CUBA - Part I - la Havana

Green, dazzling in a natural way. Colorful, vibrant. Bursting with life is descriptive but doesn’t quite capture it all the way. My first impressions were that everyone is so sweet and warm. Yes, warm in that Latin American way, in that way of old cultures that I’m used to; but this is different. This warmth is from 50, 100 years ago, from another era, when societies were not yet so mobile and local populations were communities that knew each other. The sweetness is tangible and palpable - on the surface. They still have it openly whereas in our modern societies it has been pushed down far below the surface and can be hard to find, if at all even in existence.

En route, the Lyft and Uber drivers in Miami both happened to be Cuban. The older gentleman loved to talk - I’d read in the Lonely Planet that the Cubans love to talk and this turned out to be true. His Spanish was sweet and like a song - he could tell by our accents that we weren’t from Miami, but spoke Spanish from somewhere else - which turned out to be Atlanta. He had visited his TIO before in Marietta and it was there that he saw an apple tree for the first time. He talked about the mango trees and avocado trees and the nature he was accustomed to in the tropics, but that also the nature in Marietta (Atlanta) was so lush and green. I don’t think I ever heard a conversation so sweet and poetic about the weather and nature and climate zone before that wasn’t written by Annie Dillard or a similar author. Next, on the way to the airport, the young guy was from Matanzas. How his face lit up when he heard where we were going - how he missed it so much, how his daughter could play outside in the street the entire time with 30 other kids because everyone knew everyone and it was safe. Here in Miami she was always indoors with her mother in a high rise apartment so expensive that he had to work multiple jobs to pay for it while his six year old daughter wanted to go to the beach every afternoon. He was sad because she doesn’t speak Spanish because the mother doesn’t either. But the daughter loves when she goes to Cuba and wants to stay there; she plays and communicates with the other kids through play. This makes the young guy so happy - he also had that pureness and had been here in the US long enough to realize the difference in the places, that it’s hard to have a dream here when you’re just hustling and trying to make it. Your dream, in his case, is of where you came from, that simpler place. Where you don’t merely work all the time and hustle - where time actually stands still and flies by at the same time because you’re living it in the moment and so present that the notion of time is something completely other. 

The first day in Havana we go on an architectural walking tour led by two young architects. They are both as skinny as rails and smart as whips. Their respective theses were on the square and the corner in public space. They took us around all the historical areas and then to the coolest bar and restaurant that was closed but they know the artist owner who lives in Mexico. The largest mojitos I’ve seen were served in giant glasses. This was at noon. We were surrounded by great design. This place and the people working in it had clearly had contact with lots of outside culture. Not that they owed everything to that; they had their own style and were sure of it. But they weren’t isolated, they were influenced and you could see that they imbibed it and spit it out in their own interpretation. We were impressed.

It happened to be July 26, the holiday celebrating the unforgettable Revolution. Signs were everywhere. We learned that the holiday bridged five days. We didn’t spot any military parades or anything similar, just the flags, people in the streets, reasons to celebrate and stores closed, except for the tourist ones because of course that was an everyday business. It was refreshing to be in the street - just like Miami - it may be scorching hot but there is always activity in the street - people walking, kids playing, music going by. I was dazzled by the ornate architecture from past centuries and the heydays of the ‘50s. In tropical climates, some of us are transported to a dream-like state due to those flamboyant orange flowers bursting in the trees, the bouganvillea dripping down everywhere and all the colors - pastels, sherberts, and all combinations. The doors, the tiles, the stairways - I must always look in, take a peek, even stroll in to witness the materials and imagine life from those other eras. Meanwhile, the structures may be deteriorating but the youth culture is throbbing - the kids were skateboarding in the streets with their cool haircuts - personal style is apparent - no young guy is missing out on a cool haircut. {More to come...stay tuned for part ii and iii}