What 24 Norte Americanos en Cuba?

On my Dad’s 50^th Birthday, which I was so sad to miss, I jumped on a plane that was heading for Fidel’s 50 years of Revolutionary Cuba. Sure I had heard a lot about the thousands of people who raft the 90 miles to Miami from Havanna, and I remember the whole story about Elian Gonzalez, but that’s pretty much all I knew.

While we were there, we went to conferencia after conferencia, walked through Old Havanna and New as well, an were amazed by how full it is of old beautiful cars that would be worth thousands back at home, went to a ballet, a theatrical production, a guitar concert, and an African dance performance. We also visited a school for physically handicapped children where we say a little 5 year old girl who had a prosthetic leg dance Cumbia for us, China town, where we were entertained by a drunk man singing the famous song “Guantamanera”=), the most beautiful beach I have ever seen Valdadero, a Seminary where a 92 year old man taught us how to do Israeli and English dances from the1800s, and really… I could go on for a couple more pages about all the different situations that we were put in order to learn all that we could about the culture, people and government of this unique country.

and that was just one of the things that contributes to Cuba’s uniqueness.

But, while we were told story after story about the lives of these people who have lived in this country for the last 50 years, we did our best to try to find the truth about what is really going on there. I have heard many times Cuba is neither, a heaven or a hell. I will be honest and say that I thought Cuba was similar to hell on earth before I was able to visit. But now I see that while it is not Heaven, there are many people there who are “uncomfortably content” about how they are living. I know that phrase contradicts itself, but that is how many Cubans described their feelings. We observed a lot of community and even solidarity because of the situation that the people are in now. Transportation is terrible and hitchhiking is the way people get around. When someone runs out of the rice that was part of their ration, they walk to their neighbors and trade some sugar for rice. Because the internet is almost non existent there, if they want to talk to a friend, they walk miles to go visit. We witnessed and heard about many times where Cubans are helping each other out and that was just one of the things that contributes to Cuba’s uniqueness.