Well, my school hasn't been held hostage and I haven't "blessed the rains down in Africa," but life in Havana continues to throw me daily curve balls, in the simplest of ways.
The other night I was at a dinner party with three people from my program at our Cuban friend's house. Louise-Enrique is a very unique Cuban in that he has his own place. Virtually everyone lives with their families- parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, whomever- regardless of whether they are 13 or 30. Louise is lucky, and takes advantage of his situation by having people over to cook and hang out as often as possible. Now, I am not the most domestic of the bunch, so I was given a fairly simple first task...turn on the stove. I walked up to the college-refrigerator sized oven and turned the knob for the stovetop. Nothing happened. I tried again and again, but to no avail. Despite my embarrassment at appearing completely kitchen-incompetent I asked Louise for some help. "Just turn the knob," he says. I do, with the same fruitless result. "Look, it's working fine," he replies, starting to walk off. I'm now genuinely confused. "But there is no fire," I timidly offer. And he just starts to laugh. "You are in Cuba girl. C - U - B - A. You just turned on the gas. Now you need to drop in a match." Oh.
It was a brief, flash of a moment, but it was just one of those reality checks. Heading to the beach with friends or listening to Usher in the cafe down the block can feel so much like home that it's easy to forget what a different world this is. Not that an old-fashioned stove is all that bizarre, but it just served as a reminder of where I am. I've revved the DeLorean up to 88 and traveled back to an earlier time, and that doesn't just mean cool vintage cars, but outdated home appliances and stores in general. Walking into a Cuban supermarket (the nearest one to my residence is about a mile away) is like walking into a 1950's twilight zone. Generic canned foods are displayed in sparse pyramids, like Warhol paintings come to life, but without the Campbell's logo. Department stores are a hodge-podge of cotton shirts, televisions, phones, a sole couch, weirdly old makeup, random Tupperware. And yet, most University students come to class in a uniform of blue jeans, converse, and a T-shirt, headphones hanging from their mp3 capacity cell-phones. They get their "consumer stuff" from family in the U.S, or schlep on the bus to the few stores on the island that carry only a small portion of the goods I could find in a dozen stores within a one-block radius of my apartment.
And as often as I envision myself as the title role in a warped Back to the Future, I imagine the Blast from the Past scenario that would ensue if any of my Cuban friends traveled home with me to NYC. (Blast from the Past was inexplicably a frequently watched Fleischner-girls-flick). Imagine the culture shock of stepping into a Macy's, Whole Foods, or CVS. And that's thinking big. A friend's professor explained his experience of leaving Cuba for the first time and his amazement over the smallest of things. His first U.S stop was the bathroom in the Miami airport, where even an automatic flusher was too much to take. He joked he was relieved no one else was in the bathroom to see his face of pure horror when the soap dispenser put a weird foam in his hand on its own accord.
Cuba is a bubble of land- an island in every sense of the word- with a sense of community that thrives because of how insular it is. It's incredible to, in a city as big as Havana, walk to my favorite corner milkshake stand and be greeted by everyone waiting in line. But then I travel to the store and, while gazing at the aisle full of one kind of Kat Sup (ketchup), remember, "Holy crap. There is a supermarket with a section dedicated to dozens of varieties of cheese on 75th and Broadway."
