By Robin Buller 

July 29, 2022  –  In 2012, Robin Gurung left Eastern Nepal for Oakland, where he joined a community of several thousand Bhutanese refugees living in the city.

Gurung spent the first two decades of his life in a Bhutanese refugee camp. Born in 1988, he was just three years old when his family was displaced from their native country alongside 100,000 other members of the Lhotshampa minority. 

In Oakland, Gurung was encouraged by the city’s diversity. “You do feel like you’re not alone,” he said.