Just call SRJC Little Nepal
Left to right, friends Rajeev Singh, Rupesh Singh and Binod Sherpa, all Nepalese students at Santa Rosa Junior College, jam together at an apartment in Santa Rosa Wednesday.
BETH SCHLANKER/THE PRESS DEMOCRATPublished: Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 6:11 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 6:11 p.m.
The scene at Samir Shrestha's Santa Rosa apartment Wednesday afternoon seemed straight from the American college experience - twenty-somethings playing guitar and singing under a tie-dyed banner.
The details, though, were pure Nepali from the words in the folk songs to the mixed shrine of Buddhist and Hindu icons in the corner. Even the tie-dye featured the “aum” symbol, the sacred sign of the two religions.
“That's part of our routine,” he said. “We sing almost every day.”
There was nothing usual about the gathering, though. Nepali students are a growing chorus in Santa Rosa where many come to study at Santa Rosa Junior College.
Last fall, there were 34 Nepali students at SRJC, by far the largest contingent of the school's recognized international students. The next largest group - Chinese - had just 12. Final totals for the current semester are not in, but the Nepalese will continue to make up the largest percentage of international students.
It's a sizable block that surprises even many at the college. SRJC does little to recruit international students, let alone those from the small country sandwiched between China and India, best known as the birthplace of Buddha and the home of Mt. Everest.
The reasons boil down to SRJC's solid academic reputation, and the fact that the Nepalese tend to follow other Nepalese, the students said.
“The main thing we think about is ‘Do we have a friend there?',” said Shrestha, who arrived at SRJC in 2008 and soon hopes to bring his girlfriend. “The chain goes on and on and on.”
Every chain has a beginning, and for the Nepali students at SRJC, that beginning is Direk Shrestha — no relation to Samir — who stumbled across the college a decade ago.
In the late 90s, Direk Shrestha was a teenage rock-and-roller with a taste for bands like Metallica, Nirvana and Deep Purple. He wanted an education, but also a place to party.
Internet access, however, was then mostly limited to email in Nepal and he chose a school — Pacific Union College in Napa County — because he knew someone who attended there and because it was in California.
“I was expecting the college would be like I had seen in Hollywood movies,” said Direk Shrestha, now an executive in his family's publishing business and a popular musician, reached by phone in Kathmandu.
Instead, he found himself on a cloistered campus affiliated with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Rock and roll was out. Christian music was in.
“The friends I knew did not have a car,” he said. “I felt literally stuck.”
He lasted just a quarter. A classmate directed him to SRJC - where he found the secular mix of city and country better to his liking.
There were no Nepalis at school or in the community, he said, but owners of a local Indian restaurant gave him a temporary place to stay.
He soon bonded with his SRJC instructors, several of whom had been to Nepal and took an interest in his well-being.
“They mentored me, they encouraged me,” he said. “I really liked that.”
He started recruiting other students, first his girlfriend, who is now his wife, then others from different American schools.
The draw was multi-fold. Not only was there a growing base of Nepali students at SRJC, but Santa Rosa had started to attract the widening stream of Nepali immigrants escaping the country's volatile politics and constant strikes.
Reshma Singh, for example, transferred to SRJC in the fall of 2006 from Southwest Minnesota State, where she said there were plenty of Nepali students, but virtually no Nepali families.
But in Santa Rosa, the fledgling Nepali community gathered with students for cultural events and parties, helping new arrivals with things like renting apartments, understanding credit cards and plotting classes.
This weekend thousands of Nepalis will head to the Sixth Annual Kathmandu Fall Festival in Sonoma.
“You feel like you're at home,” said Singh who graduated in the spring and is taking a year off before transferring to a four-year university.
The weather in Santa Rosa is also much like home, albeit without summer monsoons. Nepal boasts the Himalayas and some of the harshest conditions on earth, but most of the SRJC students come from the temperate Kathmandu Valley.
“Out here, the weather, it's exactly like Kathmandu,” Singh said.
Nepalis see college as an opportunity for a good time just like American do. Samir Shrestha spent his first winter in America travelling from Santa Rosa to New York in a $1,000 Chevy Trailblazer that broke down in Wyoming, still one of his best experiences here.
But he said there's also heavy focus on studying. His father calls the school to check up on grades, he said. The cost is too great to waste the opportunity.
International students pay roughly 10 times the class fees of their American peers, no small expense for people from one of the poorest countries in the world, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, according to U.S. government statistics.
Samir Shrestha said they often get last dibs at choosing classes because they are waiting for funds to arrive.
“The biggest concern is money always,” he said.
But expect more Nepalis to come. As Shrestha says, the chain goes on and on.
“We want to be together,” said Rupesh Singh, Reshma's cousin, who also arrived in 2006. “It's like a family.”
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