Web in the village

A village school reaches the internet heaven and its irrigation tank gets new sluice gates 

According to the Computer Literacy Survey for 2021 by the Department of Census and Statistics, North Central Province scored the lowest computer literacy rate in the country at 24.8% while the highest was reported, no surprise there, in the Western Province at 47.1%.  

But no one should get lulled into thinking that students in the schools in run-down sections of the cities get the short end of educational opportunities and second-hand treatment, too 

Finally, my brother successfully persuaded 20 households out of 53 in the village to have landphone connections! He even paid half of some villagers’ application fees. 

My village Maradankalla is located 6 kilometres south of Anuradhapura-Trincomalee Road (A12) above Mahakanadarawa wewa, near Mihintale in the North Central Province. But I have lived in Los aAngeles for the past 43 years. During all these years, this village is where my heart has been.   

Although the history of Maradankalla spans centuries, it was not on the map of the country until 1947 when its elders built the one-room school hoping the government would hear about it and step into support. Soon after it was built, the small wattle and daub schoolhouse got space for the village on the maps that came out later. In the same year, the Anuradhapura Madya Maha Vidyalaya was started 10 kilometres south of the Sacred City under the Central College concept of the C.W. W. Kannangara era. It remains the jewel and the axis mundi of provincial education. But as time passed, villagers realized this well-thought-of Kannangara idea helped create an educational tribal system. That’s a story for another day.   
The two tales I write below say how this small village in the backwoods of Anuradhapura District got connected to telephone landlines and Internet to its school, got two new sluice gates and a new spillway for its irrigation tank which irrigates 60 acres of paddy lands. This is an ode to all those involved in these projects discussed here.   

For A/GB/Maradankalla school, the telephone line is the instant highway to communication and the Internet heaven which most city folks take for granted. The two new sluice gates will replace leaky sluices built probably in the dinosaur age.   

Computer room at the village school waiting for the Internet

But no one should get lulled into thinking that students in the schools in run-down sections of the cities get the short end of educational opportunities and second-hand treatment, too, and use it as a defence to rationalize inequities students in village schools receive. Less than exemplary treatment of schools in poorer sections of the city is an injustice beyond comparison, and unacceptable. 
But in the village, I might add, patronized by hordes of wild elephants on a nightly basis and staffed by stellar teachers, the level of educational assistance the kids there get is so bad, that it is an unspeakable travesty and tragedy. One should not tell me otherwise. I know. Because I once lived through it!   
Until a few weeks ago, Maradankalla School had no phone landlines, therefore it was locked out of the Internet. But it has two working computers sitting in a converted classroom. Computer facilities elsewhere with every unit connected to the Internet and usually declared open with pageantry by VIPs of the Machiavellian political nobility, in a room bristling with air-conditioning and so much care, to enter them one must remove shoes to prevent dust and detritus desecrating their holy environment.   
Meanwhile, the principal of the village school sends his mandatory reports to the Kalaape (Zonal) office through his handphone, or Gedara Yana Gaman through a copy & faxing store in the town. For the principal in the city, it is so quotidian, that it only takes him a few keystrokes on his desktop computer: Disparate and separate but supposedly equal.   

According to the Computer Literacy Survey for 2021 by the Department of Census and Statistics, North Central Province scored the lowest computer literacy rate in the country at 24.8% while the highest was reported, no surprise there, in the Western Province at 47.1%. Maradankalla feels the heat of this alarming disparity. It sits in the dead centre of the North Central Province.
When education policymakers send out fiat asking students to do homework using the Internet on their handphones, they give little thought to these survey results. For convenience, these experts who devise education policies take them out of the equation. For them, the homework is for all students across the board, without caste or creed, in well-equipped schools and schools with one or two working computers in a converted classroom.   
During the COVID times, well, those few students who managed to have the out-of-production phones climbed the rocky outcrop by their village temple to do homework. They pointed the phones literally in all directions looking for good reception. The sad irony of this is that anyone who saw them would have mistaken them for looking for landmines using metal detectors!   
After the Internet crept in as an educational tool, and not having it in Maradankalla school, for a long time I wanted to do something to mollify the burden dumped on its students and teachers by this ‘fair and modern educational atrocity.’
I spoke to the principal and decided to write to government officials and private phone companies to see if they could help us build the road to the Internet here. Sadly, after introducing Internet-based pedagogical practices, Education Authorities seem to have not made any coordinated efforts to get village schools like Maradankalla connected to the wired telephone world.   
In response to our appeals, the DIALOG phone company showed its heart and worth and stepped in. A couple of years ago, they built a giant tower about 400 metres from the school hoping reception signals would improve. But the school was still out of luck as for some unknown reason, the signals were not strong enough to have a reliable and viable Internet connection to the school.   

A Pensioner’s Crusade

   
Then, in 2018, my brother T. A. M. B. Thilakarathna, a retired special education teacher, took it upon us and wrote to SLT-MOBITEL in Anuradhapura for help to get a landline rolled out to the village. We knew it was a gargantuan task, probably a request that would easily end up in the waste-paper basket. That year when I came home on vacation, I also went to the Telecom office and repeated our request.
We knew the thought of rolling out six kilometres of Coir rope was irrational and testing enough, thinking of a fibre-optic phone line even half that length connecting us to satellites many stratospheres above was beyond insane.   

But my brother, amiable, persistent and with an infectious smile at every turn, began to visit government offices in Anuradhapura looking for a solution to this problem. His milk-white fluffy beard resembling that of a Himalayan Rishi and matching moustache of a Ravana mirrored his determination for success. The unkept white band of hair on the back of his bald head danced like the tail feathers of a messenger pigeon in flight.   
Sure enough, as weeks and months passed behind him, the message he carried resonated enough, that this unassuming retiree’s frequent visits to the telecom offices must have made its administrators’ hearts soften. They listened and decided to do something about his plight. Soon, the machinery of the bureaucracy came to life, loosened their joints and Maradankalla got the ticket to its wish – a phone landline to join the Internet.   
For three weeks last month, the SLT-MOBITEL technicians and engineers worked on the construction of the phone lines. Showing his hospitality and dedication, my brother spent a good portion of his monthly retirement deposit to buy food packets daily for about half a dozen workers.   
Finally, the parents, their children and teachers got their desideratum granted. The school is now in the Internet brotherhood. I am paying its monthly Internet bills and my wife Niranjala, and daughter Mihiri have teamed up to design some ZOOM activities with the students. These gestures are not as grandiose as a parent buying a bus for a school, or a new cricket pitch in the playground, all embarrassing and shameful but commonplace now in most schools in populous areas. But at least on paper, this school seems like it is on a level playing field on the Internet. A round-the-clock air-conditioned room with new computers will complete the curve. That is another educational infrastructure matter the school must work on.   
Finally, my brother successfully persuaded 20 households out of 53 in the village to have landphone connections! He even paid half of some villagers’ application fees. That is evidence of how much interest these villagers have given a chance to better their lives. 
With the Internet, village school students will have more ways to learn about homework assignments. Villagers will have the opportunity to listen to ubiquitous religious talks on YouTube and keep up with the Teledrama parade.

These stories perhaps will no doubt become yesterday’s newspaper to many. But in my village, these are tales of life-changing moments, which they will talk about for many years to come. Each time the story is told, they will solemnly reminisce about the experience and thank those who made it happen.