ABDF

Naduvil, teacher and extreme gardener.

Meet Naduvil Thamby Konesarajah.

Naduvil is a teacher at Kaluwankerny Vidlayalam, where ABDF.org constructed a computer lab.

Naduvil is 38 years old, married, and has an 8 month old little boy. He hails from the nearby small village of Vathrumoolai, where his family has lived for generations. He’s been teaching at Kaluwankerny for 10 years, teaching Agricultural Studies in the 10th and 11th grades. The study of agriculture is vital to Kaluwankerny, as those who are not engaged in fishing are farmers. He himself studied Agriculture at the prestigious School of Agriculture at Kundesala in the central city of Kandy, which was a Royal Academy during the British colonial period.

His interests in various aspects of agriculture extend to Nadurvil’s spare time. His family owns a small farm on the outskirts between Kaluwankerny and Vathrumoolai, where he experiments with growing natural herbal medicines in an organic environment. He says that sometimes he’s successful, sometimes not. At home for leisure he breeds and/or grafts flowering plants. A plant-man, to be sure.

Naduvil is extremely excited about the recently completed computer lab at Kaluwankerny School. As a teacher, he has already used the internet to research extra materials for his class, as well as look up updated information. His text books, he explained, are mostly from the 1970s and 80s. He reports that other teachers too have been using the computer, both for the internet and to help write and print classroom materials, such as tests (our condolences to the student body!). Of course, the students have been taking up most computer time during school hours, so teacher access is mostly confined to after the students go home.

Naduvil smilingly also admits to using the computer lab internet to help him with his organic farming and, in one case, to order seeds for a flower difficult to find in Batticaloa District. OK, so strictly speaking it’s not official business use, but ABDF.org says: “You go!”