Change of Plans

             So last Saturday we were supposed to go and see a botanical farm close to Havana that had all kinds of lions, elephants, basically a zoo, but they didn’t call it that.  But, in true Cuban fashion the van broke down and we couldn’t go.  I say in true Cuban fashion because our driver, Jefe, only says that the van breaks down when he is either too hung-over and doesn’t want to drive, or he has found a way to make more money than we would have paid him for the trip.  So needless to say, we didn’t go to the botanical farm.

            However, the day wasn’t wasted and we did go get to go and see the Marti Tower instead.  The Marti Tower is a monument, much like the Jefferson or Washington ones in D.C.  We avoided countless flights of stairs by all squeezing into a tiny elevator with a very chatty lady who asked us all kinds of questions.  I’m beginning to think that all Cubans have a never-ending supply of questions that they go through every time that they meet a new person. 

            Anyways, once we got to the top the view was incredible.  You could see the entire bay, Old Havana, Vedado where the University is, Miramar where we live, absolutely everything.  Apparently, there is another building in Havana that is taller than the Marti tower, but it is closer to the ocean and closer to sea level so the Tower has a higher altitude.  I’ve never been in the Space Needle in Seattle, but I doubt that the view is as good as this one was.  And the water, I’ve never seen an ocean so blue and so integrated into a big city.  I’ve of course seen the Great Lakes as I have flown into Chicago, but it was different seeing the ocean fighting for dominance and the city not giving an inch.

            In our conversation class today we actually got to talk about visiting it for a little while and I learned even more about the tower itself.  The Cubans like to call the tower either the Mirador, which roughly translated means the looking place, or La Raspadura.  Now, raspadura is actually a dessert created with the stem of the sugar cane and a caramelized glaze.  I’ve never had it before but I am definitely going to try to find some soon.  It was an interesting sensation learning about the pet names that the people of Havana call the monuments around town.   I felt like I was becoming a Habanera (girl from Havana).  I’ve never lived in a big city so it was one of the first times that I have felt a sense of knowing a place intimately.  More places to explore soon!

Orishas

            Thursday, yesterday, we had our weekly trip discovering Havana.  This week we went to this little place right across from the capitol building called El Museo de las Orishas (The Museum of the Orishas).  I didn’t know until right before we went that Orishas were what the followers of Santería called their gods.  Santería is not quite voodoo but very similar and has its roots in the same tribes in Africa.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect, anywhere from chickens being sacrificed right in front of me to movies about people being possessed to an art museum.  I literally had no clue what I was getting myself into.

            Thankfully there were no chicken sacrifices going on and definitely no possessions.  We ended up on the second floor of a restored colonial building with giant vaulted ceilings that  had echoes from the 1800s around every corner.  Lined up against all of the walls were statues of all of these different gods with their corresponding information displayed for all to see.  I was confused because I thought that they must have been artist renderings because, well, who can know exactly what any god looks like?  Apparently though, the Yoruba people, who were the first practitioners of Santería in Cuba, had recognizable gods that maintained the same features throughout the history of the religion.  Even after slave owners and the church had tried to erase all of their ties with their home Africa, these gods survived.

            One thing that I had not realized was so prevalent was the syncretism that went on between Santería and the Catholic faith.  I did not grow up Catholic, so I’ve never really been exposed to saints and the role that they play in the Catholic Church.  It was amazing to see that each one of these black, tribal gods had a parallel saint in the Catholic faith.  I don’t know how I would feel about that if I was a Catholic today and especially if I had been Catholic back then.  I was a little confused by the whole idea of syncretism and how each god corresponded to a saint, but this religion has managed to survive some of the most difficult trials.  They definitely have my respect if not my full comprehension.

            The last thing that grabbed my attention was the fact that each god seemed to come from a certain and different part of Africa.  Apparently, the slave trade mostly brought peoples from the middle area of Africa but that still encompassed a lot of territory.  So once all of these slaves arrived here, they contributed their own gods and Santería became a blend of the gods from all different religions.  As a result of this, there is a lot of overlap.  For instance there were two gods of the sea, but one was for the deep parts of the sea and the other one was for the surface and shallow areas.  Lots of repetition and very interesting. 

No Christmas in Cuba

            So last Tuesday, February 15, for our roundtable class we visited with and got to listen to Father José Felix who is the priest at Santa Rita, a church about 20 blocks from where we live.  What he shared with us was incredibly interesting and shed a lot of light on what life was like for a priest as well as many aspects of Cuban life.

            The most shocking and saddening thing that he shared with us was that Cubans do not celebrate Christmas. The government has celebrated it once in the fifty years since the revolution, in 1997.  The Cuban people are more than willing to and try to celebrate Christmas, but it is not a government-sanctioned holiday. So, as a result, there is still class at the universities and all of the state-run businesses (which are almost all of the businesses in the country) are still open.  These people are living on thirty US dollars a month, so they cannot afford to take time off to celebrate a holiday all about buying presents.

            Growing up I watched a lot of movies so often I relate real life to the silver screen and vice versa.  One of my favorite movies is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  In this movie the evil White Witch has frozen Narnia and it is always winter but never Christmas.  When Aslan, the hero and savior of Narnia comes back, one of the first signs that the White Witch has lost her power is that Santa Claus comes to Narnia.  Cuba is obviously not a frozen wasteland, but in a lot of ways it is a country frozen in time.  It is paralyzed, without the infrastructure to continue to support existing business and lacking the ability to progress.  So some parallels between the movie and real life are clear.

            But back to what Father José said about Christmas.  I know that in the United States Christmas has become an excuse for overindulgence and wastefulness as a substitute for expressing inexpressible emotions for loved ones, but that is not what it is supposed to be about.  It is supposed to be a chance for people of all ages, all demographics, from all corners of the globe to celebrate the birth of a little boy who would change the world.  It is as if this country is frozen in a perpetual state of winter, but never get the chance to experience the hope and joy that come with Christmas.  I wish that I had been here at Christmas though because I am beginning to know the Cuban people a little bit more and I am beginning to understand that if anything, they are a people of hope and joy.  I wish I could have seen how they reacted to and celebrated this global holiday.

Orquideario

Today, Saturday, was our traditional long excursion to discover more of Cuba than just Havana.  We went Soroa a very small town in the western part of the island.  We stayed in one central location for the most part, and we got to see a giant waterfall, climb a mountain and go to an orchid farm.

            The first thing that we did once we got to the area was to start a long trek to go and see a waterfall.  Now, I believe that there is a push in the United States for major landscapes to be made visible to as many people as possible.  Whether that be that you can drive up to it, boat up to it, or do the minimum amount of walking possible, you still get there.  Not so in Cuba.  If you want to see awe-inspiring views then you are going to have to work for them.  So we began the terrifyingly steep trek down to see this astounding natural phenomenon.  Once we got to the bottom it was incredible because you could clamber and rock-bound to your hearts content.  If you wanted to get behind it you could.  No one was there to make sure that you weren’t an idiot and did something to hurt yourself.  Quite refreshing.

I was operating under the misconception that the orchid farm (called an Orquideario) was at the top of this giant mountain. Nope, just a really amazing spot to take videos and pictures.  So I hiked up a mountain in Cuba, never done that before and hopefully never will do that again!  I was amazed to see when I got to the top that these men had hauled up massive quantities of water and goods for people to buy once they reached the top.  I literally have absolutely no idea how they managed that. 

So after we hiked up the giant mountain, we went to the orchard farm.  Señor Tómas Felipe Camacho built it in honor of his daughter Pilar who died during his wife’s miscarriage.  I have never seen so many beautiful, delicate flowers and smelled such a heady scent. It actually in recent years has been turned into a Botanical Garden so it had many exotic varieties of plants that I could not name in English or in Spanish.  One interesting thing that I found out was that orchids have to be grown in an environment of 80-90% humidity.  While Cuba is generally a humid country, they still needed to use green houses (viberos) in order to maintain an ideal growing environment.  The whole garden was such an amazing analogy for Cuba and the fact that it has suffered through so many trials (the current government being its most recent trial) but it still is one of the headiest and most exquisite cultures I have ever come into contact with.

Museo de Arte Europeo

            Yesterday was our weekly day of adventure with our Professor within the city of Havana.  This Thursday we had to go and give fingerprints for immigration purposes so we decided to go to the Museum of European Art that is right nearby.  I absolutely loved this museum.  It was an incredibly different experience from the museum of Cuban Art.  Let me explain why.

            The Cuban Art Museum is in an area that is still in Old Havana, but it is away from the capitol and the central square.  Facing the entrance to the Cuban Museum is all the tanks and planes and boats that Castro and his forces used during the Revolution.  You can see the capitol and the central square from the European Art Museum’s front door.  So already these two museums show a contrast just in their location.  Interestingly, the Cuban Art Museum only had three floors of works while the European Art Museum had five.  Granted, every floor was home to different styles of works, Greek, Etruscan, French, Italian, but I think it said a lot about how much other countries affect Cuba.  Interestingly, there was even a section for work from the United States.  Yes, it was the tiniest section, but it was there. 

             Another thing that really struck me as I was going through the European Museum was that the building itself was a piece of artwork.  It was a colonial building and had an intense amount of detail in its architecture alone.  The Cuban Museum was very much a more modern museum that had no ornate scrollwork on top of columns, or painted vaulted ceilings.  If I had to put it into American terms, it would be like going to a contemporary art museum versus a traditional museum. 

            One thing that I love about all of the museums that I have been to in Cuba is that in every room there are people.  Just sitting or standing around to make sure that no one touches or harms the works.  Honestly, I can’t remember if there are these people in museums in the US but all I do remember is that if there were, they were unapproachable.  Here, these people love for you to ask them questions.  I was in the French section in the Museum and I spent the entire time just in that room talking to Rafael and Yolaida.  About a French work and French art in general, about a German work that they both liked, about Cuba and US relations.  We had dinner last night with a gentleman named Israel who said that Cuba’s national sport is not baseball.  Baseball is Cuba’s national pastime, talking is Cuba’s national sport.  So very true and I cannot wait to get to go back to the Museum and talk some more!

Food for Thought

            So as I said before, you cannot buy fresh produce in the supermarkets in Havana and I just wanted to give a little update on how the whole process works for consumption of fruits and vegetables.  I would like to preface this by saying that nothing in the United States, not even farmer’s markets compare to going to the market in Cuba.

            Our market is located about 20 or so blocks from our hotel and it takes about 20 to 30 minutes to walk there on a good day.  After we work out at the gym next to our hotel and get our butts kicked by the five-foot Spanish Nazi it definitely takes longer.  Walking there with one of the blond girls in our group is also always an adventure.  She is a rarity in this dark-skinned and dark-eyed country, so we get the gamut of marriage proposals to words that I will not repeat.  Last time we went we got three I love you’s from random strangers.

            That is just the process to get there.  The first time that we got to the market it was like sheep walking into a lion’s den.  Everything from our pasty white skin to our clothes yelled out that we weren’t from around these parts and a “Take Advantage Of” sticker was slapped on our heads.  The first time that I bought a pineapple from anyone I was charged twice what the going rate was.  I fared much better than my two roommates where were robbed blind because their language skills were a little bit rougher than mine. 

            Good news, however, that on that first day we managed to make some friends.  One older gentleman named Gabriel, who was the only one in the whole place who spoke English mind you, took my two girlfriends under his wing and explained to them what everything was.  I really appreciated his help because there are vegetables and fruits that I have never seen before in varying shades of ripeness!  A bonato is a mix between a sweet potato and a potato but it is white.  A malanga is a potato like root but has no flavor what so ever and is pink.  Plantains, which you get at most Cuban restaurants in the US, are actually called platanos that translated means bananas!

            The greatest thing about this market though is that all of these men (you only buy from opposite gender because otherwise you’ll get ripped off) are willing to help us and talk to us.  Yes many of them have asked us to go get coffee with them, some have proposed marriage, but overall, we have some really great guys that are willing to explain things to us and to help us.  The Cubans like to say that only our governments have problems, and in the market, I’ve never felt that that was more true. Paulo is my special market helper and last time I went he taught me a trick in that you rip the tops off of the pineapples so that they weigh less and you don’t pay for a part that you don’t eat. 

            If I learn anymore tricks I’ll be sure and post updates! 

Viñales

             Saturday’s are our days off from class that we use to travel around the great country of Cuba.  At the bright shiny hour of 8 o’clock, Profe took us to the great city of Viñales, about two hours west of Havana.  Within the span of about four hours, we had toured a tobacco farm where they dried tobacco for cigars, seen the mogotes, walked through a cave that was a hideout and escape route for runaway slaves, and taken a boat ride in an subterranean cavern.

            The tobacco farm wasn’t actually in the city of Viñales, but about 25 kilometers outside right on the side of the highway.  Our driver, Jefe, knew this particular farmer and stopped there because Jefe gets free corn from him in return for bringing tourists.  This was one of the most eye-opening experiences that I fully did not expect to be interesting at all.  Tobacco is planted during September, November, sometimes even in December in Cuba and then after three months is harvested.  The farm that we went to had two different stages already harvested and one more that would be harvested sometime in the coming weeks.  When the tobacco is harvested two leaves are tied together at the stems and then tied to a piece of string and strung over a pole to be hung on one of thirteen levels in a drying shed.  You would expect the smell of tobacco to be overwhelming when you walk into these sheds (some of which are glorified huts).  However, that was not the case at all.  After the tobacco reached the perfect form of “seco”, or dry, they would be tied into giant bundles and shipped to a factory where women trained by years of practice would pick out which leaves were to be used for which type of cigar, based of course on quality and size.  I’ll continue the explanation of this process once we go to the factory where they process the tobacco and roll the cigars!

            The next place that we went was to the top of this mountain to see what the Cubans call “mogotes”.  Mogotes are these plateau-like mountains that have nearly sheer cliffs that rise almost a mile straight up.  They were formed when giant slabs of stone rotated from their original positions in the bedrock and were forced upwards rapidly causing a sheering sensation.  Of course, this whole process took place thousands of years ago so weathering and tree growth has diminished their grandeur a little bit, but believe me they are still incredibly intimidating.  Also, the weather was bad today with lots of rain and mist and fog so it felt like we were in the middle of a Jurassic Park movie. 

            The last two places we went to were actually caves underneath two mogotes that slaves used to hideout from plantation owners.  The first one was an intense maze that if I had been running away and fearing for my life I know that I would have gotten lost in right away.  The stalactites and stalagmites were INTENSE!  The second one that we went to was just as much of a maze, but at the end of the maze was a river that ran from underground the mogote all the way to the ocean.  Slaves running away from abusive plantation managers would use these caves in the exact same way as the slaves in the United States used the Underground Railroad, so it was an interesting similarity of a harsh time during both of Cuba and the United States history.

Las Damas Blancas

A little background history so that everyone gets the context of the Damas Blancas.  In the spring of 2002, there was a protest against the Castro regime.  It included close to 75 professors, lawyers, writers, artists, a lot of intellectuals. Well Castro did NOT like it, and threw all of them in jail. A lot of them were the breadwinners for their families, and it caused a big vacuum in Havana society. The people here call it “Primavera Negra”, or Black Spring.

            Now getting to the Damas Blancas. These women are based out of a church called Santa Rita, which is very close to where we live.  Twenty or so blocks away, about a twenty-five minute walk.  These are all kinds of women, from all walks of life who know the story behind the unreasonable detention of these intellectuals and have decided to lodge a continuous peaceful protest since that point.  Every Sunday these women come out of Santa Rita with a single white flower for each of the detainees and shout “¡Libertad, Libertad!”  During the rest of the week they wear all white as they go about their daily lives.  This has been going on for the nine years since Castro put the intellectuals in jail.

            About a year ago, El Presidente decided that he was going to put a stop to this and that these women were causing too much trouble.  So, one Sunday in the middle of spring, Father Jose Felix gave his mass and then the service dismissed.  These women exited the church to be confronted with a horde of Castro’s thugs.  None of them were police and none of them said that they were from the government but they kept the women blockaded for over two hours.  Lots of threats were yelled, they were called whores, none of them were allowed to leave and all sorts of awful things happened.  Well eventually, one passed out and an ambulance had to be called.

            The police finally showed up after the ambulance had been called and the horde went scrambling but the trials were not over for the Damas Blancas.  They were told that they were the cause of the incident and they were pushed and beaten into trucks by the police and taken to their homes and put under house arrest.

            The next Sunday, the Cardinal of Havana, the most high-ranking figure in the Catholic Church in Cuba came to Santa Rita and gave the sermon.  After he was finished, he made a public promise to all that were in the congregation that nothing like what had happened the previous week would ever happen again.  In this country, that is like throwing down the gauntlet and asking Castro to pick it up.  Miraculously though, whether it was due to pressure from the public, the Vatican, or just his own whims, Castro began to release the prisoners and let all of the Damas Blancas off of house arrest.  Not all of the prisoners have been released, but it is a slow process to readmit known dissenters back into the general population of a communist country. 

            This is the project that I am working on all semester, so I will give more updates soon!

El Museo de Arte Cubana

            On Thursday we went to the Museo de Arte Cubana, which for all you monolinguals out there means Museum of Cuban Art.  It was an incredible institution and was definitely on par with any of the art museums that I have been to in the United States.  It is definitely a gem of Havana that has been preserved through many, many trials.  Interestingly, right across the street is the Museum of the Revolution, which is an outdoor museum that has all of the different vehicles and weapons used during the Revolution.

            Once inside, we began on the top floor and worked our way down from the Colonial period, to the post-Colonial and finally to the post-Revolution period.  All of the colonial artwork was very similar to a lot of the colonial works from the United States with a lot of portraits of important people and a lot of landscapes. 

            One of the greatest works that I saw was called “La Siesta” by Guillermo Collazo.  This was an awesome work because it showed a lot of the dichotomy between an island nation like Cuba being conquered and colonized by a highly developed nation like Spain.  Look it up and see how the opulence and formal nature of the rug and the girl’s dress are contrasted with the simple nature of the adobe structure and the abundance of plants.  It is also really interesting that a painting that is supposed to be about resting actually has so much activity going on in it.  The agitated leaves blowing across the floor, the crashing waves, not so restful.  Definitely a metaphor for the fact that this Spanish woman has been uprooted from her life and placed in a country that is unlike anything she has ever known.

            Then we moved into the post-Colonial period and I loved this painting by Manuel Vega called “Caravana de Ciegos”.  Ciegos in Spanish means blind people and if you Google it, you will be struck with the same sense of irony as I was.  In this painting, the blind were leading the blind!  During the post-Colonial period, the general international attitude towards Cuba was exactly the theme of this work.  The general sentiment was that everyone, most predominately the United States, had to keep coming in and cleaning up the messes that it got itself in to. 

            There were lots of other great works to, but I’m quickly running out of time, so come and visit and I’ll take you guys to see all the other fabulous things in this wonderful country!

Hemmingway House

Hemmingway House

So Saturday we traveled to the house of the famous novelist, Ernest Hemmingway.  I personally have never read any of his works, but as he is such a famous person in this country (even more so than in the US I would say) that might have to change soon.  The first town that we visited was called Cojimar, which is a tiny fishing town about thirty minutes from downtown Havana.  One of our taxi drivers, the infamous ladies man Marci, told us that this was just an average town for Cuba and not one of the poorest.  By American standards, people would not travel there at night.  It would be considered worse than the projects.  But in Cuba, it’s just another town.

Back to Hemingway’s story, he loved this town and it was where he kept his boat Pilar.  We went to one of the many bars that he loved to frequent all over the island.  The people of Cojimar loved him so much that they mined enough metal to have a statue of him cast and erected.  Not too shabby for an American.  Interestingly, I discovered that Hemmingway had a chauffer so that he could drink wherever he went and he had a boat driver so that he could maintain a habitual state of intoxication. 

After visiting Cojimar, we traveled an additional 20 minutes and arrived at the Museo de Hemmingway.  This place is a palace by Cuban standards.  He lived there even after the revolution because he was a Castro man.  He hated Bautista and completely supported the Revolution. J. Edgar Hoover had a giant file on him because he was such a fervent supporter of the communist regime here. 

Three things that stood out the most.  One, there was a boys baseball team practicing in his front yard.  Two, I saw the pool that Ava Gardner swam naked in.  And three, Hemmingway had four dogs, two of which were named Black and Negrita. (Negrita means little black one)  For someone who is considered one of the greatest writers of all time, he wasn’t too creative on the names of man’s best friend.

Hemmingway was apparently fastidious about his weight and always worried about what women thought of him.  On one of the interior walls there is a column of numbers where he kept track so he could motivate himself to lose more weight.  We just heard about this because you aren’t allowed inside the house, only around the outside to look through the windows.  Worried that Americans are going to get crazy ideas into their heads and steal everything.

The last interesting tid-bit from this American is that Hemmingway carried a gun when he went fishing so that he could kill sharks!

Cuba!!!

So Cuba...

I’m here, have been here for a week, and I already don’t want to leave.  There are colors everywhere!  I have seen at least four different flowering shrubs that I have never seen before in my life, and even the trees here bloom!  To live in the Caribbean my entire life, oh what a blessing that would be!

Even more colorful than the flowers are the people.  Being an American I totally expected everyone to be hostile towards us.  I could not have been more wrong.  We had a taxi driver two days ago whose name was Raul Luis who said that it was only our governments that kept our two cultures apart.  Cubans love Americans, at least that’s what he said in Spanish. 

            We start classes tomorrow, so this past week all we’ve been doing is setting up our apartments and exploring the city.  It sounds simple, but in a communist country it is definitely harder than it seems.  We went to the supermarket which is entirely different than anything I’ve ever experienced.  Brands? What are those?  It blew my mind because the shelves were full, but it was shelf upon shelf and row upon row of, for example, the same can of olives.  I would have taken a picture but you are only allowed a wallet inside.  There are also days when they just don’t have things, for example, Tuesday you can’t buy salt.  Toilet paper? Forget it.

            There is no fresh produce in the “supermercado” (supermarket), you have to buy everything in roadside stands.  Slightly sketchy until you take the first bite of a fresh pineapple and then you wonder how you’ve lived your life without it.  It’s winter here, so they are in their third cycle in the growing season and fruit isn’t as good as the vegetables are.  We’ve had to experiment with four or five different potatoes because they have so many variations of sweet potatoes and potatoes. 

            Exploring the city has been a blast, a bit difficult because my Spanish is slightly rusty but getting better with more practice.  Riding the bus has been the most eye-opening experience while I’ve been here by far.  Cubans say that the bus system is like an R-rated movie, with all the sex, violence, and strong language associated with it.  Space is a commodity that is not in big supply, and you make friends quickly.

            More about the specific places we have traveled to follow!