Lo Nyamship Association USA Inc.
Lo Nyamship Association USA Inc. is a 501c.3. non-profit organization which was established in 2014 to restore and revive, preserve and promote the rich and ancient culture, heritage and faith of Lo people as well as to address and fulfill the needs of its members in the diaspora. A significant and growing Lo diaspora community now exists in New York City, especially in the Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights neighborhoods of Queens, where the community is working simultaneously to maintain its traditions and adapt to American life. Prior to their arrival in the United States,
Most Lo people were subsistence farmers and animal herders (yaks, sheep and goats, horses) who also practiced regional trade in the winter, traveling to urban Nepal and cities in northern India in the winter to engage in the "sweater trade," buying and selling clothing. Today, most Lo people in the diaspora are working in New York's service sector " women as nannies, housekeepers, and nail technicians, and men working as construction workers, taxi drivers, or at restaurants and hotels. The youngest members of the community are studying in New York's public schools and more than 50 Lo children are now attending a weekly language and culture program run by the community. Cultural traditions and the broader social structure in the United States and in Lo (Mustang, Nepal) are very different. Members of our community realize that we must come together to support each other in times of happiness and suffering, from marriages and the birth of children to experiences of financial hardship or death of loved ones. Lo-Nyamship serves this purpose. Not only do members of this organization plan community programs and events " including those that mark important cultural celebrations like Losar, lunar new year " but we also help each other navigate the challenges faced by many immigrant communities. In this way, Lo-Nyamship has adapted our age-old traditions of social support and community networking to meet the needs of our people today. We are finding pathways forward as new Americans and as people whose heritage remains central to our sense of identity and belonging, in New York and in the world. Although Lo-Nyamship has existed as an association since 2014, and is serving approximately 900 community members, until recently we have not had our own physical space in which to carry out our mission. Since then, the association's past and present board members and the general community have worked hard to make our dream of owning a community center a reality. In December 2020, after many years of internal fundraising, sacrifice, and saving, our community members purchased a $3.8 million building in Woodside " the new home of Lo-Nyamship.
The fact that we were able to purchase this building, even while our community was suffering physically and emotionally through the Covid-19 pandemic, and struggling financially due to the pandemic's economic effects, is remarkable. We did not give up our vision. Community members made significant personal contributions, sometimes even on a monthly basis, to support the purchase of this space. In fact, while many other Himalayan New Yorkers have similar visions for their own communities, only two other such spaces exist in the greater New York area, the Tibetan Community Center in Woodside and the Sherpa Monastery in Jackson Heights. However, these represent much larger groups of Himalayan people than the Lo community. Our success in purchasing a building shows that the people from Lo are united. There is a lot of trust and love for each other. Still, we have much work to do, both in renovating the building that houses our center to more fully meet our community's needs, and to continue the traditions that have made this accomplishment possible. This is critically important because, ultimately, this space and its mission must be stewarded by the next generation: Lo (Mustang) Americans. We want to make sure that our language, culture, and traditions do not vanish. We see this danger not only in the context of America, but also back home in Nepal, given the challenges of life there, including access to education and the impacts of political and economic instability as well as outmigration. Central to all of this work is our capacity to keep speaking our language, a variant of Tibetan that is unique to our region. Another priority is to care for the elders of our community, and to allow these older generations to be supported and enjoy their retirement. Now and in the future, the younger generations are busy with education and work, traveling along the path of the "American dream" in their own way. Parents and grandparents are also migrating from Nepal to New York, and they need a space to get together, engage in religious practice and basic exercise, to share meals and keep each other company.
This is another goal of Lo-Nyamship: to provide such activities and services on a daily and weekly basis for the older generation. Finally, the purchase and eventual renovation of our own physical center will allow us to celebrate our annual traditions (like Losar and other festivals specific to Lo) and life-stage moments like marriages, weddings, birthdays, and retirement parties in our own space, without having to rent such places from other organizations. It will also allow us to host events open to the wider Himalayan New York Community, celebrating the rich artistic, musical, and cultural heritage of this beautiful region of the world with New Yorkers of all backgrounds.