March 5th - 19th

Baseball fever is upon Cuba. Despite a nasty loss to Puerto Rio of 12-2, initiating mercy rules and ending the game early, we have watched Cuba win against great odds to advance to the final round of the World Baseball Classic. To me, Cuba deserves this honor. Any of the great players, such as El Duke, have been lured away by mountains of money to play in the US and would be utterly ignorant to even think of coming back to Cuba to play for the national team. Therefore, those representing Cuba are a hodgepodge of the best of the provincial teams, many from Havana's Industriales, others from Pinar del Rio, Cienfuegos, Santiago, and all over the country.

Cuba's line on sports is that "Deporte es el DERECHO del pueblo" – Sport is the right of the people. Professional sports do not exist in Cuba, and in that sense, all of the national team is amateur. The oldest player is in his early 30s, and for many of these youngsters, this is the first time they have played against another national team, let alone the first time they have traveled out of Cuba. I have heard that part of their desire to win has been the promises made by Fidel – new cars, new houses, extra rations, and a little monetary bonus. This made me ask on the other hand of what would happen if Cuba were to lose: since the games have been in Puerto Rico and now California, would any of the players claim asylum in the face of defeat? Many of the Cubans believe so.

Our investment in the Cuban team as Americans has really shown how much we're part of Cuba now. I realized this twice in the past two weeks. First, on Tuesday night, I had a dream that I had returned to AU directly after being in Cuba. I saw people I know who I hadn't seen in a while and who I don't particularly care for, so that was a bad start to my return to the US. I also realized in the dream that I felt like I had completely wasted my semester in Cuba and not taken advantage of everything that was available to me while I was there. As soon as I was back in the States I realized I wanted to be back in Cuba.

The second instance was simply thinking of the friends I've made here. We're all great friends with the security guards at our hotel: Nestor, Carlos, Alex, and Jose. For a moment, I thought about how difficult and sad it will be when we leave and potentially say good-bye forever to all these incredibly affable and accommodating friends. I made Professor Carreras sad a week before this realization when I told him that I had no clue when I'd be able to come back to Cuba and that it could be several years.

I have routines here, I know street vendors by face if not by name, I run into friends on the street, and I have a family of two dozen Americans and Cubans in our casita. It really is a difficult realization that your likelihood to return is based on your desire to flaunt the possibility of a $15,000 fine for breaking the law, the chances of Fidel dying and the Embargo being lifted, or whether or not you'll move on to study Cuba in graduate school and come back again. There's always a way to come back, but it's never as easy as any other country in the word, and that makes our time and friends here so much more precious than anywhere else.

Part of what has brought me more into more contact with the Cubans has been my guitar that I bought recently. I can't play much, and that I can comes from tablatures that I've found on the internet, but it's really relaxing to head down to the Malecon every other night or so to watch the sunset and play some Jimmy Buffet, Jack Johnson, or Sublime. Inevitably, someone stops by to listen, make a request that I can't grant, or just to chat. I met eight or so people in two nights, all of them amiable and enjoying the evening as simply as me. One was a music producer, another was a school teacher, and all were eager to ask me questions about the US and then share their gripes with Cuba. Eventually though, the desire to have fun conquers drab political conversations, and we share a beer or two, play some more music, and share stories.

Currently, our IR professor is on a three week tour of the Middle East. He told us that, like the Americans, Cubans have a hard time knowing all the –stan countries of the world: Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. So they have a joke that there's another country that is just as difficult to find on a map – Dondestan. For those that don't immediately pick up on the joke, Donde means "where", and Estan means "are", so the country of Dondestan roughly translates to "Where are they". A lame joke, I know, but I laughed at it.

We had two consecutive weeks of awesome classes at the Ludwig Foundation, where we study Cuban culture. We had a musicologist come and discuss the history and types of music in Cuba for the first week, and for the second week he came with two African dancers who demonstrated the Afro-Cuban styles of dance that still exist. It really opened my eyes to the African tradition of history through ritual and practice instead of written history, and planted the seed of desire to travel to Africa. As our musicologist said, every dance or festival in Cuba ends with the conga, when everyone joins in and throws their bodies into having a good time. It was a great way to end the class, and we all left with huge smiles on our faces.

Spring Break at AU gave time for Phillip Brenner, AU's Cuban specialist (and currently associate dean of the School of International Service) to come visit to see how AU's pilot group to Cuba was doing, as well as aid Ariana, our graduate assistant, in her research. His legend grew larger and more ridiculous before his arrival, as we drew pictures pitting him against UNC's Lou Perez in back-alley knife fights. I am one of two of us who have actually taken classes with Brenner, and unfortunately I had very little appreciative to say of him, other than he knows his subject well.

The thing that I realized when he got here, however, was that besides the history and politics of Cuba, he knows nothing about the country that he is a supposed expert in. He can't speak Spanish hardly at all, his knowledge of the culture doesn't extend much past the hem of his guayabera, and he commits social faux pas left and right. At a meeting between some of the top professors at the university, my friend Professor Carreras included, someone asked Brenner what he thought of Carreras. He said that Carreras is "loco", which is a huge mistake in Cuban culture. At the university, as I was told by Carreras, the only one who can be called El Loco is Fidel, ironically. I believe it stems from the belief that Fidel is the only one crazy enough to try the socialist experiment. Admittedly, I wouldn't know that to call someone El Loco is a bad thing, but I wouldn't be calling respectable people crazy to begin with.

This insight plays directly into my problems with scholarship and exposes much of it as a crock. It seems to me that social consciousness, cultural awareness, and the ability to speak another language is worth much more than the ability to recite the history of a nation five times over a class of college students that didn't even do the reading for that day or to write an analysis of political behavior based on some theory that's supposed to conveniently box groups of actions together for a scholarly journal.

What made things worse was that Brenner had come to the conclusion that we were all disenfranchised with Cuba and were surprisingly to the right when it came to Cuban-US relations. The problem is that these conclusions were drawn after a two hour breakfast the day after he arrived, and the little time he heard our opinions at the US Interest Section chief's personal residence. Then, rather than have a nice, intelligent discussion with us, he instead shared these feelings with Ariana. Furthermore, his graduate assistant, Marguerite, commented that she hoped that her group (since she'll be heading the next AU group) would be happy about being in Cuba. The fault of both of them is that they explicitly asked for criticisms and problems that we've encountered being in Cuba. It's no wonder that we gave them, as we were asked, but it's amazing that they would draw entirely negative conclusions about our entire group from them.

On a good note, we had three great trips these past two weeks. We visited the residence of the US Interest Section chief, which was an incredible mansion built in the fifties, with beautiful landscaping, a pool, a grand piano inside with chandeliers, a beautiful staircase, and the copper eagle that fell from the memorial to the victims of the USS Maine that had been sabotaged in Havana harbor. While I was unimpressed by Mr. Palmry's opinions, he was in agreement with me that many of the Cuban-Americans in Miami incorrectly think that when Castro passes, they will be able to come back and reclaim the land that they left behind. He told me, however, that he believes that the next change of power will occur not without violence, as these types of changes in Cuba have never come without violence. Somewhat of a damning prediction. As all official US government employees are in Cuba, Palmry is not allowed to travel outside of Havana province, but it's debatable whether the residence makes up for it or not. Mostly, though, I spent my time there swimming and drinking Budweiser.

We also visited Playa Giron, also known as la Bahia de los Cochinos, also known as the Bay of Pigs. We visited several of the locations where the attempted invasion of Cuba by Cuban "exiles" occurred, and I was generally surprised by the audaciousness with which such an attack could have been planned and believed to ever be successful. The truth is that it wasn't ever expected to be successful, but it holds a grand place in the modern history of Cuba, as it was the first time Fidel called the Cuban government socialist and it is regarded as the first victory against imperialism in Cuba. The beaches in that area were very nice too; it was the first time I have ever swum in the Caribbean. During one of the stops on the trip, I asked our history professor who came with us what the US military's involvement had been. He told me that the Air Force had provided cover support, and that were things to change in intensity somehow, there were several US Navy ships waiting in the harbor. The funniest part was when he said that after the invading force was put down in 66 hours, "lots of Cubans looked at the US Navy ships and said, 'Well let's go kill the motherfuckers!'" I was shocked but amused, and later in the day at dinner, he said that it was strange that while most American students binge drink on Spring Break, we were binge eating all the rice, so he started chanting "Chug chug chug!" Similarly, it was strange being on a trip with a professor, and to see him at lunch drinking a beer and then later a mojito. It goes to show how sensitive as Americans we still are about drinking and what part it plays socially in the US, but in so few other nations in the world.

The next day we went to Las Terrazas, a UNESCO sanctioned Biosphere Reserve. The story goes that this small area in the mountains to the west of Havana right beyond the border of Pinar del Rio province was heavily deforested in the 60s and 70s due to the few indigenous families making a living on charcoal, which requires a lot of trees to burn. Because of the deforestation, many of the mountain- and hillsides began to erode, leaving a desolate wasteland. But a plan to reforest the area with 75 species of trees, many foreign to Cuba but known to grow heartily in latitudes similar to Cuba, was put in place to save the area and attempt a pilot program in forest regrowth and ecotourism. Planned communities for those willing take on the social/ecological experiment were built, and a hippie commune type of mentality prevailed over the burgeoning cove. A river was made into a reservoir which is fishable, a posh hotel that runs $100 a night on average was built to bring extra money in, and profits from both that hotel and any purchased art is redistributed into the community. In the 30 years since it was started, over 6 million trees have been planted, and it now resembles a lush forest like it must have a hundred years ago. It was a beautiful place, and I plan on returning another time.

We were also taken one night to a Santeria info session. A santa, a female saint of the Santeria religion, described and showed several of the rituals and symbols used in the practice. A babalawo, an always-male practitioner that specializes in divination, showed us some of the tools he uses and the significance of them. When he realized that I was fairly detached from his presentation (though there were eight of us there, he focused his entire attention on one girl in particular), he asked what was wrong and I half-lied that I had a sore throat and was beginning to get sick. He then took me outside and picked a small weed. He instructed me to chew up the leaves, swallow the juice made by my spit, and spit out the pulp. He also offered some honey to add to the mix. The interesting thing was that after he picked the plant, he crouched down by a small altar and prayed to one of the gods to allow the plant to help me to feel better and overcome my sickness. Whether or not it worked, I can't say for certain, but the fact that I was given a blessing through Santeria is an once-in-a-lifetime thing.

Later the next week, we took a trip to an Afro-religion museum in Guanabacoa, on the outskirts of Havana. Here we looked at two of the religions most well known in Cuba – Santeria and Abakua, the latter an all-male religion. Many of the displays helped to supplement the visit we had paid earlier in the week to the santa's house, and went into further detail on some of the hazy parts of the symbolism.

We've been playing a lot of basketball with the Cubans here. They all play street ball and aren't necessarily fair or followers of the rules, but they can shoot pretty well for such small people. Unfortunately, I didn't get anyone to send a football in time with Professor Brenner, so I think the next sport to try is some stickball on the street with the local kids.

Next up for trips: Professor Carreras has talked with one of his friends, Cuba's foremost marine biologist, to arrange a trip to Maria La Gorda, anther ecologically protected area at the southwestern-most tip of Cuba. We are going under the auspices of studying sea-turtles, which do actually nest in Cuba around this time. Also, one of our security guards, Carlos, has invited me on one of my free weekends that we have left to go duckhunting with him. While this is quite the juxtaposition to my ecology-minded trips, I feel like it's an opportunity I oughtn't to pass up.