Before you go to Cuba: the Center for Constitutional Rights

I can't speak highly enough of these guys, and as I just said in my below post, their use and urgency is greater now than ever. If you have any problems with the US government from you trip to Cuba, contact the Center for Constitutional Rights immediately. Hell, right their number on your palm with a sharpie: 212-614-6464

Before you travel: The Identity Project

I just heard about The Identity Project in an article in Wired entitled "US Airport Screeners Are Watching What You Read"

Hey Uncle Sam, I was reading Things I like About America during my recent flight. In case you're wondering, yes, it's a good read, I highly recommend it. If there's anything else you'd like to know about my recent trips, which aren't included in one of my eight blogs, please feel free to give me a call. I believe you have my number...

On My Way to Cuba

JULY 20, 2007
10:39 PM

As I write this, in fact, on a Jet Blue flight to Cancun.
Maybe you got a text message from me sent early this morning.
Maybe I wrote you an email blatantly promoting my own little cyber corner of narcissism.
Maybe you stumbled on this blog while looking for people to email your silly scam to make money.
Whatever the reason, you're here. I'm here. I'm going to Cuba.
Too bad you can't come with me, as it's going to be difficult to convey the smells and sounds of Cuba -not to mention the heat and humidity.
You'll have to settle for my words and occasional photo.

FIRST, some logistics for you to keep track: I'm flying into Havana tonight, with a long layover in Cancun where I hope they have wifi (Andres, hay wifi en Cancun? el DF?).
I'll be there for nine days, when I fly to Mexico City.
After a little while there, I'm planning to come back overland to the US.
How, where and when have yet to be decided.

(PS- the photo in this post is 8 years old, though the phones still remain)

A Few Words on SICKO

7/21/07
10:42 PM

I saw Michael Moore's movie last week, and while he makes himself an easy target for his critics, you can't dispute the facts about the health care crisis in the US. You may, however, wonder about that segment filmed in Cuba.

I haven't done any research or seen any other information on that clip, but having lived in Cuba, I can attest to the health care in the country. While I doubt anyone could just walk into any pharmacy and find the exact inhaler needed (medicines are in short supplies and pharmacies infamously understocked), I'm sure it exists somewhere and that it costs three pesos (less than fifteen cents).

When I was first in Cuba for the International Student Festival, a group of Americans contracted pink eye. They were whisked away and spent the festival in quarantine with the full treatment, no bill ever produced. When I lived in Cuba I contracted tendinitis in my right hand, which kept me from working (typing on a laptop like I am right now). My boss didn't wonder when I'd be back to work nor pressure me to return early (much to the contrary, I tried persisting and typing even long after it became uncomfortable. This is due to my innate American trait of sacrificing self for your job, even if it made my condition worse, something no Cuba would do, nor people in most first-world countries). Finally, after trying to type with a pencil held between my thumb and forefinger, I gave in and went to the hospital. The diagnosis wasn't rocket science (a doctor looked at my hand and said "tendinitis") and the resulting daily acupuncture treatment was "not the quality I'd receive in the US" (six patients in room, doctor standing over me, cigarette dangling from his mouth, the smoke sometimes obscuring the points where the needles were to go; once, a nurse obviously in training on administering acupuncture, inserted the thing all the way to the hilt -a good two inches into my hand. "Um," I hesitated, "I don't think it's s'pozed to be so deep".
I never received a bill.

Of course, I don't think any American can just show up in Cuba and expect medical treatment like they do in Sicko, though it'd be a wonderful PR stunt if we could. There's supposedly a clinic near the embassy zone that charges a flat $25 per visit, but who would pay it except for Americans, who think $25 to visit the doctor is a good deal?

There are a lot of concepts that Americans in general just can't grasp, and free health care is one of them. Why not? We're the wealthiest nation in the history of world, we can set a man on the moon, you think a tiny project like free universal health care would be a no-brainer.

Ok, that's my rant.

Havana, Day 1

7/21/07
10:33 PM

I'm here and online! I'm nearly ecstatic that from this simple home, whose keeper's wife works at some sort of computer company (the details I will never understand in Spanish) and has full, complete access to the internet!

Sigh... it feels good to be able to communicate with the world. When I lived here, finding the internet was a daily battle and my coworkers and friends and I went through obscene extremes to connect. Now it isn't much easier, I just have the right connection.

I've been taking notes:

Havana morning 7/21/07

Good Morning and Bienvenidos.

Where to start? with the dawn barking roosters? The saddest puppy in the world? The complete lack of plastic or the new key lime paint and fully tiled bathroom?

Smell, I usually start with the smell, the first sensation that I've arrived in Cuba, one step off the plane. It's a heavy, humid mix of diesel and unrefined coal, mixed with tobacco. If you close your eyes, it smells like a campfire, or mesquite BBQ.

I got in late, as pointless, lame and undescriptive emails and blog entries frustratingly banged away at the Cancun International Airport illustrate. It was passed 1:30 before I exited the Havana airport.

I slept well until the roosters, one of which lives right under my window. I'd swear he's in the room, but can't see him. The crowing started at dawn, as roosters do, and more impressive than the rooster alarm clock was after his cry, in the distance I could hear a chorus of other roosters, hundreds of them from as far away as sound could travel. If it weren't for the one under my window, I'd think the whole thing impressive.

Everything's good, little has changed. The room upstairs, the guest room financed by his pupil, is finished though not much different than last time I was here.
A tree in the back yard is new, lush and towering. The one next door is gone.
The scrawny puppy on the roof has been replaced by the saddest puppy in the world. He a cocker-spaniel mix and a month ago they say he came down with an illness. I don't understand the word for the illness and probably wouldn't recognize it, but I understand that it affected his brain and I don't really want to understand more. Now he's bone skinny and staggers around desperately trying to place his feet firmly on the ground, and often not succeeding. His nervous system has been fried and he can do little more than lie there. This morning he staggered towards me, eyes full of dry tears, and I petted his head. It was like giving water to a man dying of thirst -he closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and rested his head on my thigh. I can pet a lame puppy, I think to myself, but also I start fearing contracting whatever illness left him this way. Maybe that's what this journal will be about, most slow decent into medical hell with cerebral meningitis. I will, obviously, keep you posted.

The neighbors have a new stereo, which from my room is heard at a decent volume. I'm content with someone else choosing the soundtrack for my time here, but fear a litany of non-stop reggaton. So far, so good, just Eminem and salsa.

Mario went to the market this morning, a short trek a few blocks up the street. First we went to a bodega that sold cigars (one peso each) and rum. The employee was classic government store-clerk ennui, who fully demonstrated the pain involved with walking behind the counter and handing us a carton of cigars.
Outside on the ground, an old drunk sat in his own piss staring listlessly at the empty bottle in front of him.

The market was the same, and I noted the remarkable lack of plastic. Aside from plastic bags (jabas, which are guarded like currency) the only other form of plastic in the whole vegetable market was sacks of grain.

Everyone looks the same- old clothing, sweaty skin, slow staggering. It's very calm, very peaceful.

As predicted, my failure to find a conversion plug may prove to be a significant snafu.

**************************
afternoon

I couldn't stand it any more.
lying on my bed, it felt like my leg was cooking by the rays of the sun sneaking through the slats of the window.
I looked up -no sun in sight. It was the plain heat. When the fan wasn't on, everything was baking.
It's hot.
It's 3 in the afternoon.
I now know for certain that Cuba is in the eastern time zone.

**************************

4:15

The hour was spent fast forwarding through a collection of black market Jackie Chan and Jet Li DVDs that I brought over from a friend in the Philippines (thanks, C4, they'll get more use here than back home) looking for subtitles and soundtracks in Spanish. A couple were in French, a couple more in English, but the rest completely in Chinese. How will the Cubans ever understand Kung Fu if it's only in Chinese?

I have a slight headache and tightness in the temples. This could be from the spina befida that I contracted from the Saddest Puppy in the World (soon this will become depressing), or it could just be a sign that I need to drink more water.

I hear thunder in the background, though the sun is hi and there's not a cloud in sight.

WATER
Every time I come to Cuba, I battle stomach illnesses. When I lived here, my naturopath gave me a bottle of wormwood tablets, and those seemed to do the trick. the last time I brought a bottle of Grapefruit Seed Extract and a box of Emergen-C packets; I squeeze 12 drops into a naglene of tap water and shake it around, and then add two packets of Emergen-C to offset the horrible taste. It's little more than hocus-pocus, but at least it keeps me from drinking straight from the tap.

Where is the thunder coming from?

The Kitchen

Letter to My Cousin Craig

7/22/07
10:43 AM

DEAR CRAIG,

Sorry I couldn't call again before I left, but thanks for reminding me about your sister's birthday. Maybe she'll read this and warn you.

I can't but help think of the time you came to visit me in Seattle two and a half years ago, just before my last trip Cuba. You walked into my daylight basement abode with severe trepidation, carefully placing your steps, marveling at the uneven, mismatched carpet and eying the ceiling corners for cobwebs.
"See that spider there?" you said. "My wife, she'd be out of here by now."
"What? Why?"
"Cause there's a spider in here."
And that was before you walked into the bedroom.

Greetings from Cuba.
If you thought my apartment was bad, you wouldn't be comfortable here. There are stains on the wall and the ceiling has patches and the florescent light above by bed dangles from a net of wires (turning it off and on is done manually, by twisting the bulb).
The floor is covered in fine dust and there are no spiders but tiny lizards, some which are missing tales, some of which change colors as they scurry across the wall into the exposed and unfinished light switch socket.

Yes, I think I warned you about this when you walked into my room -the first time you ever came to visit me in the 30 years we'd known each other, and if I publish this, I promise not to reveal any of the deep secrets you shared.

You had a similar reaction when I showed you photos of friends' houses in Cuba.
"What's that?" you asked, much like I'd react to a loaded diaper.
"That's the kitchen." I think you gagged.

Sigh... Cousin, I think is very clear: I'm much more adventurous than you.

The fan is missing the faceplate and the socket it's plugged into is also exposed and thank god everything is made from cement so nothing will catch on fire.
The only furniture in this two-room, rooftop addition is a bed (thankfully covered by two thin sheets. I'd seen Cuban beds before and they'd be better off sleeping on hay and I'd rather not actually see what I sleep on) and rickety But I have the whole apartment by myself. (Mario's American friend, who I finally met in person the night before departing New York and lived here on and off for a few years, had it built after the last of his multiple extended visits. He hasn't been back since it was finished, but hopes to return in the fall.)
Mario asks for permission before coming up the stairs (which I find a little odd, but not really since there are no doors either) and the bathroom has been recently finished and THAT, my friend, is a major source of comfort in itself. (I won't start talking about the downstairs bathroom, as the sign of a bad travelogue is harping on about bathrooms, kitchens and other unsanitary aspects of other countries and I think I've done that enough already).
But now I've been 15 hours and aside from a brief morning walk to the market, haven't left the place so I think I should set this computer down and do just that.

Nice writing you, cousin, hope the wife and kids are well and I'd remove that embarrassing revelation if I actually thought you'd read it. Serves you right for not emailing me more often.

Much love and peace, and send all that to the fam,

Your Cuz,

C