Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

When there's no place to call home

Bridget Clegg, For The Miami Student

(HANNAH MILLER | The Miami Student)

Young men and women in jeans, striped scarves and hooded sweatshirts gather around a coffee table with blocks that look like dominos spread out on a wooden rack like the one used in Scrabble. Others watch intently while crunching on fried pastries and sipping tea from mismatched mugs.

A silky emerald green fabric embroidered with shiny symbols rests on the couch behind them, a reminder of the reason the 15 Tibetans have traveled to their friend's house in Lexington, Ky.

It is Losar, the New Year — one of Tibet's most important holidays.

The weekend's singing, dancing and games mimic Tibetan traditions.

Sonam Tsomo did not bring her chupa, the traditional silken dress of Tibet, to Kentucky for the Losar celebration. Her dresses are wrapped in Old Navy and Dubois Bookstore bags on the top shelf of the closet in her room in Candlewood Apartments.

As a 24-year-old creative writing major, Tsomo is one of the few first-years who live off campus. Her room is drenched in primary colors: a Tibetan national flag on one wall, a homage to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on another and prayer flags draped across it all.

The decorations represent Tibetan culture, but for Tsomo this is not home.

Home is continents away in a place with sights, sounds and smells Tsomo has never experienced. Home is Tibet and home is unreachable.

Tsomo's temporary home, albeit the one she has lived in her entire life, is a tiny village tucked into the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains.

Visitors know Bir, India as a beautiful spot to paraglide, but residents see it as a consolation prize. The land was given to Tibetan exiles as an act of reverence to His Holiness from the Indian government. The mountains enclosing the village, however, serve as a constant reminder of the unanswered questions on the other side.

Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter

Bir is the place where Tsomo's five brothers, five sisters, seven nephews, three nieces and one mother live. It is three hours away from Dharmsala, where Tsomo studied Tibetan history, grammar, poetry, Buddhism and handwriting at the Institute for Tibetan Dialectics.

It is the place to which her parents fled 50 years ago, before her father died. Bir is near the city where Tsomo and her family go to get their passports renewed each year — not as citizens, but as refugees.

It is in India and it is not Tibet.

Tsomo competed with six of her 300 classmates at the Institute for a full scholarship to Miami University. With leading Test of English as a Second Language (TOEFL) scores, Tsomo found out in July that she was headed to Oxford, Ohio in August 2009.

She boarded a plane for the first time and took a 14- to 17-hour flight to the United States.

Her first attempt at living on her own, without her family in Bir and her family of friends in Dharmsala, is not without struggle.

"Everything is so big and you have to manage by yourself," Tsomo said.

Tsomo landed at an apartment complex further off campus than most. She moved in with a graduate student from Florida named Stephanie who likes contemporary show tunes and movie posters. Before she can hang the photographs of her boyfriend Tsering, the only thing vaguely familiar about her new home is the questionably authentic Indian restaurant

glowing neon red across the street.

"At first I feel lonely and alone," Tsomo said. "It's hard to make friends here. I've noticed Miami students are really conservative, so it's hard.

Although she has befriended a few international and PhD students, Tsomo finds a gulf between her and the students from China. She knows the Chinese government is destroying her homeland — not the Chinese people — but the misunderstanding remains.

Her Tibetan pride is lost in a sea of Miami students oblivious to the cultural genocide, and stifled by Chinese students' underlying assumptions.

Tsomo channels her feelings of alienation into writing, maintaining a blog called "Dreaming Tibet" and hoping to teach the world about her nationality. Her poem "Mistaken" articulates what the reserved young woman says with tears in person.

"I know if I wish I can pretend to be someone else, something that is not ‘Tibet' maybe I will get more friends, but I can't even think of it," Tsomo said. "I have to make people to think that ‘Tibet exist' and ‘I exist.' I have my own identity, my own culture, my own language, that I will always be proud of."

With the Miami organization Students for a Free Tibet, Tsomo works toward increasing awareness of Tibetan issues in the Oxford community. The group's president Colleen Payne and 10 or so other students, most of whom studied in Dharmsala during the summer, celebrate Tibetan holidays, distribute information on the human rights violations in Tibet and recognize the Tibetan People's Uprising Movement's 10th of March protest

Payne said Tsomo's presence has strengthened her belief in the organization.

"Sonam has been an amazing resource for first-hand information, experiences and stories about the challenges and successes of Tibetans trying to maneuver life outside their native country," Payne said. "For me personally, she is a tangible reminder of why we're doing the work we are doing and the people in India and Tibet that we're hopefully helping in some little way."

The faculty adviser Deborah Akers softly denies the polarizing effect of the word "Tibet" and promotes the group instead as a cultural experience.

"The focus is really on the culture side, so it's not aggressive, it's not hostile, it's not politicized," Akers said. "It's just about the culture. It's just about spreading awareness about the issues."

Tsomo hopes His Holiness' (the Dalai Lama) visit this fall will educate Miami students on Tibetan issues. Following her political and spiritual leader's examples, Tsomo aspires to document the Tibetan life, writing or making documentary films about the journey of her family and friends.

"I'll try to convey the message about how we live and how it feels to live there as refugee; the feelings of being exiled, the feeling of not seeing your country," Tsomo said. "If I make a film or write a book, I should convey the message to the world."

It then depends on the world to act on that message and to connect Tsomo to the place she claims is home.