Going to Gitmo
I’m at the Miami airport, enjoying the last fresh vegetable I am going to encounter for the next two weeks, and a glass of white wine to pass the time. I’ve got a three hour connection before my flight to Santiago. Plenty of time.
I’m putting off meeting my future companions for as long as possible, both because one of my greatest anxieties of this trip isn’t the possible lack of hot water, the thought of having to eat the same three meals every day for two weeks, my concern of how well I’m going to do in the insufferable heat and humidity particular to Cuba and the Eastern region in general. It is what I call “cruise anxiety,” the thought of being cooped up with the same group of people with no hope of escape.
(Un)fortunately, it seems that as soon as you leave New York, the wine pour goes right to the rim of the glass and I was really feeling it. I was in no rush to meet everyone, and I was not interested in doing it drunk.
The phone rings, and it’s the organizer Ryan, wondering where I was. I told him I was 10 minutes away, as they were at D24 and I was at D30.
This was not the first time in discovered that the gate that I was looking for was still a train ride away. So I’m running to the air train, and hoping it shows up real fast. It does, but I’m the last to board the plane. I should have known better. This was a rookie mistake.
Well, last one boarded is still boarded, and maybe I’m just tapping into my latent understanding of Cuban time quicker than I imagined possible.
My luggage is also the last to arrive on the belt at Santiago airport. I was temporarily worried as the exact same bag looped around the belt for a good half hour before mine showed up... did someone take my bag by accident? It didn’t.
An hour and a half to Guantanamo (yes, there’s a town outside that prison). We get checked into the casa we’re assigned to. Mine is flamboyant.. the walls are fuscia, green, blue with curtains to match, with huge framed posters of Beyoncé and J. Lo featured more prominently than the pictures of the dueña’s daughter. She is magnificent, animated and larger than life, and so is this home.
A heart breakfast of perfectly ripe mango and guava, coffee sweet, strong, and smooth, eggs and toast, and we’re off to see a traditional show at Tumba Francesca. There’s some mixup, they thought we were coming a different day, so they’re not there.
Ryan sees a woman he knows pass by. He’s been running trips to Cuba for a number of years now, and he’s a local celebrity in the eastern part of Cuba. He’s a white dude and a great dancer (and I’m sure pumps a lot of money into the hands of the local people) and is instantly recognized everywhere we go. She runs a dance school for kids that’s down the block and she invites us all in to watch them dance.
A simple invitation turns into a 2 hour dance performance by these incredible teenagers. On the east side of the island, where we were, there had been a lot of people who came in from the Anglophone Caribbean, and this place is a cultural center for preserving dance styles from those places. At some point in each dance, they came to us to have us dance with them. So my first dance in Cuba was with a 14 year old boy. And he was magnificent! And then we all did a Rueda together. (For those of you who don’t know, a Rueda is salsa danced in a circle and the moves are called out, while partners are switched throughout.)
We have a full schedule of activities and very little down time. Ryan’s schedule is very minimally written, and not necessarily indicative of what things will be like. For example, we were going to a town in the east of Cuba, and we were invited to the home of a local changüi performer. I was expecting sitting in a circle, listening to a musician talk about changüi for an hour. Nope, it was a 3 hour concert in some restaurant in the countryside by this guy and his orchestra.
And this is how things go in Cuba, it seems. Things do not always go according to plan, but sometimes something even better is around the corner. Set expectations low, and prepare yourself for equal possibility of disappointment and greatness.
Two weeks in Cuba
Usually, when I write about my travels, I write day by day. But in the case of this trip, it doesn’t make any sense to do so. We basically did the same thing every day... down to eating a rotation of the same couple of meals and drinking the same couple of drinks each day.
This wasn’t a vacation in Cuba. It was the best professional development experience of my life.
First stop in Cuba is Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern side of the island. Santiago is significantly closer to Haiti and Jamaica than it is to Havana, and retains more of what is euphemistically referred to as a “Caribbean feel” to it. American translation: although Cubans come in a rainbow of colors, you’re much less likely to find white or light skinned Cubans here.
We’re here to study with the performance group called the All Stars, and I have been super excited and nervous about what this is going to be like. There is 3 hours of dancing on the schedule every day from about 9:30 to 12:30, then a group lunch, then a cultural event, followed by dinner on your own (although I never wound up alone) and then, more often than not, evening dancing. The people to people license under which we were traveling (the one Trump stopped a couple of weeks before we left... we were grandfathered in because we had already spent money on travel there.)
Out of 20 mostly Bay Area people, I’m about 15 years older than the median age and I’m concerned that my body won’t keep up. Between my sensitive stomach, my inability to function in high heat and humidity, my light touch of asthma, and my low blood pressure that often results in getting dizzy pretty easily, I was very worried.
My NYC beloved and very trusted teacher Chris assures me I have good technique and will be fine. My mom asks me if I’m allowed to take breaks if I want. I assure her that I’m pretty positive that I will, and she shouldn’t worry.
The morning classes are divided thusly: one hour of Rueda, one hour of Son, a and a third hour of some other style of Cuban popular dance, depending on the day: Afro, rumba, Haitian, Orisha.
Rueda is Cuban salsa danced in a circle, and partners change often as one is passed on to another in many of the moves. So if you fuck up, you mess up the circle, forget about just leaving your partner alone for a few. Son is more of a ballroom style, elegant and romantic.
At chris’ school, Fuákata, we learn “Casino,” which is what Cubans call their style of on-1 salsa dancing. New York is very on-2 heavy, due to the sheer quantity of Puerto Rican’s, who popularized it...which means that the emphasis of the movement is on the second beat of the 8-counts in a phrase. On-1 dancing in NYC is the minority... and even the on-1 style preferred in other Latin countries is danced differently than Cuban style... many dancers find it difficult to go from one style to another.
What I didn’t realize what that we weren’t going to really be learning casino partnering technique, we were going to be learning a choreographed Rueda routine. And at the advanced level I was placed in (woo-hoo) we weren’t even learning new calls, we were learning choreography. I don’t learn choreography too fast, and usually when a fast song comes on, I say “let’s wait til the the next one.” This isn’t exactly what I was signing up for, I thought. But, I told myself before I left, to adopt a very Cuban attitude about things... things aren’t going to go according to plan. Keep your expectations low and prepare to let things go the way they’re going to go and hope for the best.
In other words, be less Cindy and more Cuban.
Every morning we’re served the exact same breakfast. It’s big, and necessary. bread and butter, the freshest and most delicious tropical fruit anyone can find anywhere: guanabana, guava, zapote (my new favorite... tastes like sweet potato pie) papaya, mango, and bananas on rotation. A coupe of eggs, and strong, smooth Cuban coffee . Even after all that, two hours into class, we’re supplementing with snacks, mostly granola and nuts brought from home, and what we’ve affectionately began calling “roll cookies,” which are large, almost flavorless sandwich cookies that are sold in a roll. It’s one of the very few snacks sold at the local store.
On the first day, we have an “audition,” with one of the dancers and we’re put in or offered choices for group levels, I was recommended for the most advanced class which turned out to mean that we were dancing to the fastest song with the most complicated choreography and we were with Jorge, the director of the company.
Jorge broke everything down, and we repeated every figure many times, it was fast and without much pause. He is a tough cookie and had no problem expressing his disdain for you when you weren’t doing something correctly, in front of everyone. And he was figuring out choreography on the spot, so often he would change his mind and we would have to do it a different way. All the other groups it was smiles and fun... not with Jorge. He was all business. I liked Jorge, because I got relatively little yelling at and as such, a lot of hugs and kisses on the head. Everyone else in our group was a little scared of him. But he was super cool to me and Becky, my housemate, which either meant I was doing really well or the machismo Latino thing was working in my favor. And he looked a little like pre-inauguration Obama and that wasn’t too hard to deal with, either.
Santiago is known for being one of the hottest places on the island, and we were in an unairconditioned space, so all of us were drenched in sweat within the first 10 minutes. He repeated things over and over and over without much pause. The only time we got a break in that hour long class was when someone was messing up so badly that he needed to work with them specifically to fix things or when he needed to sort out the chore to align to the music and needed to think.
Both of those things were greatly appreciated ... any break I could get I was happy for.
Other than that mom, no breaks.
The second class of the day is Son. Up until this point, I had danced son a grand total of 3 times. That’s 3 dances, or three weeks or months. Because of my swing dance experience, I can usually follow, and so although i don’t really know what I’m doing, I do well enough in my “audition” that they asked if I wanted to be in intermediate or advanced. I pick advanced.
I’m now that honors kid who doesn’t exactly belong but “wants to be challenged.”
It’s harder than I imagined, mostly because nobody told me that the first partner I had been assigned was one of the youngest in the group and one of the least experienced. I’m not so quick with choreography, but when your partner is also telling at you the wrong thing, it also makes things very difficult and frustrating. After I figured out that I should just start directing my questions to Ryan or Jorge instead of my parter, things went more smoothly, even though I was pretty sure my 17-year old partner wanted to punch me.
I made it through the first three hours of class drenched, but feeling alive and well. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe it was the perfect storm of nerves, excitement, survivor instinct, electrolyte drops and all the natural vitamins in all the fruit I crammed into myself that morning, but I made it. I can dance faster than I thought, for a sustained amount of time, and i was really happy with myself. I got the crap kicked out of me, but I did it.
Lunch was family style and depending on the day, was either just the Americans or all of us and all of our Cuban dancers. We ate in one of two restaurants for every lunch, and it was the same every day. Rice and beans, a salad of shredded cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers, sautéed veggies (Ryan is a vegetarian so there were always plenty of vegetables, which was a huge surprise), calabaza, bonito, roast chicken, tostones, sometimes some pan fried fish, sometimes a beef stew. Every day. It was much better than expected, because Cuba is not known for its food, and I didn’t tire of it at all. We ate like lions every day, because (a) we worked off a lot of calories and needed it and (b) you really didn’t know if you were going to get to eat again that day. The Cubans were very confused every time I refused the rice. As much as an authentic cultural exchange would have taken place had i explained that a lot of American women don’t like to eat a lot of carbs, I decided to leave that a mystery.
When we went out with the Cubans, we were about 35 people, and this restaurant didn’t run out of food for us ever... but they often didn’t have enough forks, or chairs, or plates. We shared, we turned serving platters into plates, we made it work. It didn’t matter. No one complained.
In fact, the concept of sharing is so deeply ingrained in the Cuban culture, it is contagious. Most places outside of the home in cuba, even in nicer restaurants, don’t have toilet paper, soap, or running water. Sometimes stores were out of bottled drinking water. All of us Americans shared and offered everything we had with each other and the Cubans all the time. Toilet paper and baby wipes, and sanitizer, gum, money, pills, internet cards... it didn’t matter. We were drinking out of each other’s water bottles on day 1. If a bottle of rum appeared, it was assumed communal among 35 of us, and the Cubans were sure to make sure to take small enough swigs so that there was enough for everyone.
There would be an afternoon cultural activity... all surrounding music and dance. Dinner was also at one of the three local restaurants on the edge of town where we were staying... I never ate dinner alone and although my biggest anxiety was being stuck with these people I didn’t know, I never wanted to be away from them. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed spending time with (all but 1) of this diverse group of fun and friendly dancers, all of whom constantly looking out for one another, making sure we all had what we needed, and supporting each other’s successes and helping through missteps on this intense dance journey. I booked myself a solo room because I knew I’d need some personal space through all of this, but I barely needed it. And the two girls in the same house with me for two weeks I was so happy to have connected and bonded with instantly. We broke off into smaller groups after and had dinner with whoever was around and who wanted to. Dinner was a la carte and had some more options...I opted for fish every chance I got and it was one of two preparations every day. No matter... also better than expected.
At night, we’d go out dancing to live music for a couple for hours. That’s right, after 3 hours of dancing in the morning, add on another couple at night. All of it was amazing. We got to see two very famous bands: Maykel Blanco, and Pupy and los que son son. The latter was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen in my life, and we got to stand right in front of the stage.
A common Cuban thing is called hiring a “taxi dancer.” She or he is a paid escort for dancing, with no expectation of anything else. This seems really weird, but it’s very normal, and when we went out at night, we invited all of the Cubans who wanted to go (which was also, usually, all of them). This made it less weird. We weren’t so much as paired up as much as we went out as a group... some random Cubans we didn’t hire would ask us, sometimes the Cubans danced with each other. We pay for everything. The expectation is that we pay for their cover charge, at least two drinks, their car ride home, and $5-10 in addition. It all just worked out that those of us who had a bit more money with us would pay a little bit more than others, and no one complained about any of it. We put in what we could and had, mostly in the form of rum, water, beer, coke. And these guys were drinkers... Don’t know if this is the case normally but when the foreigner is paying, the quality and quantity of food and beverage that the Cuban can get is much higher than normal.
Just the rum itself is big... a bottle of Havana club rum costs a hell of a lot more than the rum that Cubans can afford to buy.
This brings me to the dual currency system. There are “convertible pesos,” generally referred to as CUC (pronounced KOOK) and CUP, moneda nacional. Some businesses are CUP (I’ve been calling them peso places) only, some not. Current ratio is about 24 CUP to 1 CUC. The peso places, the quality of the food is generally much less and stupidly cheap. So you can get a roll with a little ham slice or egg slice on it for about 1 CUP, equivalent to just a few American cents. A cup of coffee at a CUP restaurant will be 50 to 75 American cents, whereas at a CUP places it will be just pennies. You can tell the different places just by looking at the prices or things and the general architecture of the location. Peso places look like shacks, and a list of offerings are posted on worn out wooden signs. CUP places will look like regular restaurants.
It’s normal, however, to make a mistake, and also common to be taken advantage of. Sometimes you’re given CUP money instead of CUC as change, and if you make a mistake, it’s a big one. At some point, I had in my possession a 50 CUC and a 50 CUC bill at the same time, and the only real discernible difference at first glance is that one says “convertible” on it. One was worth USD50, the other about $2. I decided that my best bet was to not spend either. I was buying souvenirs one day and the man spotted the 50CUP bill when I was looking for CUC change and he just said “oh, give me that with the one coin” and at that point I wasn’t entirely sure I was being helped or swindled, paying him $55 or $8 for that clave I was taking home.
I knew all of that going in, and yet, mistakes were made. I was dying for coffee early in the trip, and we passed a peso place. Coffee there cost “1” so I should have said to myself, that has to be CUP but i was so under caffeinated that I not only asked for a double (which doesn’t exist in Cuba... the cups are tiny) that after I sucked it down, I gave her 2CUC and walked away. My friend Liz said “did you just give her CUC?” and with my tail between my legs, admitted that yes, yes I did. 2 CUC for that woman is probably what she might make there in a week. Liz told me to go back, but I refused. She didn’t rip me off, I ripped myself off. I really “supported the Cuban people” that day.
Then I went to the bathroom at a concert that night, and as I’m taking out a coin to give to the bathroom attendant, Liz pops up out of nowhere and says “Cindy what currency are you giving her!?!” I was totally about to give her CUC Instead of CUP again. Liz was my fairy Currency godmother that whole trip.
On the first day of the second week, Jorge spent the better part of the first hour in the advanced group practicing, literally ad nauseam, repeating a pattern that contained 6 rotations for the followers... very quickly only me and Becky were the only 2 American ladies remaining. Puerto Rican salsa taught me how to spot while turning, and that saved the day. And at the end of the week, we were asked to perform the routine at a cultural center in Havana. I never thought I’d enjoy performing anything, but the routine was so much fun and I knew it really well, so I wasn’t nervous or worried at all. So I guess I can quit this math gig that’s been holding me back from my true calling all of these years.
That was our life every day for two weeks. We saw almost none of Cuba if it didn’t involve dance or music. I didn’t go to any beach. And only on one day did I think “oh man, how am I going to do this for another week?” But a good rest and a good night’s sleep and I was ready to go... even on the day where we took a 15 hour bus ride from Santiago to Havana, and the delicious goat stew we had in camaguey left me with a stomachache that lasted the entire rest of the trip.
My new friends left on Sunday, and I had one more day left in Havana by myself.
My directional sense is notoriously poor, and I had spent the previous two weeks blindly following my group to whatever event we were going to, and following my roommates to our apartment. I forgot to download the offline map for Cuba before I left, and you couldn’t download it once you were there. I just kept forgetting anyway. McKinley was an expert cab negotiator and I was happy not putting myself neurotically in charge all the time. When in Cuba...
I wake up pretty early on Sunday morning, my iPhone note filled with info about the casa I was going to stay at, and Ania’s, my new teacher, address where we were to meet. I check out of my vedado casa much earlier than necessary, figuring I would eat a quick breakfast somewhere, check into the new casa, and meet up with Ania.
On a street that, for the last few days, had cab after cab coming for us, today there was none for a good 5 minutes. The next 4 cabs were not going to habana Vieja and refused me, even without a price offered. It’s early and I’m already dripping in sweat, partially in nervousness because I still don’t have a map of old Havana and I don’t really know where I’m going, I look at my phone, and notice that I somehow deleted the note with the information. Hmm.. I search the word “virtudes”, the street my casa was on, there is it. Whew. 20 minutes later, I finally get a cab to stop, he wants 10 CUC, which is a lot... he could have asked for 100 and I might have given it to him. I hate being late, and this was my teacher’s friend and I didn’t want to embarrass him. In the cab, I look back at the phone... it permanently deleted ALL of the information.
By the grace of I don’t know who or what, I remember some bastardized pronunciation of the street Ania told me to meet her on, but the taxi guy doesn’t know it. I tell him to drop me off in Havana Vieja somewhere and I’ll try to call, he tells me he can call... and he does a couple of times and it doesn’t go through. I get to some hotel and the concierge asks me if I’m staying there. No, I say, but I’m a little lost... and the concierge didn’t know, but directed me to a new taxi guy who knew exactly how to get to the intersection I was trying to get to and explained it to me twice to make sure I understood. He didn’t even try to get me to take a cab there.
After a few hours of lessons with Ania, I explain to her that that I have a reservation at a casa, and I know it’s somewhere on virtudes and Aguilar or 1210 or something, and she gets us a pedicab and she’s going to help me look. The pedicab figures out that it’s not aguila, it’s Agila... I tell her not to worry, worst case scenario I’ll just find another one... it would be messed up but I hadn’t paid yet and there are others all over the place. She refuses to leave me. We get to the block and there are a good number of casas. I said I’d ring each to see if they’re waiting. She does it for me. And when we find it (it was 210 not 1210... dos diez sounds a lot like doce diez) the place has no water, so the owner tells me he’ll bring me to a new place around the corner, it’s just as good. She comes with me and inspects the place, makes sure it’s up to standards, and takes a card from them, presumably to know where she left me if anything happened.
Nobody needed to work this hard to help me. I’m sure Cuba has its fair share of swindlers, but the vast majority of people do whatever they can to look out for others, even those they know are foreigners. From the entire bus line showing us which coin we should use to get on the bus, to yelling at the bus driver for him to open the door so this lost group of Americans with Fanny packs can get out the far back, to the lady who pointed to where I should walk on the sidewalk to make sure I don’t get my feet soaked, to the gentleman who walked from two tables over to point out to me that I dropped a bill on the floor, to our Cuban dancer friend who scrambled to look all over the club floor to give me back the change that burst out of my crossbody bag when I shimmied so hard the coins jumped from out of my tits (this actually happened.) And to Ania, who made sure I wasn’t walking the streets of Havana alone and homeless.
This is the Cuba I will remember more than anything, outside of the dancing. I know there’s a lot of problems and I don’t see anything there through rose colored glasses. And I’m blessed to know that there are so many events in NYC to go back to that I can continue my love affair with Cuba and its rich music and dance culture, any time I want, with my beloved dance community and new dance buddies all around the country.
It’s time to go, and with yesterday’s lesson learned, I quickly figure out that telling my hotel host that no, I don’t mean my flight is at doce y media (12:30) not dos y media (2:30 am) it’s catorce y media (14:30 or 2pm). Today’s drama diverted, I head to the malecón for one last communal WiFi gathering amongst the Cuban people.
I didn’t learn what I thought I was going to learn, but I got so much out of this trip. I learned to dance fast. I learned that I like to dance fast. I learned that I love son. I learned that I can learn choreography if I practice and try. I learned that Cuban movement is more subtle than i thought and certainly more subtle than I currently dance (and behave) and now I have to navigate how I want to interpret and incorporate that ideal in my own dancing and my own self-expression. But now I have more tools and more experience to do that. I learned that I like saying “coño” as much as I like saying “motherfucker.” None of this was expected, and not what I thought I wanted to learn, but all of it was valuable.
I’m reminded that spending money on your self-improvement is always money well spent, no matter how much, and no matter the realm.
And I’m reminded that looking out for the needs of others, being patient and considerate and kind, to be happy with what you have and not what you’re missing, to take stock of your gifts instead of chastising yourself for what you lack, for taking the time to cheer people around you on for their successes and their triumphs is the best gift you can give someone else, and it costs you nothing.
I’ll be back, soon, I’m sure of it. I can’t wait. But until then, I’m putting hot sauce on everything I see.
1 comment:
Amen
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