By Skye Wheeler
JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - They left as children andteenagers, crossing the border between dry southern Sudan andEthiopia before being transported half a world away to thegreen strangeness of Cuba's Isla de la Juventud.
Now more than two decades later, some of the 600 childrenwho were sent to Cuba for education during Sudan's north-southconflict are home, speaking Spanish, dancing salsa and workingto rebuild their land after Africa's longest civil war.
Among those who have returned -- the so-called "Cubans" --are 15 doctors, including Daniel Madit, who left in 1986 aged11. He was already a sergeant in the south's rebel army.
"We were not forced to leave, we were sent on a mission andit is not completed," he said at the end of a refresher coursehe was taking before starting to work in the south.
When Madit left, rebels in the mainly Christian south,supported by Marxist Ethiopia, were fighting soldiers of themainly Muslim north in a war over ideology, resources,ethnicity and religion, that was to claim more than 2 millionlives.
"As a client state of the Soviet bloc, Ethiopia hadlong-standing ties with Cuba. Cuba, for its part, providedsupport to socialist guerrilla movements and regimes inAfrica," said Carol Berger, a former journalist andanthropologist now completing a doctorate at the University ofOxford.
"The SPLA (southern rebel group) was one of those movementswhich received basic education and military training insideCuba. While the SPLA was never noted for having much of anideological position, for at least the first decade of the war,Cuba was considered a loyal and generous ally," said Berger.
A north-south peace deal was finally signed in 2005. Thesouthern Sudanese, who had been educated in Cuba but then stuckin limbo for years as their host country's economy collapsed,the rebels at home split and the war dragged on, began toreturn, some after years as refugees in Canada.
The homecoming has often been bittersweet.
Martha Martin Dar, an imposing woman who was sent to Cubain 1986, returned briefly in 2005 before finally coming backfor good in 2007. When she first saw her father at the airportin the south's capital Juba, a relative had to confirm who hewas.
"It was difficult for us to communicate. It was like myfirst memory. I had forgotten him completely."
Dar, who did not fight with the rebels but lived in arefugee camp in Ethiopia before being sent to Cuba, recalledher first impressions of south Sudan's best hospital in Juba.
"There was a lack of everything, five or six children in abed. People were on the floor," she said.
Despite the return of peace, and south Sudan's rich oilfields, the semi-autonomous region is a devastated land whereeven the most basic of services are lacking. Under the peacedeal, the population can vote on secession in 2011, afterdemocratic elections next year.
A CARIBBEAN CHILDHOOD
Fidel Castro, who retired this year, fought many Cold Warproxy conflicts in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.
Cuban forces were sent as military advisers or as fightersto Angola, where they helped beat South African forces,Algeria, Congo-Brazzaville, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco andMozambique.
In Sudan, Castro agreed to educate selected children, manyof whom were already part of the child "Red Army".
The children were seen as key to the struggle: they woulduse education to prevent what the rebels saw as Khartoum'scentralizing influence and abuse of the south's resources.
"The (rebel) leadership proceeded to select their ownchildren, relatives and people from their own areas," BarriWanji, a senior member of the southern parliament, said.
Berger, who is writing a book on the "Cubans", said rebelleaders wanted to remove their children from refugee camps inEthiopia "where conditions were appalling."
She said the children were sent in two groups: the first bysea aboard a Soviet cruise ship from the Ethiopian port ofAssab in 1985, and the second by air the following year.
They were sent to a school on the Isla de la Juventud(Youth Island), off Cuba's southwest coast, where Castro hadearlier been imprisoned in the 1950s.
The Sudanese rebels' charismatic leader John Garang, whodied in a helicopter crash in 2005, visited them a few times.
The best two students each year were awarded a trip toEthiopia. Madit said they would return with photographs andletters from the families.
When not in class, the children worked on fruit plantationsand sometimes camped on beaches. They were among many childrenfrom Africa who were working and studying on the island.
Dar remembered the papaya, oranges and other fruit shefound in Cuba and the humid warmth. She came later than theothers because she was ill and had to stay behind in Ethiopiafor a while. She spent two frightening weeks having medicaltests in Havana, before rejoining her compatriots.
"I was upset, missing my family. I was crying for the firstsix months," she said. Then she found that she was good atbiology and Spanish and began enjoying school more.
But she remained homesick "for the childhood I had."
NO HOME TO GO TO
When the doctors graduated, Cuba's economy was in troublebecause of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they could notgo home. The southern rebel movement had split along triballines in 1991, leading to thousands of south-on-south deaths.
For the first time, Cuba asked the United Nations' refugeeagency UNHCR to register the Sudanese as refugees. Theorganization did and Canada gave around half of them a newhome.
Because their Cuban degrees did not meet Canadian medicalrequirements, Madit worked in a meat-packing factory, while Darworked in a bank. They were among 15 doctors who wound upliving in different cities in Canada.
"All was white, cold and freezing for the first time inyour life," Madit said.
"There was sadness mixed in for everybody. People in thediaspora are ready to come back," Dar said.
The return of thousands of trained professionals from thediaspora in developed countries was meant to boost to thedevelopment of the south after the war. But fewer than expectedhave returned. Dar said many have mortgages and children andwant a better education for them than the south can provide.
Their return might also be less welcome than they expect.
"They think they deserve a job right away," she said. As aresident in Juba, she understands the bitterness felt by peoplewho stayed during the war and fear losing out to returnees.
For many of the "Cubans", the need to return overrode otherconcerns. Some left children and wives in far away countries.
In Canada, Madit eventually approached the Samaritan'sPurse aid organization, which had operations in south Sudan.
"They were amazed when they found there were 15 of us(doctors)," he said. Refresher training in Canada and Kenya wasorganized, and soon the doctors were on their way home.
THE RETURN
Today, the doctors work for the government or ingovernment-allied agencies, or international NGOs.
Their skills are in demand in a land where under-fivemortality is 13.5 percent and more women die in childbirth thananywhere else in the world, over 1 in 50.
Four children have already been named "Doctor Daniel" inhonour of the doctor who delivered them.
Bona Bol was among the 91 "Cubans" he reckons have comeback. A businessman, he is struggling to make a mark in a landwhere what little new business there is -- mostly hotels orimporting -- is owned by foreigners working for quick returns,as they weigh the possibility of the peace deal collapsing.
North-south relations came under severe strain in May whenfighting between the two sides in the oil-rich Abyei areakilled nearly 90 people and displaced 50,000.
Nonetheless, Bol says things are improving.
"It's getting good now. I make up to 20 percent (profit),"he said.
His partner Majok Wek is doing well importing materials andfood. They are convinced they are setting a precedent.
"We knew the SPLA was going to need us. Doing business isdevelopment for the country," said Bol.
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