(Excerpted from Memories that Linger: My journey through the world of disability by Padmani Mendis)

We had entered the last decade of the millennium. And I had aged into my sixties. I was thoroughly involved in my work, travelling extensively. Often, I would be away for eight or nine months of the year; never continuously, always coming home in between assignments. And I was tired. Long standing diabetes and knees degenerating from Osteoarthrosis were taking their toll.

So I said to my Swedish friends that I would like to have others take over and now stay at home. Kristina would have none of it. “But you can’t stop teaching,” she said, “I understand what you say. Instead of you having to travel about, we will bring students to you.” This was the first of three remarkable incidents.

At about the same time, Einar’s replacement at WHO had discussed with me the need to institutionalise Community Based Rehabilitatuin (CBR) in academia. He asked me to look for a suitable university on my travels that will be willing to initiate CBR education. This was the second incident.

The third is when, not too long after this, I received a message from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, Professor M.M.J. Marasinghe, saying he would like to meet me. When we did so, he said that he would like to introduce disability as an area of interest to this university. Could I help him? Oh, could I!

A series of three coincidences. Destiny again?

I shared with the Vice Chancellor my work in CBR and my relationships with Radda Barnen, with WHO and with Uppsala University and their current thinking about the need for recognised education.

Prof. Marasinghe’s request was opportune. We could do something for sure. He brought in other faculty members for discussions. Prof. K. Tillekeratne, then Dean of the Faculty of Science was most supportive of the whole initiative. They would like to establish an educational activity in the Faculty of Medicine which was set up newly in 1991. Prof. Carlo Fonseka had been appointed its first Dean. He was invited to the discussions and was agreeable to the suggestion. This was now early January1993.

An International Delegation in Sri Lanka

One month later, a delegation of five headed by Yngve was in Sri Lanka. Others in the team were Einar’s successor in Geneva, Enrico Pupulin, Kristina Fenno from Radda Barnen, Tom Lagerwall from the Swedish Handicap Institute with whom also I had worked, and Ingrid Cornell, representing the Swedish International Development Agency which may provide financial support if the initiative was suitable.

I had arranged a programme for them to first meet Prof. Fonseka and decide on the preliminaries. With Prof. Fonseka later that morning the group met Prof. Marasinghe. In the afternoon Prof. Fonseka led the group to a long meeting with Prof. Arjuna Aluwihare, who was the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, UGC. Prof. Aluwihare and Yngve got on famously, sharing much in common as experienced medical academicians.

By the end of that meeting, a preliminary Memorandum of Understanding or MOU had been reached between the UGC and the international team. This was put into a draft document to be discussed further by each side before they next met.

The core of the draft was that a Disability Studies Unit (DSU) would be established at the Faculty of Medicine, Kelaniya University. It would function directly under the Dean. Its purpose would be CBR education, research and publications both at an international level and in Sri Lanka.

As an initial activity the DSU would organise and carry out over the next two years, two international courses in CBR, each six weeks in length, each for 20 – 25 participants. Financial support would be provided by SIDA and Radda Barnen and channelled through the International Child Health Unit or ICH of Uppsala University.

Details about how this would be done were also in the draft. When asked, the Swedish delegation made one request of Prof. Aluwihare. It was that I be given responsibility for the DSU and for the two initial CBR courses. Prof. Aluwihare looked at me and we smiled.

The same group met Prof. Aluwihare the next morning with further suggestions. The draft was finalised, made ready and signed by him and Yngve.

Late that afternoon, Yngve took a flight back to Sweden. All done and dusted within two days. The other team members stayed on until Friday, meeting relevant people for discussions. More information gathering really. Included was a field visit to a CBR project. We used this project later as one of the field study areas for the international course participants.

The Disability Studies Unit is Born

And so, the DSU came into being. Prof. Fonseka asked me to come in on an informal basis to get the DSU started until I was given a formal appointment. Prof. Fonseka was Professor of Physiology and I met him in his office. On this my first day he said to me, “Padmani, it will be easiest all round if I gave you space in this department.”

He took me to a large, spacious, airy room and said, “You can have this for the DSU.” It had a desk and a chair. I was happy with that. The post of “Course Director” was soon formally advertised and three applicants were interviewed. I took up my appointment on April 26, 1993.

There were two remarkable clauses in the Memorandum of Understanding. The first was that ICH (International Child Care Unit of the Unversity of Uppsala) would meet the cost of setting up the DSU. This included all the equipment we would need. Also, the salaries of three staff for the rest of the year, at the end of which Kelaniya University was expected to take over that cost.

It was this allocation that the Faculty used to employ for us Kodi and Senevi, two of my former physiotherapy colleagues. The three of us worked together to get the course going. They then participated in the first course to learn more about CBR. They became teachers on the local courses we organised.

Before he left, Yngve had asked me to make a list of the equipment that the Disability Studies Unit, DSU, would require and fax it to him as soon as possible. He said particularly, “Don’t forget to include a vehicle for your use.”

The second remarkable clause was that the two CBR courses were arranged on a “sell-buy” basis. The DSU sold each course wholesale to ICH to buy using funds provided by SIDA and Radda Barnen. This was Yngve’s innovation, with Prof. Aluwihare’s unhesitating concurrence. The DSU arranged the residential course programme, invited and hosted resource persons, estimated the cost of the course per participant and forwarded it to the ICH at Uppsala University.

ICH selected 20 – 25 international participants and forwarded to us information about them. We made arrangements for each participant’s return travel and made sure their itinerary and travel tickets reached them in time. Each was met at the airport and brought to the course venue and residence, the Mount Royal Beach Hotel, Mount Lavinia, then under Sri Lankan ownership.

ICH paid us for all these. On the first course the participants came from 12 countries. On the second, from 14 countries. The cooperation of Thomas Cook, Colombo was memorable indeed. There were no travel hitches for any single participant. That was their achievement.

The First International Course on Community-Based Rehabilitation

Yngve attended the first course to launch the cooperation and the course. In his honour, we asked the hotel to have all the flowers in blue (manel) and yellow (araliya) flowers. The hotel was amazed, remarking that these flowers are not expensive. To us it was not the cost, but the colours and the beauty of the flowers that was important. Blue and yellow are the colours of Sweden. The hotel had gone to town and placed them all over. Making the room quite festive and beautiful. We had large flags of both countries on each side of the top table.

We arranged travel and accommodation for our international resource persons in the same way. We invited Einar to both courses. He came willingly to share both his experience and his happiness about the whole thing. Other resource persons were “Baby” Estrella from the Philippines to share her experience of disability as a wheelchair user and Joy Valdez to share hers as a CBR pioneer in the same country.

For the second course and thereafter, we invited Joy as well as Javed Abidi from New Delhi to share his experience of disability and as that of a successful activist. We also had other international resource persons for specific modules. And eminent Sri Lankans for special topics.

Sri Lankan disabled people were always invited as resource persons as soon as we could, no later than the second day. There were a few participants who had never had prior exposure to disabled people. This was not surprising – those were the times.

The First Self-Financing Unit

There was a very significant and carefully planned outcome of this sell-buy agreement. Planned by Yngve. When the DSU costed each course, we could add a percentage of the total as the cost of organising it and of running it. This was profit that we maintained in our own bank account. The Faculty though, was responsible for it and only its staff could sign cheques. We could only see the monthly statements. We followed the same practice with all the local courses that we did.

Uppsala paid us in USD. For this, we were given permission by the Central Bank to maintain a USD account at the People’s Bank NRFC branch. An exceptional approval at that time. So the DSU (Disability Studies Unit) was wealthy! But we didn’t just accumulate this wealth. We used some of our profits to run our unit. We paid our own salaries, met the costs of running our own vehicle and hiring our own driver, and of all the material we needed for the unit. All fair and square and we donated a share to the Faculty. And we invested any to spare in fixed deposits so as to add to our capital.

The DSU was a profit-making venture. It was financially independent. And it was the first self-financing unit in our university system.

The DSU was the only section in the faculty that had its own vehicle. The Dean would ask for it whenever his was not available. Other faculty members felt free to do the same. Those were the early days of computers, and we had three; we had our fax machine, own phone line, photocopier, a library and absolutely all the equipment required to run the Unit. So it was no surprise that many faculty members were often in and out of our room. It was not long therefore that the DSU became “a part” of the faculty.

When that Memorandum of Understanding ended Yngve had retired and his replacement had taken over. He had not proved himself to SIDA so our MOU could not be extended. But the purpose of the MOU was achieved. DSU was now established in the faculty. It would grow.

And grow it did with increasing demands on our work. Made possible by Prof. Fonseka’s unstinting support. We ran two more similar international courses in the next three years. One was at the request of the two WHO Regional Offices for South East Asia and for the Western Pacific. The other we organised ourselves. I had still been doing international work and travelling. The DSU had good relationships with sponsors who had sent us participants over the three years. We advertised our course to these contacts. An adequate number purchased places on our course to enable us to run it independently.

By the time we completed just the four international activities, we had reached and prepared 89 participants from 27 countries to improve in one way or another, the situations and lives of countless disabled people in their own countries.