The teacher in the coop- a cagey affair

4 July 2008

Not everything about bird flu has been bad. A teacher in Khoma Lower Secondary School in Lhuntse has decided to live in the school’s empty chicken coop. Here, the housing crunch is for real. KUNGA T DORJI reports
“I’ll be very comfortable there,” says 25-year-old Ugyen Wangchuk. This rookie teacher has stayed the few months of his career in a rented house in Khoma village, Lhuentse, which is a good quarter-hour’s walk away from the school.

Ugyen says the distance and terrain of the path between the two places was making life too difficult for him. On nights when he was the Teacher On Duty, he had to walk home no sooner than 9:30pm; and he needed to be fearless, navigation in the darkness notwithstanding.

And he couldn’t take school work, such as the students’ homework and lessons for checking, back home. Gradually, school hours became too strenuous for Ugyen.

Unable to space out his workload and bridge the gap between where he lived and where he taught, Ugyen started weighing his limited options.

He could not move closer to the school because there simply weren’t enough staff quarters or other suitable lodgings in the school or its vicinity- until he discovered the school’s abandoned chicken coop.

The coop had been built to house a poultry farm for the school- a plan to treat the students with the occasional eggs and perhaps a chicken meal or two was abruptly shelved when the H5N1 flu broke out in West Bengal.

So Ugyen went in to inspect his new accommodation. There are two walled and roofed rooms high enough for an average man to stand in. The structure and a large open space are enclosed by a wire-mesh fence. Perfect, Ugyen said, for a bachelor and an adventurer like himself.

Without sounding boisterous but with an obvious tongue in his cheek, he said, “The room built for laying eggs is where I’ll incubate my ideas. The room for the hens is where only women will be allowed. The entire area within the fence will be my compound.” Ugyen plans to move in after the annual mid-term break. But there’s a snag. The school principal’s approval needs to be sought.

A documentary filmmaker presently visiting Khoma met Ugyen and was more than amused by his plans. “If he (Ugyen) can work better and feel more comfortable by moving into the coop, that will be a win-win situation,” the filmmaker said, with perhaps an idea for a film hatching in his head. “This just might work, no matter how ridiculous it looks and sounds.”

Ugyen has certainly flown over the cuckoo’s nest. For the moment, the coop awaits his arrival.

Ratings: 1 Star