The Kindness of Strangers

I've taken many adventures over the years, and the one consistent thing in all of them is the people that I meet. Like Blanche DuBois, I live for the kindness of strangers. They are strangers only until the moment we meet. Then, they become friends, if only for a very short time.

They succeed in changing my life for the better. We meet. We laugh. We talk. We share an experience and then we move on., both of us changed, hopefully for the better. But I can only speak for myself.

Taking a sun break in downtown Havana

With one exception, that being Marie, I may never see the people in our group again, nor our tour leaders. However, I know that should one or all of us come to stand on the same earth once again, we will be friends, never missing a beat.

Marie is a constant in my life. We have been friends for more than 20 years. I am very happy to have shared this adventure with her.

Marie and the Cigar Lady

The people that I met in Cuba stay real for me because I save the things they touched and gave me, like the thank you note from our hotel maid, that I didn't realize that I saved. There was a woman who gave me a Cuban Peso for luck as I browsed in a bookstore. She told me to keep it close and then disappeared back into the crowd. The Peso is in my pocket now.

The band at Tocororo a Paladar that I really and truly plan to revisit. They treated us like homies out for a night of food and fun. We laughed and sang along with a very talented group of musicians who made us feel at home. They autographed a CD of their music for me.

Joseph, no last name, a student at the University with whom we talked politics and social issues both US and Cuban. American politics. Thanks to Joseph, Mitt Romney will forever be called Mitt RocK-ney by me. Even now the misnomer brings a smile at the memory. Fancy that, finding an Obama supporter in Havana. According to Joseph, President Obama was the man of choice by the people.

Outisde Lazaro's Papier Mache House

The notes and proffered email address from Alberto Faya, a famous man in his country, a performer, TV personality and teacher, who left me with a thirst and hunger for learning “history without the holes” punched into the story fabric by wannabe larger than life, Europeans, fearful and disdainful of indigenous peoples they seemingly conquered.

Said Faya, it may seem like they erased Africans, erased slaves, erased the indigenous people, but they really didn't and Cuba is proof of this.

Entertainment outside El Morro Castle

Pro Danza Dance Company

“Preserving culture is preserving life,” Faya told us, and he drew the parallels and connections allowing us to see history in total, for the first time. I struggle to explain to you what his short lecture taught me or how it made me feel, except to say that I want more of it. I finally exhaled in understanding what it was that he said.

During our entire time in Cuba, Marie and I never saw another Black American and it was okay. Not finding Black Americans anywhere but the USA is pretty much the norm in my travels and Marie's too. We talked about it. We are troubled that American Blacks don't travel and don't seem to want to. Both of us talked about how we were greeted with perplexed stares and silly questions after revealing that we were going to Cuba. The first question from our acquaintances, family and friends was always “why?”

We say, “why not?” If they did travel, it would help make the cosmic connection that “we” are not alone in this universe, that slavery, never did define “us” as a people and that “our roots” run so deep that we will never, ever be eradicated by any so called conqueror who fears “our existence.”

The people of Cuba are our home, our familia.

More to come...

Looking for Assata Shakur, But Finding Me, Instead

I'm long past the days of jumping airplanes on the spur on the moment. My ready bag was not ready. I was no longer working for anyone other than myself and I was now traveling on my own dime, so while I have always wanted to go to Cuba, there was a new caution in my step.

Cuba is still embargoed for Americans, basically, meaning I couldn't just go and enjoy myself. I had to ally myself with a tour group, Insight Cuba, something that I have always tried to avoid at every opportunity. Tour groups are okay, but I always feel like a kid having to ask the babysitter if I can go to the bathroom, when I'm on a tour. Insight Cuba is the best of the best. I was very pleased and would travel with them again, despite my innate reservations about tours.

I love being able to make decisions about where, when and how to go, on my own. On a tour it is hurry up and get someplace with no time to savor the moment. I need to taste my food, my drink. I need to smell the place. I need time to trip over the curb and to stumble over the cobblestones in the roadway. I need to talk to the people in my path, pet the dogs who venture near, and watch the street play happening around me.

Looking out at El Malecon from Melia Cohiba Hotel

I don't know when or even if President Obama will lift travel restrictions, so I decided to go now, with a tour, because I can always return, if I like it.

“Like it!” Ha! Cuba felt like going home. I exhaled. It felt like I'd been born there, just returning after a lifetime trip into the outer world. My Spanish sucks, but it didn't matter. I understood what was going on around me as if I was simply walking around my own neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And I was greeted like a native, starting on the plane from Miami. My seat mate was an old man in a brown suit, vest and tie, wearing four hats piled on top of his head. It was an easy way to carry so many hats. He also had a couple of others in each hand. He didn't talk at all until we landed at Jose Marti International Airport, when he turned to me and asked me if I was home to visit family. He said this in Spanish. Since he spoke slowly I was able to understand completely, what he said to me.

I told him in my broken Spanish that I was an American on vacation and not Cuban. He turned and looked squarely at me and said, “but your family is here, you are Cuban?” I told him “no.” The look in his eyes told me he didn't believe me, but he was polite about it, and we parted to gather our belongings.

Downtown balcony view from Hemingway House

My friend Marie smiled at the exchange. It was the first of many times per day that I would have to explain that I was away from home, not returning home.

It was also the first indication, here on this trip, that Black Americans don't travel. We tend not to leave our neighborhoods to even cross the street. As Marie and I wandered from Havana to Bayamo and back again, we found Americans, excluding the ones we were traveling with, but not one of them was a Black American.

For the past several years Black Americans have been obsessed with finding their ancestral roots in order to determine where they came from, meaning what tribe in Africa. Our genealogical search takes us from America to Africa with no stops in between. However, judging from what I've seen and heard, maybe more of us should stop first in Cuba before going all the way back to Africa. African culture, religion and history was not erased in Cuba.

The Spanish and Europeans tried. However they were not successful in quieting or shushing the “African-Native Indian noise,” as they were in the United States. Cuba was birthed by a Black woman said historian and professor Alberto Faya and it shows in all aspects of Cuban life. It is the culture of Cuba, fused from Native Indian, African, Spanish and European roots.

To quote Professor Faya, a noted historian, teacher, performer and musician, “preserving culture is preserving life! It is African. We are all African, here.”

Dr. Faya teaches history without “holes.” In America, history is taught to make the European look powerful and dignified while denigrating non Europeans, casting them as less than human, unworthy of historical mention.

I nearly cried as his lecture progressed. I'd waited all my life to hear all of history, inclusive, colorful, equal, an out loud “black and proud” moment that is still reverberating inside me.

More to come..