Castro, JR and Lankan students
The welcoming role over, when the students went back to their respective universities, had come the call inviting them to the dinner that Castro was hosting for President Jayewardene at the President’s Palace in Havana.
The students, with wide smiles, flanking President Jayewardene and Castro, standing tall sporting his signature beard but no cigar or trademark fatigues, are captured on camera, a treasured photograph among the memories of their time in Cuba. (Castro who died aged 90 on November 25 ruled Cuba from 1959, heading the government till 2008)
“I didn’t even know where Cuba was when I was told that I had been awarded a scholarship to go there and study medicine,” the Medical Officer-in-Charge of the Accident Service of the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children, Dr. Ananda H. Angammana tells the Sunday Times. It was then that he looked up a map, no easy Google being available in 1980.
Along with him went four others to Cuba, two to do medicine and two to do engineering. The air-fare was Rs. 13,000, a princely sum for a boy from Angammana village in Gampola.
“That was the only cost. For, once we landed in Cuba, every single thing was provided,” says Dr. Angammana, describing how they were immediately taken to a poly-clinic in Havana for a week to be screened for diseases such as malaria and filaria and then given a dose of chloroquine to ward off malaria which made them drowsy and sick. The food was quite different to Sri Lanka – lots of fish and meat and a little rice but cooked differently.
Next came a long bus ride to the University of Santa Clara, 300kms away, through landscapes very similar to Sri Lanka, to study Spanish, the language of the locals, for one year. They also saw vast tracts of sugarcane cultivations, with land utilisation to a maximum, unlike back home. There were no houses spotting the landscape, breaking up the cultivable areas. The homes were clustered around one area surrounded by all the required facilities.
“Everything was provided to the scholarship holders by the Cuban government under the charismatic leadership of Castro,” says Dr. Angammana, going into great detail……accommodation, all medical books, food, clothes (both the uniforms for university and other clothes including sweaters to face the cooler season), shoes and also the airfare to come back to Sri Lanka after their studies.
Similar sentiments are expressed by engineer Nuwan Kumarasinghe attached to the Meteorology Department, focusing on Castro who was from a wealthy landowning family but gave up all that once he took up the cause of his country.
Mr. Kumarasinghe, however, knew a little bit about Cuba having followed the Non-aligned Summit held in Sri Lanka in 1976, which Castro was unable to attend and sent his Foreign Minister to represent him.
Each and every student, not only from Sri Lanka but also from Africa, other parts of Asia, Latin America and even a few who had come over from the United States of America (although the US and Cuba were daggers drawn and in the midst of the Cold War, with hardships being piled on Cuba by the economic embargo imposed by the US) were given 60 pesos as pocket-money monthly. The students were also looked after during the holidays, taken to the beach or to the plantations to spend their leisure time or have fun at the fiestas that Cubans who are a jolly people held often.
Two tins of condensed milk were issued per student per month, as well as two packets of cigarettes, says Dr. Angammana, promptly adding that not a single Sri Lankan student smoked, so they exchanged them for more condensed milk.
“All this was given without any expectations from us by the Cuban authorities,” he says, reminiscing how they would study and study, spreading their books all over their beds, as there were no other distractions. They also became disciplined, able to manage on their own, as they had to clean and mop their rooms and toilets themselves.
None of them engaged in politics -- not in Cuba neither back home in Sri Lanka.
Dr. Angammana stayed seven long years – learning Spanish for one year, medicine for five years and doing his internship for another year. He never telephoned his family back in Sri Lanka because international calls were entangled in difficulties those days. Letters sent air-mail were the only link, that too taking about one and a half months to reach, in those days sans computers, e-mails and mobile phones.
Mr. Kumarasinghe, meanwhile, learnt Spanish and then went onto study electronic engineering at the Jose Antonio Echeverria Technical University, also of