A possible follow-up?

Tuesday, 27 Feb 2007 | Journal

As people were clearing out what I guess was the auditorium of the school I visited, the headmaster placed a closed envelop on the table next to my chair. Thanked me for coming to the school and for doing what I did and went on his way. I was left in the care of ‘my entourage’ and following that I was given a tour of the school ground, but I’ve covered all that before.

The letter was in Thai. A closed envelop (or present) is not something you open when it is being given to you¹ in Thailand, so I put it away and later asked someone to translate it for me. The letter was a very polite ‘for your information’, in which I again was thanked for my kind gesture. It also contained a very polite way of informing me that the only computer in the school that students could use (there was one more, I presume used by the staff for administrative purposes) had broken down about a year ago. There was no request (that would be too direct), but I was informed that the school and its students would benefit incredibly if they would have another computer. I asked Nat and she said the same was the case for the other two schools we visited.

Now, I’ve known about this project called ‘One Laptop per Child’ for a while. They are attempting to build and distribute a $100 laptop for children of lesser developed countries. It is an amazing project, for which the Thai government has shown great interest. So it might very well be that these laptops in the next few years perhaps would get to the schools in Kalasin. But there are no definitive plans for this that I am aware of.

So in the mean time, I hope I can somehow get the kids of Nong Bua Ngo access to a computer. I don’t know exactly how I will do it, it most likely will not be happening anytime in the near future. But it’s something that is in the back of my mind. And when an opportunity arises, I’ll act on it.