A treat for aspiring teachers

Digamadulu Guru Geethaya
Author: Gunasheela Ambawatte
An author publication

Reviewed by Daya Dissanayake

If ever a title fitted a book, it is Digamadulu Guru Geethaya. It is an autobiography, an adventure and a history book, all in one. The book's success has already been proven by the readers of this country as this author-published book is now in its third print within two years.

Ambawatte takes us through least known developments in our history of education from the early sixties. That was the time there were very few schools in remote villages, and volunteer organisations were encouraged to set up new schools in such villages. Once a school was established, and had the standard facilities available, the government took over the school and absorbed the volunteer teachers onto the education service.

The story is about a young man who had the courage, the vision and the determination to start a small school by himself, get donations for land and buildings, and find the students by himself.

As fate would have it, when the school was taken over and the young man was selected as an assistant teacher, based on his qualifications, he did not get an opportunity to work in the school he had developed. Instead his first appointment was in the Ampara District in a school in a village called Namalthalawa. No one in the small town of Ampara had heard of the school, and the officials at the Education office could not give him the directions to locate it.

Lonely battle

It was started by the Gal Oya Development Board for the new settlements opened by the Board under the Gal Oya Project. It was in a small building with a corrugated tin sheet roof, which had been once used as the kitchen by the workmen of the Board. There were only 14 students, who had to walk 2 to 3 miles from their homestead while the headmaster travelled 40 miles on an ancient motorcycle, daily.

That was in June 1964 and by January 1966 when the author entered the Teachers’ Training College there he had left behind him over 400 children in a school with a solid building and a playground. This was all a part of his lonely battle to bring education for the people who risked their lives and the future of their children by settling down in the jungles of Digamadulla.

It pained me to read about how trees were cut down, for “development”, because the author did not seem to show any feeling towards the trees or the destruction. Not even when he described how two bulldozers had taken more than two days to fell the massive banyan tree near the school grounds. It reminded me of the eternal battle between culture and nature, and that development always meant destruction.

Yet as I began to read chapter 20, the visit to Ratugala Vedda village, I found Ambawatte coming to life, in describing the virgin jungle through which they were travelling. He becomes so poetic and empathic with nature, that I could forgive him for his earlier lapses. Then I had another surprise, as the author described the evening meal made by the young students of the Galgamuwa School. He had enjoyed the red rice with the Maldive fish sambol, only to be informed that it was not Maldive fish, but dried venison, which had made him almost throw out. He admits that he had never tasted any meat in his life. A most admirable practice for a young man, living in the thick jungles, where there would certainly have been easy access to hunted flesh.

Indigenous culture

The description of the Ratugala Vedda village and their leader in the 1960s opens our eyes to the true indigenous culture, which is far from the fake aboriginal face shown by the so-called Veddas today who try to make us believe they live the same life as it was described by the Seligmans.

The village leader was neatly dressed in a short sleeved shirt and sarong, and he warned the visitors to behave themselves while they were in the village. Another very important lesson for the teachers, and through this to us, is that these people, we derisively call Veddhas, have much better moral and ethical values. They do not steal anything that does not belong to them.

The Veddha leader offered the noon meal of manioc with grated coconut without any meat, which justify my faith in our indigenous people, that they were mostly vegetarian. I should not have been surprised to learn that Ambawatte is a vegetarian, because all through the book, he has been a person who cared for humanity. A man with humane feelings.

This book should be read by all our young children, to learn how man can achieve his aims, if he really tried, that nothing is impossible. It should be noted that Ambawatte's father said, when he wanted to start a small school in the abandoned temple in the next village, that starting a school is something that could be done only by a chief monk of a temple, the village headman or someone of such standing, and not a project to be started by a twenty-year-old.

Interest

Ambawatte is not a Duishen, described by Chingiz Aitmatov in the ‘First Teacher’ (translated into Sinhala as Guru Geethaya). At Halagama in Nawalapitiya he had the old temple and then the village folk to help him. Duishen had been paid a salary, but Ambawatte had to depend on his mother for everything. At Namaltalawa the Gal Oya Development Board was there to help him, but it was he, who had to get the best out of all the opportunities he had.

If he too had waited for others to come and help the schools, Halagama would never have got a school of their own, and Namaltalawa would also have remained like many other schools started by the Gal Oya Board. And there was no Atyani in this Guru Geethaya either, but it is a story that can be read from cover to cover, with unabated interest.

As Attanayake M Herath, Senior Lecturer at Peradeniya University had written about Digamadulle Guru Geethaya, it is a book that should be read by every teacher in the country, and every young person aspiring to be a teacher.

It is refreshing to read about dedicated teachers we meet in Digamadulla Guru Geethaya, and it reminds us of our teachers then, who really cared for the students, who considered teaching as a service, a service they performed with love. The kind of teachers that the country needs today.