Aurora Central grad connects to new life after leaving Nepal

AURORA | As a kid in the Beldangi refugee camp in Jhapa, Nepal, modern technology was a foreign concept Yadap Adhikari.

There was no television, no computers and no phone, either. Electricity was scarce and sometimes non-existent.

Just sending a letter meant a two-hour walk, not the click of a send button.

But when he arrived in the United States five years ago — speaking no English and awed by his new surroundings — Adhikari saw an elevator at the airport. That piece of technology changed his life and from there, even through some challenging times when he was tackling a new language, Adhikari knew what he wanted to do with his life

“Now I can’t imagine anything without a computer,” Adhikari said, the alarm on his digital watch beeping and a smartphone tucked in his pocket.

After graduating from Aurora Central High School this spring, Adhikari is headed to Colorado State University in Fort Collins to study computer engineering. The goal, he said, is to one day go back to Nepal and help the people in his home country learn the sorts of technologies that many in America take for granted.

“Why would you need to walk two or three hours to send mail to another person?” he said. “It’s just a waste of time that you could spend with family and friends and do other productive works.”

Adhikari received a $10,000 Comcast Leaders and Achievers Scholarship Program given to students “who strive to achieve their potential, are catalysts for positive change in their communities, are involved in their schools, and serve as models for their fellow students.” Just two students in the state received the $10,000 scholarship.

Adhikari said that while he loves technology now, things didn’t always go well the first few times he sat at a computer.

As a seventh-grader at Boston K-8 School, Adhikari said teachers gave him a laptop computer so he could put together a PowerPoint presentation. Things seemed to go well, but when he turned it on, nothing but music from his native Nepal came from the speakers and the screen was empty.

“I don’t know what happened. It was black,” he said with a laugh.

Teachers gave him a score of partially proficient, but he kept with it.

Monique Taylor, one of his teachers and later his speech and debate coach, said that persistence never wavered.

“Yadap is not one to get discouraged over things,” she said. “He doesn’t understand what the word ‘no’ means.”

The speech and debate team requires a lot of public speaking, something that petrifies many native-English speakers. But even though he was only a few years removed from speaking zero English, Adhikari jumped into that program, as well as a mock trial team.

“Not many refugee kids do that, but I wasn’t surprised that Yadap was willing to do that,” Taylor said.

Later in his high school career, as his English improved and he looked for ways to help out, Taylor said Adhikari was an assistant in one of her classes for other students with limited English skills. Even if another student’s native language was Spanish or something else, Taylor said Adhikari always tried to help, knowing how crucial it was for him to get a handle on English.

“He also constantly pushed them,” she said. “If they would say it was difficult he would say, ‘Yes, it’s difficult but it’s important.”

Six other Aurora students received $1,000 awards from the Comcast Leaders and Achievers Scholarship Program:

• Tara Anderson – APS Options Program.

• Juwan Harris – Rangeview High School.

• Sumayia Hussain – Lotus School for Excellence.

• Brandon Lewien – Gateway High School.

• Jessica Saffold – Smoky Hill High School.     

• Breanna Wheeler – Cherokee Trail High School.