen because, like Boston, they have plenty of college students who could be counted on to help.

McNeill sponsored Dolma Bhakro, now a Davis Square resident, who left a husband and two children behind when she received her resettlement program visa. "My first job here - housekeeping in a nursing home - I cried," she recalls. "I was born in a good family in Tibet - we had a lovely house, people worked for us." Bhakro remembers her family's flight at night and by foot over the mountains to safety in India. "But then I thought, why should I cry? Every Tibetan has suffered this. I'm lucky."

Bhakro now works as a lab aide at the Whitehead Institute at MIT; she and her family, who joined her in 1995, are looking for a house. Dorjee, an electrician back in India, works at Bread and Circus. Life for both of them now is often recognizably Western: Bhakro thinks children should have more homework; Dorjee's daughter is thrilled to be less than four hours from the nearest mall. These young people, plucked from India and dropped into American high schools, now consider this their home. But not their parents.

"I was born in Tibet," Dorjee says, "and if I could some day, I would go home. In my eyes I can see it dimly. There is peace there." He squints, as if trying to see deep into the past. "It is beautiful."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, 1. Sonam Dorjee lights a container of oil for his home altar before a wall bearing a photograph of the young Dalai Lama. To step inside his East Somerville home is to be transported to a faraway place. / GLOBE STAFF PHOTOS / WENDY MAEDA 2. Dorjee holds up a Tibetan prayer flag outside his home.

LOAD-DATE: January 29, 2003