I guess now I have seen it with my own eyes. But instead of having any easy answers, I'm just more aware of how hard it is to come up with answers, easy or otherwise, about a country as rich in contrasts and complexities as Cuba.
My first real impression came on the bus ride from the airport to the Martin Luther King Center in Marianao, Havana: On either side of the bus were billboards advertising peace on earth, defense of the ozone layer and solidarity between people. This must be propaganda of some sort, I realized. But honestly, what thoroughly good messages to propagandize. I couldn't help but feel a surge of idealistic joy.
I found much to be joyful about in Cuba. There were the insightful, good people I was accompanied by: a group of 18 other delegates, three trip leaders and two bus drivers with whom to joke, share thoughts and discover this new place together. There were the warm colors of this tropical paradise; there was the ocean. There were the Cuban people who were open and friendly enough to dance and sing off-key late at night with a group of five awkward foreigners along the malecon (the strand running right up along the ocean). And there was a practically continuous flow of new ideas and impressions.
But as joyful as I was to be there, I had trouble figuring out my role in Cuba. I was there with the Cuba Delegation and Witness for Peace; I was a delegate, a socially responsible traveler. But I was also a blonde, blue-eyed American who was an obvious enough target for hair-braiders at the Old Havana art fair, someone who could pay her way at the tourist stops and be cajoled into giving her pink Dr. Grip pen to a poor old woman named Ana Ester. I wanted a genuine experience and I guess that's what I got. I was treated differently because, in more than one way, I was different. It made me feel uncomfortable.
Perhaps discomfort-the healthy kind of discomfort that sooner or later yields to learning-set the tone for a good part of the trip. There was the discomfort of having to reveal a part of myself-my emotional reactions, my state of mind-to everyone else on the delegation during our reflection and check-in sessions, challenging moments for a person as quiet as I tend to be. There was the discomfort of not quite knowing when to wield my camera without being intrusive.
There was the discomfort of finding myself thoroughly impressed with a lot of what socialism offered Cuban people-free education (with a 96 percent adult literacy rate) and free health care (with an infant mortality rate of 6.3 out of every 1000). Then there was the discomfort of meeting, on my second-to-last day, a doctor-turned-vendor-of-Che-hats (because tourism is the more profitable industry) wearing a hat from San Francisco and openly professing his desire to move to the United States. "Do you think I'm telling you the truth?" he asked me, after telling me that he had to rent his stall space from the government and that he made the equivalent of $12 a week. I did, and I told him so. I did not know how to explain that I thought there might be more than one truth to tell.