This is a short story which I have written in story writing competition held by Central Queensland University. I won the first prize and $100 gift voucher. I was featured in CQUnivesity’s newsletter. Here is the link for the news letter

Newsletter URL: Here

Here is the story

Wireless Made It Possible

“Tikhe!”, I shouted in anger when one of my sheep was trying to bully others in the herd. It was already evening and the sun had just started to set. I slowly followed them to their pen at my house. That was my daily routine and I didn’t like it. I liked to read books. Not the school text books but those kinds of books which have interesting fantasies and imagination in it. I was not a good student neither a bad one. I had never got good in any subject neither had failed.

Once, a white man handed me a small book which had lots of sketched pictures in it. Though I didn’t understand any of the writings I really liked it. I used to see it under the kerosene lamp for hours daily. I used to carry the book everywhere. I was so much into it that I forgot to watch my sheep went into the farm. My father found out that and he thrashed me very badly. He saw the book too and tore it into several pieces. Though he used to do like that before too but I hadn’t felt that much bad before. Soon I determined that one day I would be able to get what I wanted.

I always felt bad about the condition of my village which people call it Nangi. It is located at the most remote part of Nepal where there were no telephone services, roads and electricity. As I grew younger I tend to see the problems of the people in my village clearly. I was always thinking about how could I change the way we were living. In the age of information is power, we didn’t even know what is information and why we need it. I was thinking how could I make it possible to access the information?

As I was born in Magar family I was expected by everybody to become a British Gurkha soldier. That was only the way people of my village knew how to make money. Many generations of my village were such soldiers. But I had different dream and it would be against my family to follow it. After completing my high school I became teacher so that I could do something to my society.

After few years of teaching I got scholarship at University of Nebraska at Kearney for my bachelor’s degree to study computer engineering. It was like dream come true to me. After the completion of my study I returned back to my village dreaming to change the live of my people. Soon I realized how it was hard to access information in my village. I had to walk two days to get to the nearest town to access e-mail and internet. When people of Australia knew about the situation they donated four used computers to me. But without the telephone line it was impossible to connect to the internet. I emailed to BBC about the possible solution that they could come up with. It was good to know that BBC responded with an article published. Soon many volunteers of the world were willing to help me and they suggested the plan to use wireless technology. Then test team worked day and night and finally it was successful to connect to the nearest network using microwave antenna. Soon my remote village was connected to internet. I taught computers to the students of my school. We also build library, health clinic and new class rooms. The health clinic used internet to do telemedicine. The locals saved lots of money to call their relatives using text and voice chats. The hunger of getting recent and interesting information had reduced and the new era had begun.

People recognized my effort and voted me to get the respected award of Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. I got many such recognition nationally and internationally but the thing that mattered most was the love and support of the people.

When I told my successes to my six years old daughter she replied, “Please, buy me a candy.”

The Actual Story URL: Here