06 August 2009

A Family of International Students

The author (center) with his wife and daughter, who will follow her sister to the United States for college.

By Mangala P.B. Yapa

When he sent his daughter Shanika to American University, Mangala Yapa knew that she was still just a phone call away from Sri Lanka — less distance than separated him from home when he studied abroad 30 years ago. Yapa is a shipping executive in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

You might say that my daughter Shanika’s path to become an exchange student began with my own similar journey in the 1970s.

I went to Canada when I was about 17 years old, and spent three months in the youth exchange program Canada World Youth. I was there for a short period, but I really liked that experience and the exposure to North America.

I returned to Sri Lanka and tried to continue my higher studies. At that time, young people in Sri Lanka didn’t get the choices they have today. You could not decide exactly where to pursue your higher studies. The opportunity I got to pursue further studies was in Russia. One might ask, why Russia? Well, that was the opportunity I got, and fortunately that was a fully paid scholarship. My parents could not have afforded any higher education abroad for which they had to pay.

So I did my university education in Russia, and that gave me a completely different kind of exposure in life. This, of course, was the time of the Cold War, and since I had been in North America and then to Russia, I started to understand the world more comprehensively and differently from what I would have otherwise. I had seen both sides.

While I was in Russia, I travelled a lot. In fact, during the latter part of my Russian education, my wife, then my girlfriend, was in UK for some higher education and work experience. She is a doctor today, but in those days we used to meet in UK or elsewhere in Europe. As a result of these travels and experiences, we had a more open approach to a lot of things. We had quite a good knowledge of what was going on the world.

A Different World

When Shanika said she really wanted to go out of Sri Lanka to study, both myself and my wife encouraged it because of our own experiences. We were happy to send her out and expose her to new cultures. Of course it was a big decision in the family, but we were not apprehensive.

Today it is a completely different world from when we were international students. I missed my family when I was abroad at her age in Canada and Russia. Communications were very poor; there was no e-mail, no telephone communications. We only had letters, and they would take weeks and weeks to arrive, so it was tough. But today, communications are much easier. You can talk on the telephone. You can even see each other in a videoconferencing. If my daughter needs me, she can call me, text me, e-mail me. There are so many ways. If there is an emergency, she can get a flight quickly to come back to Sri Lanka. In those days, you couldn’t transfer money very quickly, you couldn’t buy a ticket so easily. You couldn’t afford it. There were a lot of issues. Even if communications were available, they weren’t so practically accessible for everyone. But now I think this globalization has taken the whole world into a different kind of level, which is fantastically good because it makes life easier for everyone

And perhaps my daughter will find when she starts working that a totally new world is beginning to emerge. Globalization and global citizens — these are the things of the future. The United States of America is a great place to be at this time of development, and she can be better prepared for and more involved in the change to come globally. Change is the theme of President Obama, so why not be part of it?

So I’m quite pleased that Shanika has had the opportunity to be there at this time of changes taking place in America. I have encouraged the second daughter to take a similar approach to her education, and now she’s going to study design and architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York this fall.