LACONIA — From a young age, Menuka Dhakal knew that she wanted to be a nurse, often pretending to give her friends vaccines during their imaginative play. It was a bold dream for such a girl to have. After all, she was one of three children born to a family that was two years into an 18-year stay in a refugee camp. For her first 16 years, she and her family lived in a bamboo and thatch home without electricity, running water or any visible means for her to achieve a career as a medical professional.
Yet, now a freshman at Plymouth State University, Dhakal is a few years away from the life that was recently just a dream. To get from where she was to where she is, Dhakal has coupled a few lucky breaks with lots of hard work.
Dhakal and her family — father Bhim, mother Indra, younger brother Devi and older sister Tulasha Adhakari — are members of an ethnic minority community that lived in Bhutan for centuries until the government of Bhutan began to persecute them for their religious beliefs, forcing about a hundred thousand of them to flee to refugee camps in Nepal.
Life in the camp was spare, Menuka recalled. "We didn't have anything, but we were happy with what we had." Access to education was one of the few things they had, something which turned out to be invaluable to Menuka's future.
School was an hour's walk from their home, a path that turned to mud during the rainy season. Without umbrellas, monsoons were endured thanks to rain protection improvised from sheets of plastic. Still, Bhim and Indra insisted their children make the long walk to school. Her parents were raised as farmers without formal education. They wanted more for their children, telling them, as Menuka recalled, "You have to go to school and learn to do something else, to be better than us."
At the school in Nepal, Menuka studied core subjects as well as English, her parents' language of Djonkha and Nepali. That learning paid dividends when, in November, 2009, her family was granted refugee status by the United States and was placed in Laconia. Very soon thereafter, she was attending her first day of school as an LHS freshman.
While the social aspect of her new life was daunting — "First day was hard, I didn't know who I'm going to talk to" — she found quick success academically. It turned out that maintaining an A grade average was the easiest part of her first few years in high school.
Menuka found that her life in the United States, though replete with opportunities she had never had before, was also full of new responsibilities and obligations. "In our country, I didn't have to do anything, my parents could do everything. Here, it's totally reversed." Though her parents are taking English language classes, they haven't been as quick to fluency as their children. Due to the language barrier, they require the help of their children to interact with the world outside their South End apartment. Menuka had no choice but to quickly become an expert in the trappings of modern American life, from phone bills to medical appointments.
Not only was Menuka required to discern her family's bills, she also had to figure out a way to pay them. Her older sister was married and had her own young family to worry about, and her brother was still too young to work. So, after school but before tackling her homework, Menuka worked as much as 32 hours a week at a local sandwich shop.
"I want to thank my boss because he gave me a job," she said. "I will be able to help my family."
There were times when the pressure reduced teenage Menuka to tears. However, her moments of weakness were overcome by years of strength. Within three years, Menuka had earned enough credits to graduate from LHS, with a record impressive enough for her to win enough scholarship money to fund a four-year program, housing included, at PSU. She's enrolled in the nursing program and is considering adding psychology as a second major.
It was not many years ago that becoming a nurse was little more than a fantasy for Menuka. "It was my dream from a young age." Now that she has begun to study the field, her thoughts are pulled back to the refugee camp and the conditions she survived. "Sometimes I want to go back to my country and take care of them. We didn't have good nurses and doctors, many people died," she said. "I want to help them."

CAPTION for MENUKA in AA:
Four years ago, Menuka Dhakal (at left) was living in a refugee camp in Nepal. Since coming to Laconia in November, 2009, she has labored to secure a life for both herself and her family. Shown with Menuka are her mother Indra, father Bhim and sister Tulasha Adhakari. (Laconia Daily Sun photo/Adam Drapcho)

BRISTOL — Wind power projects, like the one that already exists in Newfound Region, and two others that are being proposed, represent the wrong kind of renewable energy source for New Hampshire and the Northeast, according to a scientist who addressed a gathering organized by project opponents.
About 400 people turned out at Newfound Regional High School to hear the talk Friday evening by Dr. Benjamin Luce, a physicist and chairman of the Sustainability Studies Program at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vt. He appeared at the invitation of New Hampshire Wind Watch, a nonprofit group organized late last year in hopes of becoming the basis of a statewide anti-wind effort.
Luce told the audience that the array of 24 wind turbines that make up the Groton Wind project, together with the 37-turbine Wild Meadows Power Project being considered for land in Alexandria, Danbury and Grafton, and a third project of 15 to 25 turbines proposed in Groton, Alexandria and Hebron, is part of an enormous development effort to erect wind turbines on ridgelines in all the mountainous areas of the Northeast.
"You're talking about thousands of miles of ridgelines," said Luce, who put the figure at upward of 4,000 miles. "You are looking at massive renewal energy development in the Northeast.
"This is not (about producing the) power that we need," Luce continued. "It's about transitioning away from traditional energy sources" such as nuclear power and fossil fuel generating plants, he said.
But in Luce's opinion putting so much effort into wind-farm development in this part of the country is a flawed strategy. He said that if wind-farm projects were developed to the greatest extent — meaning hundreds or thousands of projects — the power they would produce would satisfy only about 2.5 percent of the region's energy demand. Further, because wind speeds in New England and the Northeast are so fickle, traditional energy plants would still need to remain on-line to ensure the supply of electrical power would be adequate to meet the demand.
"Wind won't be doing any of the heavy lifting to meet our energy needs.
Wind is intended to reduce our carbon footprint," said Lisa Linowes, the executive director of the Industrial Wind Action Group, an anti-wind project group based in Lyman, who participated with Luce in a question-and-answer session after the talk.
Luce said he is also concerned about the environmental impact of large wind farms — noise, marring of scenic vistas, harm to local property values, and disrupting of wildlife habitats and flyways used by migratory birds and bats.
The only kind of wind-power development that Luce sees as offering any real potential is offshore wind projects, such as Cape Wind — a wind farm which has been approved in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod. But Luce cautioned that it is still too soon to tell if Cape Wind will live up to its supporters' expectations.
Spending money to develop wind farms on land in this part of the county "is putting money into the wrong resource," said Luce. Instead, he said it would be better if the money were put into building large-scale solar — or photovoltaic — energy projects.
"For one-tenth of what we're spending on wind we could have a viable solar power source," he said.
Luce said he is further concerned that the growing public opposition to large wind farm projects could undermine public support for other forms of renewable energy.
The $100 million Groton Wind project, developed by Spanish wind-power company Iberdrola Renewables, went on line Dec. 31, but is not yet producing at full capacity. Under an agreement with Groton, Iberdrola will pay the town $528,000 and then increase the amount of the succeeding payments by 2.5 percent each year for 14 years.
Iberdrola has now set its sights on developing the Meadows Power Project. Meanwhile, EDP Renewables of Portugal is hoping to develop the wind farm in Groton, Alexandria and Hebron.
State Rep. Suzanne Smith of Hebron, one of two lawmakers who spoke briefly during the event, said concerns about the proliferation of wind farm projects explains the large number of bills which have been filed in the current legislative session to deal with wind projects specifically or electrical power projects in general.
One bill sponsored by state Rep. Harold "Skip" Reilly calls for a moratorium on wind turbine projects. Others deal with developing a new state energy plan, the building of major power lines, and the process used to decide requests to build specific projects.
Smith, a Democrat, said judging by the list of bill sponsors, these bills have wide bipartisan support.
"We're reacting (to the projects that are being proposed) rather than being proactive about what is in place," Smith said in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Rep. Glenn Cordelli, a co-sponsor of Reilly's moratorium bill, said that he is concerned that unless legislative action is taken wind turbines — mounted on steel towers that rise 500 into the air, and with rotors that measure 300 feet in diameter — will protrude from the ridges of many of New Hampshire's mountain ranges. The Tuftonboro Republican said his concern is that someone will propose winds farms in Carroll County, possibly including the ridges of the Ossipee Mountain Range which he can see from his home.
Reacting to the turnout at Friday's gathering in Bristol, Cordelli said, "I think there is a lot of interest and desire for more information."

CONCORD — State lawmakers could be spending a great deal of time this legislative session debating the state's role in the development of the electric power infrastructure in the Granite State.
State Rep. Suzanne Smith of Hebron says the list of electric system-related bills is already pretty long.
According to her count, proposals that are already, or soon will be, in bill form include:
— Requiring the state to draw up a new strategic energy plan.
— Establishing moratoriums on wind-turbine and electric transmission line projects.
— Requiring an evaluation to determine whether a specific energy project is necessary.
— Mandating that new major transmission lines be buried.
— Requiring public participation for site approval certificates.
— Establishing energy efficiency standards and clear energy districts.
— Requiring specific findings on the need for transmission lines.