Banjul, August 13. – On a day like today, but 20 years ago, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, delivered a speech in Havana, in which he spoke of Gambia and the collaboration of the largest of the Antilles with this West African nation.
On the occasion of his 94th birthday, this August 13th, 2020, we reproduce below fragments of that intervention by Fidel in the graduation ceremony of all Cuban Medical Sciences Faculties, held in the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Tribune in the capital.
Fidel’s words:
A few days ago I met with 70 health workers, who after a short vacation were returning to The Gambia to resume their noble and selfless work in that West African country. When they remembered with expressions of affection and advance congratulations that days later it would be my birthday, I replied: my birthday is today, after this meeting with you”.
I experienced a truly profound emotion that day after the three-hour exchange that I had with those compatriots. They were highly qualified university professionals, some very young, others older, from the eastern, central and western provinces, almost all family doctors and other specialties, although there were also dentists and nurses; They were men and women of humble origin, of all races and mixtures of races, just as we are. Something stood out above all: legitimate pride, optimism, personal courage, self-confidence, creative spirit, quick mind, joyful voice and gesture, which unmistakably and incomparably characterize Cuban internationalists. They returned anxiously to the dozens of populated points they serve, on both banks of a wide river that stretches for hundreds of kilometers, in a small and elongated country where they provide the most humane of all services: to relieve pain, preserve or reestablish the immense health welfare, and above all save lives.
That world so different is already as theirs as Cuba itself. And in what extent his love for humanity and his country grows at the same time! How gigantic and heroic the human person can be! To what amazing heights can their minds and hearts soar!
Two decades later, Cuban health professionals continue in the Gambia, making the legacy Fidel left them a reality.
"An Island on a Continent" 