28.02.2008
Dhanamaya Karki from Nepal was lucky to come to the German Southwest
Dhanamaya was lucky to come to the German Southwest. (Copyright: Baden-Württemberg International)
It was only the first week in Karlsruhe that was a bit difficult. Everything was new. It was the first time that Dhanamaya had left her home country Nepal: “When I arrived at the airport, it was the first time I had ever seen a tram. I was just fascinated,” the graduate student from Kathmandu recalls. With the help of her advisers, she quickly learned how to use the electronic library catalogue and find her way around the campus “jungle”. Having lacked laptops, advanced laboratories and technical resources at her home university, she was very happy to be able to come to Karlsruhe, this excellently equipped place which has produced so many Nobel Prize Winners.
When Dhanamaya Karki was still in high school, a lecturer from Germany, Mr Arend Vrijs, came to her class and invited the students to write an essay about global warming. Since Dhanamaya’s text was one of the best, he consequently supported her studies and is now helping to finance her stay in Karlsruhe. “I was very lucky to be able to come to Germany from Nepal, as I don’t come from a wealthy family,” she acknowledges. Dhanamaya wants to continue her university career and return to Nepal to teach after her PhD.
Her family is proud of her success in Karlsruhe. Programming and web design, the issues in Karlsruhe’s Information and Communications Engineering Master Programme, was Dhanamaya’s second professional choice – studying medical science would have been too expensive. The young woman has learned to adjust to necessities. There are many ways to make life interesting – even with little money. For instance, she regularly meets other people from Nepal in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg’s capital, about an hour’s trip by train from Karlsruhe. She can’t afford to fly home for Christmas or the summer break, so this is her way to keep in touch with home. Dhanamaya has no doubt that she eventually wants to take the knowledge she gained in Karlsruhe back to Nepal. That might be difficult, she believes, because there are not many jobs in such a poor country. Yet the better her education, the bigger her professional opportunities will be. The Universität Karlsruhe (TH) does its best to support this idea with scholarships where necessary and an excellent education.
More:
www.uni-karlsruhe.de www.etit.uni-karlsruhe.de
