In apartment complexes on opposite sides of town, the women — one a former shopkeeper from Somalia, the other a teacher from Bhutan — waited for children to come home.
Only the teacher, Devi Gurung, was rewarded for her patience.
Outside an apartment decorated with Buddhist prayer flags, she watched as a school bus pulled up and the niece she had not seen in four years, hopped to the curb.
“I am lucky,” said Gurung, reunited with her sister’s family days earlier after spending more than half her life in a refugee camp.