Dear Editor,
Today, the 9th of November, marks the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. In October 1963, two years after the Wall was first constructed in August 1961, a group of Guyanese students, Oscar Singh, Philip Chan, Gordon Sobha (my dear friend who was killed in the Cubana air disaster in 1976), Prabhu Sookraj, Doodnauth Gopaul, Narbada Persaud and myself arrived in Leipzig in the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany). We were met at the train station by Alfred Jadunauth and Steve Surujbally. They assisted in the arrangements for our accommodation at August-Bebel Strasse.
We had actually left Guyana in August 1963 and spent one week in Mexico, and then five weeks in Havana, Cuba, all at the courtesy of the Cuban Government. We were very well treated and got the privilege to meet with Che Guevara, who expressed to us his admiration for Dr. Jagan (who he had met). We also met the first female in space, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova who stayed in the same hotel with us. During our stay too, we volunteered to pick guavas in the guava orchards, and met Fidel Castro working there and he presented us with boxes of his favourite cigars. When we left Guyana there was racial strife in the country, and we noted the racial harmony and progress in Cuba that was in stark contrast to the confusion and turmoil we had left behind.
Two days after our arrival in the GDR we began our German language course at the Herder Institute. Both Jadunauth’s and Surujbally’s photos were prominently displayed as the best students at the institute. In my language class there were students from Cuba, India, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Guatemala, and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). In that class I made friends with Frances Stevens, the daughter of Siaka Stevens of Sierra Leone.
After the language course I went to Wismar in Northern GDR to begin electrical engineering studies. In East Berlin there were many people living in subsidised housing paying only ten GDR Marks a month (in the 1970s the Guyana dollar was higher than the GDR Mark), as opposed to those in West Berlin who were paying 400 Deutsch Marks (which was higher than the GDR Mark) for similar apartments. Groceries and meat were subsidised in the GDR too, and West Germans used to come over to shop for themselves and their families. Many West Germans would come to the GDR for free medical care and pharmaceuticals as well. Upon my return to Guyana in 1970, together with Henry Skerret, Freddie Kissoon, Leyland DeCambra, Ronald Gordon, and Coco Wilson we formed the Guyana/GDR Friendship Society, and I explained these as the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall to our Guyanese people.
Of course, that was the naive view of a young student enamoured with the life in the GDR at the time. Today, of course, I realise that no matter what the state provides for its people, if it is not accompanied by certain rights and freedoms the people will rebel. The Wall therefore fell some 28 years later in 1989, and I was there in Germany when it happened. That day too, marked the birthdays of my grandson Ron Ramsaroop, his great-grandfather, and our own Hamilton Green.
Yours faithfully,
Boyo Ramsaroop
