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BNKS Wish List

On Nov 23, 2001 I went to the school for SEBS/FOBS/BNKS meeting. Rabindra 255B, Dilli Ram Chaudhary (SEBS Guest) and myself stopped by various departments to jot down their “Wish List”. If you are interested in helping to meet their wish( partially or in cooperating with other donors) list you can contact us at sebs@sebsonline.org or call SEBS office in Nepal at 411390. Here is our summary report.

School Gate Security: The moment one enters school gate, it’s hard, if not rare to escape the security guards. Few old timers are still around, but no exception was granted to both SEBS presidents in the visitor log in policy. It was tighter than US Airport security (no body search was conducted). Their only demand was that of universal in nature. Better pay.

Som Singh: Next person I met was ever smiling, ever hard working Som Singh dai. He is the equivalent of boxer in the book “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. I always make an extra effort to meet him every time I visit school and slip out some money from my pocket into his to let him know, even after so many years I truly appreciate his dedication and service for the school. His demand, “School needs a new bus”. He said he is tired of fixing famous Ashok Leyland’s dark pinkish bus with plate Ba Ek Ka 1170, which he believes has already lived 2 lives. Has been repainted over 15 times already and it’s fume along is enough to pollute the KTM valley. BTW Ganesh dai has retired, Mingma dai and the other driver dais are still around.

School Clinic: After matron Mrs Rai left in 94 (she is in Washington D.C. and organizes dinner meets for SEBSers once a year), Mrs. Prajapati took over the clinic. Mrs. Lama is still helping students in clinic. Little restructuring has occurred in clinic. Ground Floor Ward is for boys and the new first floor ward is for girls. School has started tracking it’s common disease in an annual basis. Following are the STATs of number of cases reported in 2055/56 B.S.

Fever – 290, Typhoid – 65, Diarrhea – 20, Leg/muscle Sprain – 20, Tonsillitis – 15, Trauma/sports injuries – 10, Pharynxitis – 10, Mumps – 8. Others include: Chest infection, black out, hepatitis, fracture, appendicitis, cellulites, URTI, UTI, Eye Infection, Ear Infection, asthma etc. I was kind of surprised that ubiquitous “chicken pox” of our time was not reported.

I also met, 071C Anurag Baral and 083C Nitish Karki while ringing bell in the house master’s door in Makalu house. Upon my inquiry, Anurag told me he has tooth-ache and was wanting to take a leave permission to go to KTM and be with parents. I told him to go to the clinic and be treated. He gave me a classic answer, “Clinic ma je dhuke pani khali Cetamol dincha”. Indeed Cetamol has become a panacea for all ills in BNKS. Cetamol legend continues.

Wish list of Clinic:
1. Light Aluminum Stretcher – 2 (current ones are made of iron and weighs about 30 kilos so one has real difficulty in carrying a injured patient all the way from the houses/sports fields to the clinic).
2. Sphygmomanometer (or commonly know as Blood Pressure unit) – 2 sets. Current one is pretty cumbersome. I got my BP tested for free and was well within the range.
3. Nebulizer – These are artificial steamer that helps people with Asthma to breathe properly.
4. Solar Geyser – Clinic urgently needs one because the old solar heater is very unreliable in clinic. Since winter was approaching Mr. Lama was worried that sick students may not be able to take shower and the matron may not be able to sanitize some of the equipments used.
5. Big Thermos Flask- 1 For continuous hot water for Horlicks etc.
6. One file cabinet to keep students records.

One thing they did not mention but I saw a great need of was a regular dentist who would clean their teeth every six months. In fact a dentist in BNKS do pretty well and cover the entire Narayanthan as well. So there is a need for full-time dentist/dental clinic in BNKS. There is also a need for psychologist/ social counselor to assist students at various times.

Physical Education (PE) Department: Had a wonderful chance to meet with my classmate Krishna 270B and Man Bdr. Dai 157A, who are instructors in PE department. PE department also includes Mr. B R Maharjan (Head) (maharjanbijaya@yahoo.com) , Mr. K Adhikari and Mrs S. Bhujel.
It was a softball season, and I got struck out, while attempting to play with bhai/bahini’s from class 8. It’s been almost 10 years since I had last touched the batch in O-levels. Warming up was a must for everyone and both guys/girls had to take 2 laps upon arrival. We witnessed A1 warm ups.

Wish list of PE department:

1. Indoor Multi-purpose Complex Hall (in line with SEBS/School dream).
2. Electronic Score board with 24 sec and 8 sec. clocks.
3. Fiberglass (transparent) basketball back board (only Lincoln School has one).
4. Touch sensitive electronic start and stop watch for swimming and for tracks.
5. Start Guns/ Speakers/ Electronic timer clocks for tracks/swimming.
6. Softball gloves (leather)/bats (6 - aluminum) and base/home base – 2 sets
7. NBA/FIBA rule-book on Basketball.
8. Most up to date rule-books on Soccer, Basketball, Softball, Gymnastics and other sports (Man Bdr. dai says they badly need it).
9. As many VHS tapes, books, CDs as possible of How to Play - Basketball, Soccer etc that can be used for training.
10. Bull dozer service to level the bottom pitch.

Computer Lab: School computer lab looked really impressive. Resembled my own College’s lab in Ohio Wesleyan University. It has 35 PII stand alone Desktops. Mr Mukunda Amgain (mukundajee@yahoo.com) has done an excellent job of maintaining the lab and teaching Computer Science to students. Raby 255B taught Pratikshya 824C bahini (a full-scholarship student from Palpa) of class 6 on how to use various edit features of Word program. Following is an excerpt (modified for grammar and spelling) of Dec 3, 2001 e-mail I received from Mr. Amgain.

I was very happy to know about many new ideas for the betterment of our school's IT sector. It is very difficult to make the School Management invest in the IT field here. Although we have done a lot in the past 2 years, there’s much more these students deserve and can be done. Due to financial difficulties management has not been able to invest and update as I have wished. If you could make some arrangement on behalf of SEBS it would be very big investment in future SEBS members, IT sector and the school itself.

Currently we have 35 P II computers in our lab. We are in need of the following items and have been relentlessly requesting the management to no avail. Any assistance through organization, private donors, parents and FOBS would be much appreciated.

Our Wish list is as follows:

1. HP Laser Printer – 1
2. LCD Mutimedia overhead projetor with Laptops (optional), which will aid in teaching the whole classroom at once using big screen instead of approaching individual computers.
3. UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) to cover all computers and prevent it from sudden loss of power. Need about 3 units.
4. Any educational software Science, language, Math, Stories etc., will be much appreciated. This should be an on-going project.
5. Any hardware that can help Network these computers.
6. Phone line for Internet access – Currently only library has Internet in school for everyone’s use. So only teachers can use it. Students rarely have access to it. If we have a new phone and lease an ISP and introduce DSL, all these 40 computers and be plugged real time to the World Wide Web. Imagine the difference this would make in their lives.
7. Scanner – 1

Eventually we need to make computer lab in every houses with about 8-10 computers and have T1 connection. Students will have faster and easy access from their own house’s and will make a REAL difference.

School Library: Meet with Mr. Kamal Ghimire (Yogi) kpg37@yahoo.com , Ms. Subdhara Pradhan and<