Growing up in refugee camps in Nepal, Bikash and Kumari Regmi didn’t know what primary care was.

Now Bikash, 33, is a primary care provider, a family nurse practitioner working in the Barneveld office of the Mohawk Valley Health System. And Kumari, 32, will become one after she passes her board examination this summer.

The couple, who came separately to Syracuse with their families in 2009, now live in Utica with their 17-month-old daughter Arohi.

“We are really proud of what we are doing and what we have accomplished in this period of time,” Kumari said.

Bikash’s family fled their native Bhutan when he was 7; Kumari’s family left when she was 6. During the first few of their 17 years in different refugee camps, there were no bathrooms. Kumari remembers the horrible smell coming from the forest that people used instead. There was no running water or electricity. People got water from the river and many children died of diarrhea and dehydration. Health care meant a small clinic in each camp that mostly handed out Tylenol, the couple said.

“I have seen the deaths of so many small children,” Kumari said. “That is why I am in health care today.”

Kumari graduated from SUNY Polytechnic Institute Friday afternoon with a master of science degree, having already, like her husband, graduated from St. Elizabeth College of Nursing and earned a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Poly. She is one of hundreds of local men and women who are graduating from local colleges this month with associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.

Some will continue their education, something Bikash and Kumari both hope to do some day, some will go to work and some will start second careers.

For now, Kumari will take a break; her second child, a daughter, is due in August, and she wants to stay home for a few months before getting a part-time job and easing into full-time work.

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