Salsa Lessons

            A huge part of life in Cuba is dance.  The people dance, the children dance, when it is hot outside even the air dances.  So it only makes sense that eventually, we would learn to dance.  Our professor set up some lessons with a Cuban woman that he knows who is actually studying to be a priest in the Santería religion but will do odd jobs to make some extra cash.  Today was our lesson, and boy, it was a trip.

            Yaimela, the lady that was teaching us, lives two blocks down from the Floridita, the famous bar that Ernest Hemingway drank at in Old Havana.  We walk in, and it was the first Cuban home that I have ever been in, and I was so surprised by what I saw.  This is a home that is in the middle of Havana, literally a block from the richest and priciest street in the entire city and you would not know that.  We were in their front room the entire time that we were there, roughly an eight by ten room with a concrete floor and exposed wiring.  It reminded me a lot of the houses that we saw while we were in Honduras my senior year on a mission trip.

            No matter what the house was like, Yaimela was a dancing queen.  I always liked to joke with my family that I had the best moves out of any of them, but this girl made me look like I had two left feet and no rhythm.  We learned all the basic steps and I was feeling pretty good about myself, and then Yaimela’s little sister came in.  This twelve year old could move her body like she had no bones and made you wish that you could dance half as well as she could.  By the end of the lesson the whole family was there and we were having a regular old dance party.  I have never perspired so much in my entire life, I swear I thought I was going to pass out.  Did this faze any of the Cubans?  Heck no, they were just getting started.  I am so glad we had the lessons, but I have no idea how these people dance for hours on end, they must be crazy.  But now I know how to salsa, one step closer to becoming Cuban.