Jordan, home to a battling Nepali community
Once their fathers fought for the British as Gurkhas. Now, members of the city's Nepali community are fighting poverty and low expectations
Tourists and shoppers throng Nathan Road. But life is very different in the densely populated blocks down to the site of the former Jordan Road pier. In the day, elderly Chinese men lean on their canes, sitting in Jordan's small public parks, while shrieking children play. At night, as the market stalls and start to close down, and the traffic on the overpasses slows to a dull hum, the local Nepalese community, one of the fastest growing minorities in the city, moves into the parks and street corners.
Sameer and his friends are drinking, smoking and joking around while others huddle in the shadows, doing drugs they dole out of small plastic bags.
"We are here every day after work," said Sameer, a 16-year-old Nepali who has dropped out of school and works at his parents' roadside snack shop. "It's all right."
It is a scene that Martin Radford, director of Inner City Ministries, described as a gangland. "Drug addiction is very high. Young men can quickly become a part of gangs and there is gang rivalry that occasionally spirals into violence," says Radford, who runs tutorial and vocational programmes for ethnic minorities. "It's something to do; it gives them a sense of belonging and sense of status as well as protection," he said .
Most of the Nepalis are the children and grandchildren of Gurkha soldiers, fierce fighters who served the British Army from 1814. In 1948, after Indian independence, the British sent the Gurkhas to the New Territories, where they carried out security duties and border patrols.
