CAMAGÜEY. - After the closing of the teaching institutions for the new coronavirus, the University of Camagüey Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz prioritizes the care to foreign students.
Approximately 68 young people of pre-grade and ten of postgraduate course that continue in the center are attended every day by the rector, they are visited every day in more than one occasion and they are provided with a health service 24 hours.
In that sense, Yailé Caballero Mota, director of International Relations of the UC, told that they have received two humanitarian visits of the embassies of Angola and Haiti to evaluate the taken epidemiologic measures, to bring financial contribution and modules of cleaning.
“Although at first for the boys it turned out to be difficult to adapt themselves to the idea of not being able to go out as earlier, they have understood the necessity to remain in ‘the house‘. And precisely so that they feel comfortable and safe, our department, together with the council of direction, propitiates a constant exchange about their biggest worries”.
There has been guaranteed free Wi-Fi connection 24 hours and there they can buy often products of cleaning and food in the shop of the UC. Also they have to their service, as decision of the rector, a car that moves them to extract money of the cash machine when it is indispensable.
It is confirmed to us by Ernesto Lima Ebo, Angolan student of 4to. year of chemical engineering: "We have been more than 60 days like that. We do not lack anything, really there is no need to go out from here. Before the pandemic we had many of these things, but now the attentions are better”.
From the teaching point of view, Ernesto recounts, they neither feel unattended. “Every Monday, the teachers send us via online tasks and exercises and we must send them solved every Friday. The boys of fifth year are others who have not stopped studying and although we play soccer in the evenings and see movies in the nights, they dedicate most of the time to their thesis or final works”.
THE LUCK OF BEING IN CUBA
The efforts of the managers of the UC are not only for those who are here. At the beginning of the pandemic there were remaining out of the country four exchange students and 67 teachers. The totality of the boys already returned to Cuba and with the next arrival of the teacher that is in Spain, the returned professionals would add five.
“From decreed the quarantine we communicate with the foreign institutions and negotiate the maintenance of the contracts, the feeding and the safety. We assure the routes to continue the investigations of those who remain in other countries always fulfilling the protection protocols”, affirmed Caballero Mota.
Photo: Taken from Newspaper 26
One of those that values as good being already at home is the student of Journalism Legna María Caballero Pérez. In the Newspaper 26 of Las Tunas, her hometown, made public the experiences since in Mexico they announced to her the negotiations of the Cuban government for her return.
“After all the Cuban landed in Havana we applaud and my tears were running while I looked at a sky, which is not for being prissy or a more patriot than nobody, but in the end it was true: there is no sky so blue as my sky”, she wrote for the newspaper of the oriental province, which published her experience under the title to Return to Cuba in the middle of the Covid-19: "Here we leave nobody behind”.
Legna described also the days in the isolation center and the care that nurses and doctors had with the persons there. “The suspense is the worst of the destinations and the only consolation that they all give to me for the social networks is: ' It does not matter, you are already in Cuba’”, she declared.
The feeling of breathing the air of the hearth calms, relieves the sorrow of those who inhabit this world that suffers the impact of a pandemic. But in her hearth Legna is, as in his hearth Ernesto feels, although far from his family.
Under the Cuban sky, under sure roofs, Legna and Ernesto, as so many boys of the University of Camagüey who look after each other waiting to meet everybody when the corridors of their house - school are sure once again.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez