My name is Dil Darjee. I was born in Bhutan. I moved to Nepal and settled in the Refugee Camp in the eastern part of Nepal. In the camp, there was an organization who supply basic needs for the refugees.
Life in the refugee camp wasn’t good. The environment is very bad. The lots of pollution caused sick and death and there was not good medical facilities. In this situation, I spent my life for twenty years. And there wasn't chance for repatriation.
After spending several years in the refugee camp I got two options those were staying in the refugee camp or third country settlement in the eight different countries such as Canada, USA, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, UK, etc. And that was a great opportunity for me to escape from the worse environment and have a better life.
There are two organizations set up, UNHCR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and IOM (International Organization for Migration), for the third country settlements in 2007. People chose different countries for their better life but I decided come to Canada because I heard Canada is safe, peace and people are friendly. I had a family and friends who were already in Canada so I started my process to resettle in Canada.
There were different steps that I had to attend like first one is assessment in UNHCR and then in IOM. IOM called me often for verification, physical examination, preparation for flight and cultural orientation for five days. In five days I learned about how to exist in second language country. It took almost two years to get a date to leave Nepal.
Actually, I applied for PEI because my family and some of my friends were already settled in PEI. Unfortunately, I got a destination map of Moncton. So when I first came to Canada, I landed in Moncton. I stayed in Moncton around fifteen days.
When I was in Moncton my family came to visit me and it was two years since I saw them and I was really happy to greet each of them by saying “Namaste” and shaking hands. After two weeks, I moved to Charlottetown, PEI because my family and friends were in PEI and I did not want to live alone. So I moved to PEI, happy to be living together with my family and thanks to Newcomers to Canada (PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada) for accepting me. Thank you.