iWoodrow

Day 5 in Cuba

2010-12-04T03:10:00.000-08:00

The Havana roads are potholed. Most of the sidewalks are falling apart. I heard someone describing parts of the city as “looking like Berlin after the bombs dropped.” Largely the people are poor and many jobless. The government is bankrupt.

Typical street in Old Havana, aka the "nice part" of the city.

Whoever’s job it is to fix this place, I wouldn’t want it… but I say that about America too. I wonder why Fidel stayed in power so long. I understand HOW he maintained his position of leadership and responsibility; I just don’t understand WHY he wanted it. Had he left office after four or eight years, he may have inherited all the credit of overthrowing Bautista and forming a new government without having to take any of the blame for the current ills of society.

Looking around Havana and reading Cuba’s history, I can understand why, to the Cuban people, communism seemed like a good idea. They’d been more or less under colonial enslavement ever since Chris Columbus and his crew landed on the island in 1492. The concept of sharing wealth, rather than creating it for others while keeping none for themselves, must’ve seemed like a great idea.

Statues like this are all over Old Havana. Some statues are of Abraham Lincoln, whose image was symbolic to the Cuban Revolution representative as a man who ended slavery. Weird, right?

I also feel like, had the US lifted the embargo, or not imposed it in the first place, than Cuba’s socialism would’ve evolved toward capitalism just out of US business involvement alone.

It’s hard for me to get a pulse of the people. First, my Spanish is so poor. Even if I was fluent though, I don’t think Cubans speak politics much, even amongst themselves. They don’t really speak religion much either. They just seem to accept what they have – in part I’m sure due to fear imposed by the government but also because they don’t have much choice anyway. Short of another revolution, they seem to await the natural course of time.

Somewhat typical urban housing in the older section of town. Newer housing looks much more Soviet, square and concrete.

I’m sure it’s partly because of all the 1940’s architecture and the old style automobiles, but being in Cuba makes me feel a bit like it must’ve felt for the fictional residents stranded in Casablanca. Lots of Cubans want to leave – despite all their national pride. They just can’t secure the Letters of Transit. So they wait, and in the meantime many of them serve the more fortunate comers and goers of richer nations.

This is such an odd place. I like it. Part of me wishes I could escape to this nation, just to cool my heels a bit and hide out from the rest of the world; not unlike the way I feel about Alaska, which is somewhat of a semi-developed third world nation itself.

It’s time to go back though. I leave at dawn, five hours from now. As I pack my bags I’m reminded of the lyrics to a favorite song of mine, Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards, about governments failing their people, Cuba included:

“It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline

But on the Che Guevara Highway, filling up with gasoline

Fidel Castro’s brother spies a rich lady who’s crying

Over luxury’s disappointment so he walks over and he’s trying

To sympathize with her, but he wishes he could warn her

That the third world is just around the corner….”

Day 4 in Cuba

2010-12-03T01:52:00.000-08:00

As I said, our restaurants have been very nice. this was today's view.

These nights are long. My father and I stay up late smoking Cuban cigars and talking to others on our trip. This is my father’s company far more so than it is the friends I’ve kept over the last half-decade. My father is an attorney and those with which we’re traveling are lobbyists, attorneys, businessmen, executive types…

Another view from today's restaurant.

I like their world, particularly as I’ve been in exile from it for the last half decade traveling the 50 states of the US more or less as an itinerant laborer. Needless to say, our Cuba trip is made up of upscale retaraunts – far better than the native Cubans can afford - and similarly upscale entertainment. I don’t dislike it, I just wonder what the rest of Cuba is like. I have some idea just from what I hear from our native guides and from what I see in the residential area.

This billboard is at the baseball stadium. Loosely, it translates to say that we triumph at the will of the total.

We went to another baseball game today – a stadium filled with Cubans. I wonder how the ballplayers negotiate their contracts, just as I wonder how others in the Cuban system make their way in this government controlled state. From what I’ve been told, the ballplayers must play for the team of the district in which they are born. There are no trades. But how do they get paid, I wonder. How do they handle retirement, etc, especially the players whose careers are short. Those questions aren’t easily answered, of course.

A shot from today's game.

Cuba is a mystery and I don’t expect to understand it in a week no more so than I expect to understand America having lived there my whole life. All I seem to find are more questions in my head. The more I learn the more confused I am.

The baseball game is practically all I did today. I skipped the morning’s show at Cuba’s Jewish synagogue to catch up on my sleep. I’d been going on three hours a day for several days in a row now.

At the ballgame, the defense was surprisingly poor. It was only their fourth game of the season. I wonder if they even have a preseason. It appears that they just begin their season without preparation and the quality of play improves as the season progresses… At least that’s what I expect considering today’s numerous errors. Who knows though. As I said, this place is a mystery to me.

Another shot I took of today's game.

Constantly I am curious as to how much the heavy government burdens its citizens and how much the union-like communist system unintentionally encourages its workers to move slowly without any encouragement for extraordinary service. Every restaurant we’ve been to has had slow service; the drinks take forever in particular, not that I need more.

Perhaps many of my questions could have been answered via the lyrics of tonight's musical entertainment, Carlos Varela, but my spanish is far too poor to interpret such poetry. Anyway, those are just my day four thoughts. It’s four AM now. Time for bed again. These days fly by.

Day 3 in Cuba

2010-12-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Again the days and nights blended together. We ended day two with a trip to the Tropicana, the outdoor theater known for creating the stage shows now popular in Las Vegas. For two hours a rotating crew of about thirty singers and dancers, accompanied by a full band, performed in vibrant costumes, the women often in thongs and feathers. I wish I'd taken pictures of that, but I'd left my camera at the hotel, not expecting to be able to take photos at the show and content just to relax and watch instead. It was a fantastic show - musical and acrobatic, far more entertaining and engaging than anything I've seen in Vegas or elsewhere. The talent and training of the performers was undeniable.

We went to a disco after that, staying until three in the morning and fighting off the Cuban women attempting to seduce travelers for opportunity and money.

After a couple of hours sleep, a pair of Red Bulls and a two hour visit to a protestant charity where we watched a propagandist film as part of a pitch for donations, I split from our group and left with my father, taxiing to a baseball game. Havana's hometown team, the Industrialist had four days earlier began their 90 game season, defending last year's National Championship. Only locals filled the stadium, about 20,000 of them in total, which seems like a large crowd considering it was a Tuesday game with a one pm first pitch. For three pesos, equivalent to three dollars American, we bought box seats behind home plate and had a personal server deliver us beer and a ball autographed by the entire team. The beer and ball cost a few dollars extra. When I remarked that I liked our server's Industrialists T-shirt, he set out to find one for me. Unable to find one - these items can be surprisingly difficult to acquire in Cuba - he removed his shirt and demanded I buy it from him, which I did after attempting to persuade him otherwise.

Like most buildings in Cuba, the Industrialist's stadium is in disrepair - old wooden seats and concrete bleachers, stadium lights having been removed for an unstated reason two years ago forcing all games to be played during the day. The playing surface however was in good shape, the grass green, the infield manicured. I visited the mens room while at the stadium, wherein the cement urinals no longer featured running water and yellow pools of piss remained stagnant in ruts worn too deeply to allow flow toward the drain. This was immediately after the game when a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of Cuban men filtered through the bano with me as a female custodian yelled from the doorway in Spanish, demanding us all to exits. The men yelled back to her, laughing. What they were saying I could not understand.

As baseball games are not a tourist attraction, and as the Cubans waste little of their money for taxi service, we had to wander the streets of the urban residential neighborhood until we found a cab. The driver screeched to a halt then took off just as quickly once we'd entered the car, the squeel of his tires peeling out drowned by the sound of his booming stereo. For whatever reason, lots of cuban autos are fitted with Kenwood stereos and the Cubans where large Kenwood logo stickers on the back of their rear windows.

We weren't at the hotel long before our tour bus took us to dinner in one of Cuba's newly introduced privately-owned restaurants. These are different than most restaurants as they are private businesses and not government run - an effect of the recently begun Raul Castro administration. From the restaurant we went to a private party at the home and art studio of Jose Fuster, the man billed as the "Picasso of Cuba." Fuerte's house is several concrete structures all covered in painted tiles with balconies and gazebos branching out in every direction making the place look not unlike a colorful, statue covered tree house. Unfortunately the battery on my camera died on me today and I was unable to take any pictures of today's events. I'll take lots tomorrow, specifically at the baseball game as I'll be returning for game four of the Industrialist's series against the Metropolitans. They play the game soundly and with a lively, passionate audience. Without a big screen for replays and with none of the technological hoopla of modern American sporting events, the game has a feel of the 1950s to it - as much of Cuba does.

Somehow missing in all my recapping is the sometimes lively discussions we've had with our Cuban hosts about politics and the effects of Cuba's domestic and international affairs on their people and economy. Lots of curiosities in my head; too many to even form them into questions. More tomorrow.

Pictures of Cuba from Day 2

2010-12-01T23:47:00.000-08:00

I hate to post all these pics without captions but I'm doing so hastily and on the fly.

The pics of the cars are just the everyday vehicles the people here often drive. Lots of 1950s US cars and Soviet cars from the '70s. Lots of people drive motorcycles with sidecars. Lots of hitch-hikers too. It's legal here and most Cubans don't own cars.

The Pics of people on the street are just that.

The 50-something white dude is my dad. The bronze statue is Hemingway.

Cuba Pics Day 1 y 2

2010-12-01T01:58:00.000-08:00

DAY 2 EN CUBA

2010-12-01T01:36:00.000-08:00

Day one quickly bled into day two as I left the end of the Bueno Vista Social Club concert and wandered the Havana streets until I found a bar. It was about 11pm.

The first person I met was an Italian tourist; male of about forty. The second person I met proved more communicative: a German male of thirty-five. As I speak German conversationally, he almost forcefully educated me on his own experiences. He's been vacationing in Cuba about five times a year since his early twenties. He told me all about what it means to have a Cuban girlfriend - Cubanas he's began relationships with in discotheques, women who desire the money of a foreigner and more often than not an opportunity to gain citizenship which can allow them to leave Cuba.

"Don't fall in love with a Cubana," he warned me. "They are college girls who desire the money only foreigners can offer them," a sugar-daddy of sorts. "But one can have many Cuban girlfriends and return to them each visit. They are good women but they love the opportunity of you more than you yourself, you know what I mean?"

I knew what he meant. As he said that the bar in which we were drinking became completley dark. The TV and the lights flickered. Then everything was black. "Rolling blackout," he said. Electrical shortages are the norm in Cuba. So normal in fact that patrons at the bars remain calm, bartenders light candles and business continues as usual. It was then that I learned the acronym: TIC (This Is Cuba).

"This is Cuba," said the German. "You have two options. Either the vagrancies cause you anxiety or they relax you completely. No telling what will happen when you're here. Everything changes at a moments' notice."

Indeed, the German is correct. Like all the others at our bar I was relaxed. Thirty minutes later, the lights and sound powered on, musicians took the stage and life resumed as normal. I stayed until almost two in the morning. The music and bars close at three. The performances, even at small venues are excellent. All professional musicians in Cuba are graduates of the music program; just like all doctors are graduates of the medical program. Education here is excellent. Work opportunities however are not.

"You won't understand Cuba in just one day or one week," our guide told us this morning. And that made sense to me, even on just a few hours sleep. The society here is confusing. "I've lived here all my life and I still don't understand it," he said, and I realized that I feel likewise about America.

Our first duty on the morning of day two was to visit a church, the purpose of our visas. We visited a daycare center for underprivileged people run by the Catholic church. A nun, Theresa, was our guide. Many in our group were elated to see the children sing and dance for us. Many felt sympathetic to the kids and the nun overseeing their pre-pre-school education. It was an odd site: Americans handing out stickers and smiles to three year olds in uniforms as they were marched around by the educators of the nun. It didn't look much different from the church-run childcare I've seen for the poor here in the United States. In New York I actually was tenant mates with a nun running a similar organization. She was a nice women and a character - smoked cigarettes like a chimney, drank wine like a fish, cursed like a sailor... all with me and behind closed doors. I couldn't help but believe that the nun serving as our guide, Theresa, was much different. After all, it is the same work just in a different nation with a different economy,

After the church visit, we toured an art museum, then I freed myself from a museum of the Cuban revolution and walked to a bar frequented by Hemingway when he lived in Havana; a bar also calling itself the "Cradle of the Daiquiri" for its advancement in that field. From there we took the entrance to the hotel and stuck with the informality and chances of fate.

Tomorrow we go to a professional Beisbol game.

Photos de Cuba day 1

2010-12-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Day 1 in Cuba

2010-11-29T16:07:00.000-08:00

After Castro architecture.

Most of Cuba can be divided in two parts – before Castro (or BC), and after Castro. The BC sections of the nation are notable for their beautiful buildings, often Spanish in fashion culminating in the Art Deco style of the 1950’s. Post fifties, Cuba took on what they refer to as Russian-style architecture, referencing communist Russia’s blocks of pragmatic though ugly mass houses and similarly designed concrete, square structures. Everything is old here. As one of my fellow Americans remarked, “the whole place looks like it could use a coat of paint.” True enough.

Signs like this are everywhere - in lieu of commercial advertisements.

We arrived at 10:15am, as planned, received our visas, made it through customs, then loaded into pre-arranged buses with Cuban guides who escorted us first into old Havana, then around the old American embassy of the 1920’s, which is in a tourist section of town frequented mostly by Europeans. From there we walked to a waterfront restaurant and then to a cigar club. Tonight we’ll have dinner, drinks, and a show with the Bueno Vista Social Club.

The national sports training center.

Tomorrow we’ll start the day by visiting the church that is sponsoring us as their guests. I have no idea what to expect.

More signs - as previously mentioned,

So far the Cuban people have been hospitable and friendly; somewhat surprised though very happy to see Americans. There are beggars occasionally and stray dogs as well – which I assume are better urban pests than pigeons and rats.

In Cuba the government picks your job for you. Evidently, these guys got handed "field laborer."

More to come tomorrow.

En Route To Cuba

2010-11-28T16:29:00.000-08:00

Smallest commercial plane I've ever been on. 19 seats. Look how askew my shoulders are just to fit between the others in my row. From left to right we are: good-natured, double-chinned stranger; me; my father.

Another view at the 19 seat plane. I was in the middle seat of the last row and took this shot from there.

I crammed into the tiniest of airplane seats today and rode an hour with my shoulders jammed between my father and the stranger at my right. This was our flight from Tampa to Miami, a 19 passenger Gulf Stream with every seat occupied and the three largest passengers (my father, me, and the very good-natured, multiple-chinned man on my right).

Tomorrow morning I'll meet our travel group for the first time. We rally at 5:30AM at Miami International Airport. Our charter flight leaves around 9:30 and we'll arrive in Havana at 10:15. I'm not sure what the deal is with the four hour gap between our rally time and our take off. I somewhat expect the US government to be giving us some sort of anti-Cuba speech in that time period. I'll find out soon enough. Will keep taking pics and posting as I go too.

I read online today that the internet in Cuba is only for the highly privileged - those with a government pass - and that it is heavily censored and monitored by the government; emails are monitored and read too. (I WILL have internet in my hotel, though... so if I don't make it back to America, assume I'm being held captive as an internet user [kidding, I hope]). Cuba also has the lowest per capita computer ownership of any nation in the world... or it did until 2007 when the government legalized computer ownership. No kidding. It was illegal to own a computer. The Cuban government was protecting its people from the internet, which it called "the great disease of the 21st century." And I thought the US government was a nanny-state for pulling Four Locos off the market.

So, as I said, I'll keep writing my notes to myself on here and I'll keep posting pics too as I take them. I'll be in Cuba manana!

Preparing to Leave for Cuba

2010-11-26T14:50:00.000-08:00

I'm somewhat frantically getting ready for my trip to Cuba as our plane will be touching down in the communist nation on Monday morning. As to what I expect - my mind is almost burry I'm so curious and confused.

For one thing, I don't know what to wear while I'm there, thus I don't even know what to pack. I'm not sure if I'll be amongst masses of impoverished citizens or if I'll be in some sort of gorgeous resort area. My guess at the moment is that I'll be seeing both. Though even my hunches seem suspect to me now.

I have my father to thank for this trip, as otherwise I wouldn't have been able to legally leave the US for Cuban soil. One way or another, my father, through a friend or a business contact of his, was invited to join this State Department approved "goodwill" trip, put together annually by a California lobbying firm with contacts to a Cuban church.

Roughly seventy-five of us make-up the travel group. I say that having quickly counted the names on the PDF recently emailed to me: a collection of paragraph-long autobiographies that each of us were asked to submit. From that document I have an idea of the company in which I'll be traveling. Our ages range from twenty to mid-sixties, though most seem to be in their early forties. Most common occupations: lobbyist, attorney, corporate executive in governmental affairs/ communications, record executive, television executive, hollywood agent. Then there's a teacher, a chef, a personal trainer, a college student, and of course me - some guy who spent the last half-decade traveling to every state in the country working odd jobs so he could tell stories about it... and who most recently has been renovating a house while pondering the beginnings of a legitimate career.

So that's the roster more or less and we'll be in Cuba for one week. I'll have my own room at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. I'll have internet access there, no cell phone.

I'll be bringing my camera, my laptop, some pens and notebooks... and probably just some clothes other than that - linen slacks, khakis, some button up shirts, shorts and a swim suit.

Fool that I am, I haven't prepared myself for this linguistically. Years ago, when working in the kitchen of a Manhattan Italian restaurant with a crew of undocumented immigrants, my Spanish was passable. I should've brushed up in preparation for this trip. Perhaps I'll cram tonight.

That's about it. As a journal of my travels, I'll keep this blog updated as best I can with photos and posts (just for my own records). You can follow along if you want.