Saturday, June 2, 2012

All is Not Well.

All is not well in the broading kitchens! For one, hostel mess is alarmingly dirty. But dirt is not what annoys most of the Principals. What annoys them is when they are burdened with swollen legs.
And now more students have complained of swollen legs. Much to our surprise, it is nothing to do with elephantiasis. Doctors in the eastern dzongkhags had made their message crystal clear that students do not meet RDA(recommended dietary allowance). In simple words, our students are being fed with food from the school mess that is devoid of sufficient nutrition for a healthy living. The MoE have been trying to integrate new schemes to cover up the embarrassment before it becomes national shame. Few months ago the hon'ble Sherig Lyonpo emphasised the need to increase the students' monthly stipend while the Jury needed more proof . I can give proofs to mathematical theorems but a proof for deficient nutrition? I tell you, anyone who could convince DPT about the urgent need to increase students' stipend would virtually reserve Sherig Lyonpo's berth for the next election.
As a student, most of us do remember how hard life was especially in a boarding school. I still remember how carefully i would use my right hand to hold my big steel Thali(!) while my left hand would dexterously make another wall around the rim of that Thali so that every single grain of rice dropped in my plate! We survived on buckwheat broods during lean periods. But not a single student died of hunger or dehydration.
Comparatively, human body is quite complex to fully understand. It needs all the available carbohydrate, proteins, minerals and vitamins for proper growth. Often, we supplement it in the form of iron tablets, vitamin tablets, calcium tablets..blah blah. And yet still, we discover each passing year, we have been poorly feeding our body.Big mouth! lol
Well, for a healthy body, truth be told, demands are high. You need proteins, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, fibres etc and these foods do not come freely from WFP programme.:)
 Despite low GDP,Bhutan still towers in the "most happiest" countries in the world and this gives us reasons to celebrate notwithstanding how poorly our people take their daily meals.
So, are we poor? Once,I asked this query to Choden and she thought i was kidding with her. For her, poor means India and Africa but not Bhutan.:)

3 comments:

  1. I wonder what is there in our Lenpo's mind. Is he really thinking about it? Hats off to our politicians, they are smarter than Indian Politicians.

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  2. Remember our old days in Zemgang HS.Meals were awfully terrible. Kharang and potato soup in lunch, and limited amount of rice in dinner made our days. After whole night fast the little break fast hardly filled our stomach.We may have suffered multivitamins defiencies a lot more times. No wonder why bhutanese students are dull and pathetic looks.
    Recently, a year back i have treated 26 students for vitamin deficiency swollen legs in Chapcha HS.
    As a science teacher, I think you can also create awareness to this issue, and you can recognize symptoms of beri beri, scurvy, anemia..hoina..and treat them...

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  3. Sonam, thanks for visiting me. you always surprise me by reading all those craps:). As for doc Tshering, i appreciate ur concern. Hope we overcome this burden sooner than expected. Cheers.

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