Castro, JR and Lankan students
Sports Page 28
Some loved him but others hated him. Whatever the admirers or the critics may say, as the motorcade carrying the ashes of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro wended its way from Havana, the capital, to Santiago de Cuba where he will be laid to rest in a private funeral today, thousands of miles away in another tiny island, it is a nostalgic journey down memory lane for a large number of Sri Lankans.
Pulling numerous frayed and fading photographs from old albums, these Sri Lankans in wide and varied professions spread across this country as well as the world are re-living their “days, months and years” in Cuba and the unforgettable meeting with Castro back in the 1980s.
As they gather at the Cuban Embassy to bid a fond adieu to Castro today, they will go back in time to their student days, when Cuba gave them everything and more than they needed and moulded and nurtured them to be what they are now. From the late 1970s up to now, each year five youth head for Cuba on full scholarships to study medicine, engineering, sports medicine, veterinary science, physiotherapy, food technology, agricul- www. sundaytimes. lk tural science, economics etc. A special quota of 20 scholarships had been granted to Sri Lanka in 1986-87.
“Go back to your country and do your best,” is what Castro told these freshfaced students who had come over to Cuba to pursue different spheres of undergraduate studies.
While they looked on in awe, he had also assured then Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene, who was on a brief visit to Havana that unlike students who seek higher education in western capitals, all the students who come to Cuba will return home to serve their country.
It was soon after the 8th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nassau, the Bahamas, from October 16-22, 1985, 31 years ago that President Jayewardene paid a visit to Cuba to be greeted by a whole gang of students waving the flag of Sri Lanka and shouting “Jayawewa”. He had been so surprised at the large number that he walked across to them and asked them whether they were really from Sri Lanka or were in fact Cuban students brought to welcome him.