A nurse coming down with the virus herself, an expectant mother, a public health expert putting his training to use, a teacher navigating the new world of online classes, and an amchi (Tibetan doctor) trying to help frightened patients. Lhakpa, Diki, Sangey, Yeshi, and Kunchog are just five Himalayan New Yorkers, but their stories of daily life over the last few months contain more lived experience of the current crisis than a thousand headlines and statistics.
Since March 2020, New York City has been a global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Largely unreported is the fact that thousands of Nepalis, Tibetans, and other Himalayan natives have been at the epicentre of the epicentre, living and working in the Queens neighborhoods where the virus has hit the hardest. Just launched and still evolving, ‘New York COVID-19: Diverse Diaries from a City Under Siege’ is the first concerted attempt to document the impact of the pandemic on this often invisible community.
Nearly every day since April, as many as 10 Himalayan New Yorkers from all walks of life — including Lhakpa, Diki, Sangey, Yeshi, and Kunchog — have been recording short audio-diaries from home in their mother tongues (Nepali, Tibetan variants from across northern Nepal to eastern Tibet, and Dzongkha), with English summaries added later to reach a wider audience.
This growing multimedia record — nearly 300 entries totalling dozens of hours — presents a unique portrait of the daily struggles faced by doctors, nurses, and essential workers; the immense pressures on elders, parents and children under quarantine; and the new ways that Himalayan New Yorkers are aiding not just their own struggling communities, but their neighbours and fellow citizens.
‘New York COVID-19’ is a unique collaboration between diarists committed to sharing their experiences and a distributed group of scholars who first came together in 2016 to create Voices of the Himalaya, a project documenting the extraordinary diversity and vitality of Himalayan New York through oral history interviews in a dozen languages.
Beginning with Nawang Tsering Gurung, a young social entrepreneur and community mobiliser originally from the village of Ghiling in Upper Mustang the team now brings together long-time scholars of Nepal, Mark Turin and Sienna Craig; Turin’s doctoral student Maya Daurio, herself a geographer and GIS specialist with Nepal experience; and linguists Ross Perlin and Daniel Kaufman from the NYC-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance, which is committed to supporting linguistic diversity in the city and beyond.
One of the first COVID-19 deaths in the city, on March 23, was that of Anil Subba, a Nepali immigrant and Uber driver in his 40s living in Jackson Heights. By early April, members of the Queens Nepali community alone were reporting hundreds of people seriously ill, including several needing intensive care, with the number of cases still growing rapidly. At the same time, the Urgent Nepali Aid Network for COVID-19 was established as an early mutual aid effort, and an estimated 400 to 500 Tibetan nurses began organising for the pandemic, including many at Elmhurst Hospital, which was described as the city’s “number one priority” by NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio due to the surge of cases there.
The Queens neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona were emerging as the hardest-hit zone in the hardest-hit county in the United States, by sheer caseload, with some 13,000 confirmed cases and over a thousand fatalities recorded in a population of around 330,000 (as of 1 June). Central Queens is also among the most culturally and linguistically diverse urban areas on Earth, and includes one of the largest Himalayan communities outside of Asia.
As the disproportionate impact of the virus in Queens started to become clear, our team responded with a plan to help ensure that the Himalayan experience would not remain invisible or be forgotten — by recording and elevating, in real time, the voices of those living through the virus. Free and open to all for non-commercial use, the audio-diaries form just one part of an emerging project which also includes 20 ethnographic interviews with Himalayan community leaders; multilingual materials relating to the pandemic and community responses; and a distinct but closely related effort to map the city’s languages.
Community members, first responders, scholars, policymakers, and the general public form the intended audience for this work — both to inform people about what is happening right now, and to increase understanding in the likely event of future public health and socioeconomic crises.
The diaries make clear that all Himalayan New Yorkers have been affected by a crisis that is more than just a virus. This is also a mental health epidemic, an economic emergency, and an ongoing and lived experience with unprecedented levels of uncertainty. With the virus finally ebbing in New York — 200,000 confirmed cases and 20,000 deaths later — the toll of COVID-19 on the Himalayan community (subsumed under ‘Asian-American’ in the public health statistics) is still unclear.
What is certain is that most people know or are related to at least one person, probably many, who have fallen seriously ill or died. As the ‘New York COVID-19’ project makes clear, many were sick and recovered at home without being diagnosed; others are uncertain whether they were ill, or may still be uncomfortable admitting it; many are still understandably anxious; and all have been affected, directly or indirectly, by the socioeconomic crisis that is unfolding in tandem with the pandemic.
Despite these challenges, the community is extraordinarily resilient — and is developing new strengths in response to the crisis. The diarists report an intensification of family and community ties and religious practices that were already strong, widespread adherence to and respect for public health measures, and creative mutual aid efforts and community responses that have included individual check-ups on the ill, internet-based programming for isolated elders, organised efforts to navigate complex government services for which little non-English language help is available, and much more.
Indeed, beyond organising and taking care of its own, Himalayan New Yorkers have been going much further in their professional roles as healthcare professionals, essential workers, and service providers as well as in their social capacities as good neighbours. Along with so much else, the diaries testify to the growing power and visibility of a Himalayan community in New York City that is now also a focal point of the global Himalayan diaspora. Have a listen.
Diki Bista (Loke), 2 April 2020, Expectant Mother
I woke up, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and did basic prayers while making water and incense offerings. I prepared breakfast, and while eating, I did a WeChat video call with my family, to where my mother is in Kathmandu. Even in Nepal, they are all staying at home.
After talking with my family, I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, cleaned the house, and did yoga for forty minutes. I also go to college, but at the moment, all the classes are online, and there are many assignments — I tried to spend an hour doing an assignment. Then I made lunch, ate it while watching a movie. I did a walk or light run inside the apartment for thirty minutes. And today I don’t have to prepare dinner because a friend living on the Upper West Side made us some delicious Newa food and came all the way to Woodside to drop it off here. I used to eat Newa food a lot with my Newa friends in Nepal but I’ve never tasted it in America.
Now when we see the news, in America, the scariest area is our area: Queens. It’s a 15-minute minute walk from our home to Elmhurst Hospital, full of patients. I can’t do anything, just stay at home and pray. Most of our Mustang people are also in this neighborhood, most of them are staying at home, watching various Dharma teaching videos and praying…
Lhakpa Dolma Sherpa (Nepali), 16 April 2020, Hospital Nurse
I work at Elmhurst Hospital, Queens, New York, as a nurse in the Medical Surgical unit. Currently I am in self-quarantine after I was infected with the COVID-19 on April 3…
Today I feel a little better, I don’t have a fever and I feel a little more energetic. The COVID-19 symptoms begin with fever, cough, and difficulty in breathing. My father lives in one room and I in the other in the same apartment, keeping social distance. During this crisis, my father has helped a lot. He always leaves a thermo full of hot water with lemon, and another with hot water with turmeric. In the morning, my father has been calling me from the door, “Lhakpa Dolma,” and then I get up and get the thermos.
Today for breakfast, my father prepared toast and eggs. I haven’t actually seen my father for many days. We always talk via phone and FaceTime. My father prepares the food and leaves it outside the door. It’s been more than 13 days that I’ve been in this room. My father and I do share the bathroom, and what I do is first put on the mask and gloves, and go to the bathroom, and clean the entire bathroom with Clorox and then come back to my room.
Every morning, I call my family: my mother, sister and her husband’s family are in California. Everyone over there is also worried about me. Every morning, we spend an hour or two together on a group video call on Instagram. I also contact my cousins and my maternal aunt, I try to contact everyone. During this self-quarantine, what I’ve realised is that we take so many things for granted…
Read also:
Overseas Nepalis on the COVID-19 frontlines, Upasana Khadka
Bhutan refugee to coronavirus caregiver, Gopal Gartoula
Yeshi Jigme Gangne (Central Tibetan), 4 May 2020, Language Teacher
I’m not feeling well, and my hair is getting longer, so I cut my hair and my father-in-law’s hair as well. While barbering, I feel a terrible stomach pain and it gets difficult to breathe too. But during this crisis, it’s scary to go to the hospital, so I tried to stay home. My wife is also not feeling well today. I don’t really know why, but it seems connected to staying at home for days on end — and it’s been seventy days that I’ve been staying at home. I’ve just gone out several times quickly to do some grocery shopping.
Yeshi’s son takes online classes.
There is the demand and desire to leave the house, but we’re stuck here out of fear. And then there’s the fluctuation in our schedules — it’s now 12 pm, and usually I used to wake up at 5 or 6 am, but now I wake up very late, and it’s not only my family, but most people are facing something similar.
Today my children were really insisting that we let them play in the backyard, but we didn’t let them leave the house and they were both screaming. For us, at least we get some fresh air from our deck, but we don’t get much sunlight. We need the sunlight on our bodies… There is a saying in Buddhism that we don’t know whether we will wake up tomorrow or not, so we have to practice Dharma today.
Dr. Kunchog Tseten (Amdo Tibetan), 7 May 2020, Tibetan Doctor
Many people in New York City are suffering from a wide range of physical and emotional conditions, exacerbated by quarantine and the ongoing pandemic. The most prominent of their complaints are anxiety, stress, and depression.
These extraordinary circumstances deprive many people of the space and time they need to sustain an exercise routine. As a result, we are hearing about muscle spasms, upper back pains, chest pain, and so on.
When they come to me looking for suggestions to alleviate these pains, I have been asking them to do full body prostrations. If the patient is not religious, they may prefer to do physical movements such as yoga.
Beyond movement, I have also been suggesting to them certain changes in their diets. For emotional problems including insomnia, it is good to take one teaspoon of nutmeg powder in bone broth before sleep.
Generally speaking, it’s not necessary to fear the pandemic in the absence of diabetes, respiratory disease, or other chronic illness. Those who are healthy and strong need not panic about this pandemic. (Of course it is important to take every necessary precaution for the sake of public health.)
Here I will share some ideas about the treatment of emotional conditions by parsing them not only as ‘disorders of the life-force wind’, as Tibetan Medicine commonly describes them, but sometimes as disorders of the phlegm, or as hidden fevers in the heart. After that I will also mention certain common formulas for their treatment…
Sangey Tashi (Kham Tibetan), 26 May 2020, Public Health Expert
Today I went to my work. It was my first day back to work after the lockdown. Every quarter we have a meeting, and today was this quarter’s. I took the subway instead of taking my car because it would be difficult to park it. In the subway, it wasn’t crowded, and I felt like it was safe since people were maintaining social distance.
My office is in Lower Manhattan and there were far fewer people around on my way there. Around 4:30 p.m., I came out of my work meeting. Usually around this time the streets would be packed due to rush hour, but now that is not the case. Quite a few people hang around the Fulton Street Station, but I saw very few of them today. Even those taking the train are all wearing masks, it’s rare to see people without one.
Read also:
Keeping our hearts open in a lockdown, Gary Wornell
Journey to the mountain of the spirit, Claire Burkert and Thomas Kelly
Recommended
Nibha Shah: Nepali poetry’s mansara October 4, 2019 Photo: MONIKA DEUPALA orn in 1971 into an aristocratic Rana-Shah…
Bina Theeng Tamang: More than a maichyang May 31, 2019 Pic: SIKUMA RAI unmaya Do you know something? These are…