Missive #12 - Cubadanzón

#12 With love from Cuba

November 20, 2011
Sunday afternoon
Matanzas, Cuba

Cubanism of the day:  Si es un perro, me muerde (lo tenía a la vista y no lo veía):  Literally: If it is a dog, it will bite me. Means “it was in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t see it.”

Generación Y name of the day:  Yanisel

I forgot to take my camera to the second night of Cubadanzón 2011.   The 20 dance couples were divided differently:  first to compete on the dance floor together were all the younger pairs (under 40), then the older pairs numbered 1 to 10, and then the remaining older dance couples, numbered 11 to 20. 


I found the costumes to be much nicer than on the first night.  All but one of the younger women wore short dresses or skirts, and the young men all wore formal and outdated two-piece suits, which looked very (literally) hot, but they weren’t sweating profusely. Their partners were using their fans (which were exquisite!)  throughout much of the danzones while on the stage.  The older women, by contrast, nearly all wore full-length dresses or skirts.
And the dancing! And the music! The audience would suddenly explode in applause in the middle of a dance, and at first, I couldn’t tell why.  The musicians playing on stage behind the competitors, I soon realized, were stealing the show!


At one point, I turned to the enthusiastic spectator sitting next to me, who had been cheering couples by their numbers throughout the competition, and I said, “I think the musicians are going to win!”  She laughed heartily and nodded--several of them were dancing up a storm with their feet, while their hands played flutes and drums and violins, and a mess of other instruments I’ll have to try to photograph tonight...the finale begins in less than an hour.

I still like No. 14 the most.


Update, November 21: My favorite pair, No. 14, came in second place!

Missive #11 - Ciudad de Matanzas, Cuba - November 19, 2011 - DANZÓN WITH THE CUBAN STARS

November 19, 2011

Ciudad de Matanzas, Cuba

DANZÓN WITH THE CUBAN STARS

Last night, I attended the GALA INAUGURAL CUBADANZÓN 2011.  It was held in the movie theater el Teatro Velásquez, which is on the main plaza of the City of Matanzas.  

From the seminary, the entire downtown area, with all the shops and restaurants, is five or six blocks down the hill and another six blocks to the left, turning toward the bridges and the bay.  I can walk there in about 10 minutes.  

Before arriving on the square, I could hear the sounds of live music: the Matanzas Symphony Orchestra.  They were set up on one corner of the large rectangular Plaza de la Libertad, right across from the entrance to the theater.  A large crowd was gathered around.  I crossed the street and first went to the ticket booth, paid my 5 pesos in moneda nacional (about 20 cents) for my ticket, and was told by the young girl in the booth that the orchestra was a prelude to the show, while the dance competitors rehearsed inside.

It was the first time I’d heard this professional local orchestra, which was fabulous. This evening, they played a number of dance tunes, many of which I recognized (Berlin and Gershwin, among others from that golden age), followed by dance tunes I did not recognize. 

I noticed two pairs of dancers, quite elderly and quite elegantly dressed.  The women held fans that they opened and waved as the men promenaded them around to the first part of the music.  

As the couples passed one another, they smiled and nodded.  At the first shift in the music, each couple paused, facing one another, and politely conversed.  At the second change in the music, the woman in the pair quickly flip-closed her fan, passed it from her right hand to her left hand, then lightly touched it on her partner’s right shoulder while raising her other hand to meet her partner’s raised left arm--all in one fluent movement, as they began to dance to particular beat of this third danzón rhythm.  

After a few minutes of dancing, smiling face to face, bodies surprisingly close to one another, the music shifted again, signaling the return to the promenade. These three movements were repeated several times throughout each danzón, with the dance rhythm becoming a bit more enthusiastic each time.  It was truly beautiful.  And these two local couples dancing under the stars to the symphony orchestra were merely a prelude to the 20 pairs about to compete indoors to the sounds of a live band. 

The 20 pairs were the winners of local competitions from all over the island.  The men each wore the pair number, hung over his shoulders so that it could be seen from front and back.  The master of ceremonies introduced each pair by number, names, and region.  There was one couple representing each province, including Isla de la Juventud.  

Two of the pairs were white; four or five were black; and the rest were mulatto, or mixed mulatto and black.  There were no mixed white-black or white-mulatto dance partners.  (This is quite similar to what I just read in Ben Corbett’s “This Is Cuba: An Outlaw Culture Survives,” in which he writes that Cuba’s racial mix is 51 percent mulatto, 11 percent  black, and 37 percent white.)

Pair numbers 1 through 10 danced on the stage first, to three or four separate danzónes, which took about 45 minutes.  Then they sat down to watch pairs 11 through 20.  I was sitting right in the center of the front row, surrounded by many of the competitors and their family and fans, who had traveled with them.  It was quite colorful, listening to some of the comments.

The costumes worn by the dancing pairs were equally colorful, but very conservative, in comparison, to those of the ballroom dance competitors, not to mention the gaudy things worn on “Dancing with the Stars.”   Actually, they weren’t costumes at all.  The older women wore mostly simple but elegant below-the-knee dresses, some heavily sequined or shiny.  Some wore beautiful shawls, Spanish mantillas. The fans tended to match the dress.  

The shoes were what stood out the most, to me, at least.  The younger women all wore rather flashy shoes with extremely high heels, and their partners were equally flashy in their dress and demeanor.  

The older dancing pairs, like the ones outdoors, were dressed more sedately.  Sometimes, the couple was color-coordinated.  One pair wore all shiny coffee tones.  Two women wore red dresses.  Three or four pairs donned black-and-white combinations.  

 My favorite dance couple, No. 14, of course, was sadly not very well coordinated, he in an ancient and impeccably white shiny suit, she in a poorly contrasting light-yellow long top and matching skirt, and very thick-soled sparkly sandals with straps.  But their inner glow, and the way they smiled at one another when they danced, easily outshone their outward appearance.   

The competition continues this evening.  I’m taking my camera. 

With love from Cuba,

Elisa

Postcard to a Friend

This is an email I received from my friend about a postcard I sent to her... Very Funny...


Hi Elisa,

thank you for your lovely postcard which I received last week.  It did very well to get here since you mailed it to Ireland and I live in Scotland.  It is on my refrigerator. 
I read your mailings with great interest.  Cuba sounds very exciting.  Your enjoyment of it all shines through in your emails.  I hope you get a residency pass or whatever it is called so you can live more cheaply.  We all miss you at the bridge.  Its a shame that the internet connection is not better.  I am sure you are looking forward to your sisters visit at Christmas.  Take care of yourself dear Elisa


regards,
Maryxx

Missive #10 - Matanzas, Cuba - Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Missive #10

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

SET, Matanzas, Cuba

Names from ‘Generation Y’ and Some ‘Cubanisms’

There’s a very amiable older skinny black woman professor (I’m allowed to say the words black and white here without alerting the PC police) who teaches writing and composition at the seminary. 

I had taken my laptop to the little cafeteria across from the dining hall, together with a couple of long lists of names, with the intention of writing down the names beginning with Y.  Dumb idea, to think that I could actually get any work done in the most public and laid-back spot on campus. But it turned out to be great, because when the professor asked me what I was doing, and I told her, she immediately sat down and gave me another interesting explanation for this Cuban cultural phenomenon of the 1980s:

“After the Revolution, people were no longer allowed to give their girls the name of a boy, or their boys the name of a girl, and all the old Catholic names like María José or Jesús María were outlawed. So they eventually began to make up new names. Nowadays, the only people around with normal names are we older folks…my parents named me Mercedes, and my sisters have normal names too.”

Post-Castro, new parents naming a newborn child had to follow very many laws and rules and governmental regulations, just to have the kid properly registered as a bona fide Cuban citizen (and so they could add another person to the libreta for a greater amount of food rations).  And yet the choice of what to name your son or daughter was one of the few indelible freedoms a new parent could claim.

It was my own generation of new parents--those who began to have babies in the 1980s--who also began to exercise that freedom in a way that started out unique and then became a fad.  (Similar to when I named my second daughter, born in 1980, Ashley, and the nurses at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., all looked at me and said, “Mrs. Barton, are you sure you want to give your baby girl that boy’s name?”  Within a couple of years, the name Ashley had become one of the most popular American girls’ names of the ‘80s and ‘90s.)  In Spanish, there were no names at all beginning with the letter Y.  So the letter Y became the chosen initial letter.   In fact, according to my colleague Mercedes, the letter Y became so popular that letter itself was renamed:  instead of the original “i griega,” it is now known as the letter “ye”.

In moving to Cuba, I’d thought that I would finally find myself surrounded by people with names like my own--those found in most of the Spanish textbooks I’ve used in my teaching. Wrong. I have yet to meet a single other Elisa.  

The following list is of names belonging mostly to students here at the seminary, and nearly all of them were born in the 1980s.  I can tell this easily when I first meet them because they are about the same ages as three of my daughters.

Yohanes

Yanike

Yosneis

Yoelkis

Yarelis

Yadira

Yunisleydis (“la flaca”--the manicurist--has a twin sister known as “la gorda” who also has a Y name, but she didn’t write it down for me)

Yamilka

Yoani (the author of the blog “Generación Y”

Yurién (taxi driver between Matanzas and Varadero, born 1980--I have now started asking for their year of birth as soon as I hear another Y name)

Yahimy

Some ‘Cubanisms’

No, I did not just coin that word, though I did have to add it to my Microsoft Office dictionary.  And some of these expressions may not be any more particular to Cubans than to other Latin American speakers.  The one thing they all have in common is that they have no direct English translation or equivalent.  But I shall try to give a few examples of how these phrases are used in everyday speech:

Ya eso no es lo mismo.  Literally: “That is no longer the same thing.” Used when one has begun to make a comparison and then realizes that it is not quite valid.

Ni carece un guanajo. Literally:  “Not even a turkey is lacking.”  I’m not so sure what this means, but I’ve often heard it used as an expression of disgust, as in, “it doesn’t make the slightest difference.”  My mother (totyna@comcast.net) may be able to provide a good example with a better explanation, but she is somewhat Internet-disabled.

Con la tranquilidad más grande del mundo. Literally:  “with the greatest tranquility in the world.”  Used to describe a generally thoughtless action: “without giving it a second thought.”

¡Le zumba el mango!  This is definitely Cuban.  Literally: “The mango is thrown” (at someone or something).  Used to express incredulity over an outrageous action or event. 

Ni una papa…Literally: “Not even a potato.”  Means “not at all” or “not even a peep” or “not in the least.”

Encantada de la vida  Literally: “Enchanted with life.”  Used to describe a sense of delight, and freedom from worries, trouble, or problems.

¡Qué casualidad! Literally: What a coincidence!  But Cubans use it ironically to mean the opposite.

¡Está yumísimo!  Used to express that someone or something is “very American.” La Yuma means the United States.  It comes from the name of a Mexican border town called Yuma.   Vamos pa’ la Yuma means “We’re going to the U.S.” 

Comerse un cable. Literally: ”to eat a cable or an electrical cord.”   Used to express great difficulty. 

Estuve 10 meses en Cuba y me comí un cable.  “I spent 10 months in Cuba, and it took a lot of work.”

Lo que se formó allí fue tremendo. Literally: “What formed itself there was tremendous.”  Used to express an event which went from being uneventful to becoming tremendously eventful.

Ven acá… ¿y por qué tu no…?  Literally: “Come over here…and why don’t you…(why didn’t you)…?”  We Cubans love to second-guess anyone and everyone’s actions but our own.

With all my love from Cuba

Elisa

Added on 11/21/11

MORE ‘CUBANISMS’
Expressions used frequently in Cuba
Darle la cuerda a alguien:   Literally: to wind a person up (like a watch). Means to jerk one’s chain; to push one’s buttons.
Estar fuera de caldero:  Literally: to be out of the cauldron. Means to be hungry, not having eating in a long time.
Dios te ampare: Literally: God forbid you.  I remember my mother using this under dire circumstances, when she realized that her own authority wasn’t great enough to stand in the way of her children’s disobedience.
El boniato no da para más.  Literally: The boniato (a sweet potato that comes in various colors)  doesn’t give/do anything else.  Used to express that Cubans are no good at multitasking.  They admit only to being able to do one thing at a time. 
Le ronca la malanga. Literally: his malanga is snoring.  Very similar to “le zumba el mango.”  Used to express indignation and disbelief.
Está de yuca y ñame / Está de tranca / ¡Ay, carajo!:  Oh, hell!  Used to express that things are very bad.

Letter to Ardmore Presbyterian Church - Matanzas, Cuba - September 19, 2011

To:  Ardmore Presbyterian Church

From: Elisa Menocal

September 19, 2011

Evangelical Theological Seminary

Matanzas, Cuba

Dear Church family:

Yesterday I attended my very first Presbyterian service in Cuba, at a church just a few blocks down the steep hill from the Seminary where I am living and teaching English as a Visiting Professor.   The church is called IGLESIA PRESBITERIANA REFORMADA, MATANZAS CENTRAL and is called simply “Central” by its members.  Its pastor is also a professor at the Seminary.   One of my English students is the youth pastor at the church and he invited me to attend.  That very evening, both the church and the seminary hosted a group of about 15 Presbyterian pastors and church staff from the Outreach Foundation. 

I have in front of me the printout from yesterday’s Sunday worship service.  Let me share with you some of the more colorful similarities and differences which I noted.  The morning began with a bible study which was led by another professor from the Seminary, a Cuban woman of Asian descent.  (The men and youth held similar Sunday school classes in other rooms in the church.)  There were about 25 women in attendance, and the verse which was under discussion was written simply on a large sheet of paper on an easel:  Philippians 2: 6-11.   At the conclusion of the class, a bell was rung and it was time for the Merienda, a special Cuban snack bar with an assortment of sweet pastries, espresso Cuban coffee, and other refreshments, each of which cost maybe a penny or two in the national currency. 

Then everyone filed into the sanctuary and the worship service was preceded by announcements and petitions for prayer.   The remainder of the Order of Worship is exactly the same as yours, and, luckily for me, almost every single word spoken by the pastor was also written and printed for all to read along. 

The first and most stunning difference came in the form of the sound of communal singing:  very loud, and without the accompaniment of a choir, and not everyone could carry a tune but every single voice was lifted enthusiastically!  I smiled openly imagining what a shock this might be to some of those Ardmore members who, like myself, tend to mutter along the words to hymns which are easily drowned out by the organ and the members of the choir.

Last week I was in Havana, visiting my single aunt who never left Cuba, so I accompanied her to her local parish Catholic mass.

In addition to my teaching duties at the Seminary, I am also translating a daily devotional booklet written by Presbyterian pastors all over the island, and published locally.  If you wish to be added to the growing list of readers of Su Voz in translation, send a request to Jack Kern.  I will attach today’s translation to this email.

Finally, I wish to thank you for your continued prayer support for me, as this is my first time living for a prolonged period of time in an ecumenical Christian community.  I have been keeping something of a journal, tentatively titled “From Cuba, with Love,” which I send via email to those who request it. Let me know if you would like to be added to that mailing list as well.

Yours in Christ,

Elisa Menocal, M.A.

Visiting Professor of English

Evangelical Theological Seminary

Matanzas, Cuba

Elisa.m@seminario.co.cu

Elisa.menocal@gmail.com

Missive #9 - Matanzas, Cuba - Tuesday, November 8, 2011

#9 with Love from Cuba Missive

Matanzas, Cuba

November 8, 2011

Nails, twins, and a piglet

Last Saturday afternoon I passed by what looked like a nail salon and made an appointment for today.   I forgot what street it was on and couldn’t find it and so I kept on walking, in a large circle, as I usually do when I’m just out exploring.  On the next block I asked the first lady I saw standing by an open door, “Is there a lady around here who does nails?”  She immediately pointed me a couple of doors further up the street, to where a man stood by another open door.  There was a home-made (of course) wooden baby gate at the entrance.  Inside, two young women, one black with huge rollers in her hair and one very pretty white woman, sat in rocking chairs, a little boy stood by them in front of a TV set with a DVD playing Ninja Turtles in Spanish.   Beyond this small front room the same man had climbed over the baby gate ahead of me, and was now washing up at the kitchen sink.  The pretty young white woman ushered me in to sit down and immediately began to gather her supplies and set up a table between the two rockers.  She came back holding a baby and set him down on the floor.  By then I had already asked more than my usual twenty questions, Lucia, and another really great thing about being surrounded by Cubans is that they all think it is perfectly normal and come right back at me with twice as many questions of their own!  So I knew that the older boy was the same age as Riley and the baby boy was 11 months old and that he could already walk.   The beautiful young mother calmly and efficiently got her two little boys set up in front of the TV and had set up all her supplies on the table and she was now ready to begin doing my nails.  She started with my toenails, one foot at a time resting on her knees.   All of a sudden I heard an odd sound, wondering if it was coming from the TV or from the baby, and turned around to see a piglet!  It had come through a gap in another home-made gate at the other end of the kitchen.  With the same calm efficiency she’d shown with her two sons, the young mother picks up the piglet, carries him back over his gate, and comes back to attend to my toenails.

(By now you are thinking, “She’s covered the nails and the piglet; what about the twins?”I just stuck that in because I realized I had to start a new paragraph and break up the story a bit.  But you know how obsessed I am with babies of any kind, and especially with twins, so just wait.)

I was wondering whether this was one of the piglets I’d recently seen over the Seminary wall, but she told me, “Oh, there are lots of piglets all over the neighborhood…everyone keeps them inside, that’s why you don’t see them.  This one came from a farm outside the city; my brother bought it…they are for special occasions…”  I told her I assumed nobody grew much attached to them as pets, even though it sure looked like this piglet wanted to play with the two little boys, because he kept sneaking through that gate to join us.   I forget her answer to that comment, but I think it was a small giggle and a shrug. 

My next set of questions was about the rest of her family.  By now I have learned that there are never fewer than 3 generations sharing one household.  Sure enough, her mother lived with them.  You’ll be proud of me to know that I did not need to ask about the father of the two boys.  I had mistakenly assumed that he was the man I’d seen earlier, but she corrected me:  “That’s my brother.  The father and I had a fight.”  She told me about an older sister who has twin daughters the same age as her older son, and who is expecting another baby.  I asked if the cousins live nearby and she said, not really…but about five minutes later, the twins and their very pregnant mother show up at the baby-gate.  The baby isn’t due till January and already looks like it might be triplets, but they already know it is only one boy.  As I was getting ready to leave, I asked her to write down her information so that I could send others to her.  She had another one of those made-up names beginning with a “Y”, so it’s a good thing she wrote it.  Then she went into some long explanation about how the telephone number she wrote is for a phone a few doors up the street, and to just tell people to ask for “La Flaca—the thin one”.   Turns out her twin sister, who lives right across the street, is “La Gorda—the fat one”.  She just smiled and shrugged saying, “I guess twins run in the family.” 

Missive #8 - Seminario Evangélico de Teología, Matanzas, Cuba - Sunday, November 06, 2011

MISSIVE #8 WITH LOVE FROM ELISA IN CUBA

Seminario Evangélico de Teología, Matanzas, Cuba

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Yesterday I was sitting in a restaurant called “Ríomar: Salón de la Cubanía” on the main street of Matanzas, la Calle Del Medio.  It serves lobster and shrimp, seafood which is generally forbidden to Cuban nationals and reserved for foreigners, but then again this restaurant only took convertible pesos so I suppose it was all perfectly legal.  (I’d just read about this in one of the blogs in Yoani Sanchez’s book Havana Real: One woman fights to tell the truth about Cuba today, which is outlawed in this country but I am reading it in my Kindle under the covers late at night). Next to me sat two young couples, and a nursing baby.  The two families made me think of my grandbabies and their mothers, Zoë and Ashley.  Not that I’ve seen many Cuban infants being nursed in public, but nearly all those I’ve seen seem less fussy and calmer somehow, as do their mothers, than most of the babies I’ve observed in restaurants in the U.S.   They so rarely cry or even whine, and more often than not, they are sleeping soundly in someone’s arms—not in a stroller or a baby carrier of any kind.  Maybe that’s why.   Cuban babies have somewhat of a special effect on me—I wonder how come? Same thing goes for Cuban kittens. J

Matanzas is starting to feel like “home,” especially now that I am living with a cat, in an apartment with something of a real kitchen, where I cook mainly cat food, and have been spending most weekends here.  By the 2^nd or 3^rd visit to the same store, to the ETECSA (Government Telephone Company with internet access), to the movie theatre, or to the local bodega, the employees and I already share a mutual recognition. 

Yesterday I also went to the Museum of the City of Matanzas and paid the $2.00 MN (moneda nacional) entrance fee, which comes out to be about a nickel.  A pretty blond-haired blue-eyed older woman was assigned to follow me around.  Moments later, the ticket-lady came and asked me if I was “una residente,” to which I promptly and proudly replied “Sí”, and thus avoided having to pay the tourist fee of $2.00 in convertible pesos.

I was not as lucky with the entrance fee on my first trip to a real tourist site, the famous Cuevas de Bellamar, just outside Matanzas.   The tickets were $5.00 MN for nacionales.  My Cuban friend bought tickets for the three of us but the guard made us all show him our ID cards.  My friends nervously pulled out and opened their carnets and I had to go fish my Cuban passport out of a locker where we had already stashed our bags.  The guard reprimanded me and said that “this was no good” or something to that effect, returned my ticket to me and told me to go back to the cashier and buy a new one—for $5.00 CUCs.  Later, several of the others on our tour sympathized and shook their heads saying, “Nothing gets past that guy.”

 My Cuban friends keep telling me to just keep silent and let them do all the talking. I’ve been trying to shut up but you know how hard that is for me.  Still, I’ve been very lucky almost everywhere I’ve gone.   There has always been a man or woman who has immediately and spontaneously acted as my guardian angel and helped me to find a seat on a non-tourist bus or to pay for a meal at a state-owned restaurant, or to buy anything with the national rather than the convertible currency.  It is always the same story:  Cuban “nationals” or “residents” pay with moneda nacional and all others pay the same price but in CUCS—which is 25 times as much!   I think that after I’ve been living in Cuba for 3 months I actually have the right to obtain a residential carnet which then entitles me to pay for everything in moneda nacional as well as to receive a libreta, which is a like a rations booklet for free food. 

The Cuban Pony Express

My daughter Livia’s 29^th birthday was a few days ago and she emailed me:

Hi Mom,

Miraculously, the postcard that you mailed on September 9th just arrived yesterday, on my birthday.

I don’t believe in coincidences anymore, only in miracles, which after all, are all acts of God, great and small. 

Have any of my other postcards arrived?  

The Cuban Pony Express, as I began to explain a few letters ago, arose out of the need created by the lack of any real or reliable postal service between the United States and Cuba.  It was first mentioned to me in an email from one of the many U.S. Presbyterians who will visit Cuba and perhaps also come to stay at the Seminary while I am living here.   They often ask for any supplies that are requested or needed.  I had been cc’d on an email between several U.S. pastors with Cuban sister churches, talking about a handful of bilingual bibles, and asking if I could use any for my students. Yes, I said, I needed about six of them for my “Inglés Teológico“students.   A few emails later, I was told that the “Cuban Pony Express” would get them to me somehow sooner or later.  So I asked how it worked.   It means that anyone who is boarding a plane from the U.S. to Cuba is sent or given the requested item to carry in a suitcase.  Upon arrival, usually at the airport in Havana, that person is then met by another person who delivers the item forward until it reaches its final destination.  The bilingual bibles made it from the U.S. to Cuba within a week or so of that email, and they were promptly given to one of my students, who happened to be back in her hometown of Placetas in Central Cuba, about 200 kilometers away. It had taken only two or three ponies.  Unfortunately, my student did not have enough space in her suitcase to bring the bibles back to the Seminary, so she had to leave them in Placetas. 

The publisher of the Su Voz booklet which I translate every day had a dire request for more ink for the printing press.   A visiting U.S. pastor from New Mexico duly took back an empty box of the ink.  That was the first pony.  He mailed it to the second pony, another pastor in Texas, who was at the Seminary a few days ago.  But he was unable to locate the right kind of printer ink so that was another aborted delivery.

I’ve sent my own pony off today, with a gift for my granddaughter Riley’s 5^th birthday, and a CD of all the photos I’ve taken.  I gave them to William Kelly, who teaches ESL at the Christian Association at Penn and lives just across the river in “West Jersey”.  Bill’s wife Alice had gathered and sent a list of items I’d requested (mostly for Semi and for teaching) which I joyfully and thankfully received just yesterday.  I am hoping that Bill will ride that final pony all the way to my daughter Ashley’s house in Center City Philadelphia and make a special hand-delivery.  Ashley recently wrote:

All is well here- the kids have been asking about you a lot lately.  I tell them about the things you are doing and they know that you are "in Cuba."  

So today I asked Bill to show my grandbabies a photo of the two of us here together and to try to explain to them what it means that their grandmother is “in Cuba.”  

Missive #7 - The Seminary, Matanzas - Monday, October 24, 2011

With Love from Cuba # 7

The Seminary, Matanzas, Monday, October 24, 2011

All my money was stolen on Saturday. I’m still a bit too upset to properly state just the facts, but I’ll try.  A week ago, my daughter had wired me money to the local Western Union office in Matanzas (there are 2) which was automatically converted into convertible Cuban pesos (CUCs).  This is by far the best way to exchange US currency into Cuban currency, because the exchange rate is nearly 1:1 minus a Western Union fee of $80 per transaction.  I had left most of the money inside of a zippered colorful Guatemalan fabric wallet, which I had placed on a wall-mounted shelf where I kept everything other than clothes: all of my books, folders, teaching materials, jewelry, mosquito repellant, etc.  The outside door of the apartment was bashed in hard enough to completely break off the entire lock and chain, which were on the floor behind it.  The break-in took place in broad daylight, sometime between 11 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. 

The Cuban police are a work of art.  This would make for a great new CSI- Special Edition: Cuba episode.  They were finger-printing and taking photographs and interviewing me until 11 p.m. and were back again today for another hour or so, with the prosecuting as well as the defending attorneys already assigned to the case.  The first thing the district attorney wanted to establish is how long I planned to be in Cuba, for when the case comes to trial.    The police detective who interviewed me and wrote out the entire report longhand for me to sign on Saturday night also returned today and I kept staring at him because he reminded me of someone.  The four of them were invited to join us for lunch in the Dining Hall, and after one more look at him I had it figured out.  I asked him whether he had ever heard of the American comedian Bill Cosby.  He had!  I told him he looked almost exactly like the actor who played the role of the teenage son in the long-running television series titled “The Bill Cosby Show.”  I asked them if they had internet access and they did, and told them to Google it to find a photo of the actor, whose first name I think is Jerome.  

Who can tell me the full name of this actor and how old he is today?  Send me a photo, please, so that I can show it to the police team.  They will be thrilled.

 Tuesday, November 1, 2011:  Yesterday I moved all of my belongings for the second time since the break-in, into another much larger, much more secure, and more modern apartment.   It is the apartment that the Seminary has been using to house the specially-invited foreign guests for short periods of time.  It is quadruple the size of my first apartment.   Most of the walls have fresh paint, a color of which my daughters might approve, i.e. not ‘eggshell’.  The floors are all 12”x12” ceramic tile, white and beige.  The bathroom’s walls and shower stall have square foot blue ceramic tiles,  an American showerhead with good 2^nd floor water pressure, a pedestal sink and mirror, and a toilet with a push-button flush on the top of the tank which actually works (most of the others around the seminary do not)  and with minimal rust stains in the bowl.   The bedroom has a nice double bed and a large air-conditioning unit.  The living room is furnished with a typically Cuban matching set of 2 rockers and 2 straight-back chairs, with woven seats and backs, and glass-topped coffee table.   The eat-in kitchen has another carved-wood table and set of 4 chairs, which I am using as my desk for now as I type this.   There is a microwave!  The refrigerator is a good size but only the top freezer part is working and I have to keep the bottom part slightly open so that it doesn’t roar.  There is one electrician who comes to work at the Seminary one day a week, and he has a huge backlog of broken fans, air-conditioners, rice-makers, washing machines, etc. to fix.    Luckily, the only thing I have to cook and refrigerate is my own homemade cat food.  And the dining room ladies love me because when they asked me,  I had antacid tablets and Ibuprofen and ballpoint pens to give them, and the I showed them the baby books Ashley made of the grandbabies, so they give me lots of leftovers to feed Semi.   Oh—and the Dining Room Lady in Charge, who is called “Mamita” by nearly everyone, told me that her real name is “Julia” and she hates it.  So I took my laptop over to the Seminary Kitchen and played John Lennon’s song for her, and the rest of the kitchen staff gathered around to listen, and since John Lennon is an iconic martyr only second to Che Guevara in this country, you can imagine the outcome.  She now proudly answers me when I call her Julia, British pronunciation, of course.

 I am told that this will be my home until the end of my stay at the seminary.   My new little Cuban Siamese kitten loves the new place.  There is a brick-floored outdoor laundry patio off the kitchen with an old-fashioned double-sink.  I just found enough plastic-covered old wire to attach to the aluminum slats in the windows diagonally crossing between the living room and the kitchen, to create a clothesline.   I feed the cat on this outdoor porch, because of the ants.  (One drop of anything edible, liquid or solid, on any surface anywhere, will immediately attract literally hundreds of little ants.) 

 Last night Semi caught something that looked like a cross between a flattened slug, a huge leech, and an enormous cockroach.  He brought it inside to play with it.  I took one look at the thing and picked him up with it in his mouth and put them both outside.   By the time I came back with a piece of toilet paper in hand to flush the thing away, it looked like Semi (short for Seminario) was literally licking his lips.  When I described the disgusting creature to my neighbors, I was told that it was todo muslo “all muscle, highly rich in protein, a healthy treat for a cat.” 

Also last night, I and several others experienced the worst thunder and lightning storm of our lives.   It lasted for hours and was followed by torrential downpours.   Today it was all that people were talking about.  We are more susceptible to lightning and thunder because of our location at the highest point of land, combined with a lot of very tall trees.   At my house in Haverford, I would grab a daughter or a cat and run out to enjoy any summer or winter storm from the comfort of a porch swing and the relative safety of a covered balcony.  Last night, I grabbed the cat for dear life.

By the way, Semi knows who broke down the door and robbed my money.  I had left him behind to nap. A friend and I went walking down to the farmers’ market over the bridge at the bottom end of our street, then alongside the river San Juan to the Matanzas Bay.  We walked along the bay to eat lunch at a state-owned restaurant (it takes moneda nacional, Cuban pesos, and is thus affordable even for a student) overlooking a small half-moon beach.

The Rector (who is the CEO of the Seminary) had been traveling abroad during the robbery, but upon his return he immediately called me to his office to discuss the robbery.  The Seminary does not carry insurance, but he offered to try to raise enough to reimburse me.   Instead, we recalculated the sum totals of expenditures directly related to my stay, such as monthly fees for the religious visa, transportation to and from the airport in Havana, and paying back the deacon for the money he had loaned me to hold me until my daughter wired me more money via Western Union.   The totals were close enough to one another and we agreed that it was a fair arrangement.  The Rector feels that even if the police catch the thief, the money will have been spent.  The police told me that the thief has to pay the money back a bit at a time. 

I am thankful that all that was taken from my apartment was cash.  My laptop was untouched right on the desk; my digital camera right next to it.  The case with my jewelry had been opened but nothing was taken.  The thief took my Spanish-English dictionary and my bible off the desk and placed them on the floor behind the broken door so that it would not be entirely open.   So what I saw when I returned to little apartment was my Semi sitting, quite calmly, right inside the opening of the broken door left slightly ajar. 

My life is just now beginning to get back to whatever was starting to become normal before the break-in.  The next episode will have to do a bit of back-tracking so that I can finish telling you about the Cuban Pony Express, the 3 days spent at our grandmother’s house on the beach in Varadero with my cousin Alicia,  the visit from my 4 students so that we could go ‘swimming in English,’  and last week’s class where I decided to show them the documentary film made in 1992 about my aunt.  We discussed their reaction to the film in today’s class.  Tomorrow they turn in something in writing.  Thus far, since I’m making up the course as we go along, the emphasis has been mostly on verbal communication.  The end of the trimester is already on November 25^th and I have yet to give them a grade for any written work. 

I apologize for the mass-mailing, but if you write to me individually, I will of course email you back in private.

With love from Cuba

Elisa 

Missive #6 - Matanzas, Cuba - Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Matanzas, Cuba

By now perhaps one of you has received a postcard from me, with two Cuban postage stamps, one for 30 centavos, the other for 35, and postmarked either Havana or Matanzas.  If and when they arrive, please email me.  I am curious to see how long it takes and whether they arrive at all. 

The Cuban government loves to blame everything possible on the bloqueo, the U.S. embargo.  Such is the case with the non-existent-to-abysmal postal service between the two nations.   Was it Bostonian-turned-Philadelphia’s own Benjamin Franklin who coined the term “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”?  Whoever said that wisely presaged the invention of the Cuban Pony Express.

Some of you may already know that, as part of my volunteer job in Cuba, I was asked to translate a booklet of daily devotionals titled Su Voz, which is published here in Matanzas.  Since last February I have received scanned copies of the booklet. I then translate the devotional for one or two calendar days and email it to one person, who then forwards it to a large distribution list.  That distribution list multiplies itself as well. So there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands now, of regular readers of these brief daily meditations penned by a small group of Cuban Presbyterian pastors from around the island.  Su Voz is published quarterly and includes three calendar months of daily writings about half a page long, based on a short passage from the bible.  I don’t know yet how many of these booklets are actually printed or to whom they are distributed here in Cuba.  I do know that it has not been easy to obtain a copy in the U.S. 

Friday, September 23^rd, 2011

Varadero, Cuba

This is dedicated to my dear old (boy) friend Tim Lewis of Roslyn, Georgia, whose 55^th birthday it is today.  And whose look-alike, a youth pastor from Huntsville, Alabama, I just met last week at the Seminary.  (Depending on how much more of this Bucanero Cuban beer I down before I quit writing, I may or may not go into more detail about that.)

A picture may well be worth a thousand words, but I shall continue to have to describe in words each of the marvelous photos I’ve taken this afternoon, because uploading them takes forever.

I am sitting at a typical enclosed outdoor patio table of wrought iron painted white, under a permanent pergola made of white-and-yellow-striped canvas and a lush vine with my favorite periwinkle color of flower.  The lanterns have just been lit on the columns supporting the corners of the pergola, and the church night custodian has just turned on the outside fans upon my request.  The only other guests at this addition to the Varadero Presbyterian Church are a doctor and his family, and they just walked by on the way to the beach, which is a block away.  I’ve just returned from my second trip to the beach today, and I may yet return for a third, after a late dinner and another spectacular sunset.

The pictures I have already taken are not of that sunset over the water, although I do plan to get those shots any minute now.  The pictures on my camera from a couple of hours ago are of vehicles of all sorts:  a horse and carriage; motorcycles with the cute little side-car, bicycles of all sorts, and of course many of those “classic” old American monstrosities which grace every avenue and driveway and many are adorned with a “TAXI” sign.  But the best photos I took this afternoon were of the mothers and fathers and grandmothers picking up the children from the local day-care or nursery school:  on bicycles!  And the bikes all had the most ingenious child seats:  in front of the handle bars, in front of the seat, and behind the seat.  And sometimes all three, with each occupied by a little kid.

Thursday, September 29, 2011 

The Seminary, Matanzas

It’s not like anyone here could possibly replace any one of you back home. And yet, perhaps as a result of living at this ecumenical seminary, I am already surrounded and blessed by several men, women and children, from the very young to very old, on a daily basis.  Each one of them seems to have the same effect on me as my own dearest family members and friends.  There’s Marielys, who was born the year I was first married, just a bit older than my Zoe, and who shares her inner sweetness and is already more like a daughter to me than a student.  Marielys is going home to the center of Cuba this afternoon, to help take care of an ailing mother and grandmother in the town where she and her husband will eventually become pastors.  She asked me to stop by their apartment at dinner time to take her husband to dinner, or he will forget.  I asked her if I could take him to the movies afterwards, too.  This young married couple, second-year students in a five-year course of study, seems to be the party central of the seminary campus.  They invite me over for un cafecito every day after lunch, and hosted an impromptu dinner party there a few nights ago, with a game of dominos and all!  

There’s Aitana, who shares the great charm and impulsivity and outgoing personality of my Ashley and my Livia.  Aitana is a force to be reckoned with, very confident and commanding.  She is equally generous, to a fault.  The minute I mentioned that I wanted a straw hat, she brought me the perfect one the following Monday, after going home for the weekend.   She notices every article of clothing and jewelry I am wearing and does not hesitate to register her compliment or complaint.  The necklace I wore on the plane from Miami to Havana somehow got all tangled up and I have been struggling for weeks to fix it, only making it worse.  I gave it to Aitana and 10 minutes later she triumphantly presents it to me.  We were in the dining hall and everyone at the table gasped and said how beautiful!  Today at lunch Aitana says to me, “Profe, we need to take you to the hairdresser…how about this afternoon?”   A couple of hours from now, I’ll be getting my first Cuban haircut somewhere in the city of Matanzas.

In Varadero this past weekend, I met a woman who could easily double for my mother, if I needed another mother, which I do not.  And I have two colleagues, professors with degrees from the University of Havana, who regularly reflect the modest intelligence and perspicacious pedagogical astuteness of my older sister.

I have yet to find a gorgeous Cuban woman who cries as easily as my baby sister but I have a feeling I will soon find someone to remind me of Lucia.

Alice is coming to spend her Christmas vacation with me! 

Matanzas, October 14, 2011

I found myself so overwhelmed by so many new experiences that my writing could not keep up with it all, so I stopped writing.  I am going to hit the send button on this or it will never get out.

Love to all and please do write back.

Elisa 

Missive #5 - Seminario Evangélico de Teología (SET), Matanzas, Cuba - September 15, 2011

Missive # 5 from Cuba

September 15, 2011

Seminario Evangélico de Teología (SET), Matanzas, Cuba 

Each day here is the start of a new adventure; I am starting to feel like Elisa in Back-to-Cuba-Wonderland.  


I was just stepping out of my little studio apartment after taking some photos of the inside of this cute little place, when I heard the sound of a soccer ball being bounced, so I grabbed the camera again, and just as I was focusing it, the ball hit one of the two goats perpetually tethered to a huge tree (I couldn’t believe that these two young men were running barefoot around all those little goat poops). The soccer ball hit the goat HARD, the goat actually fell down into the other goat, on its side, stunned for a moment.  The kid picked up the soccer ball. It was game over, as the ball had hit the goat’s horns square-on; the ball was dead.  The goat, thankfully, is OK.

A common sound in Cuba I wish I could notate musically has only three tones:  one short and flat, one long and a bit higher, and the rest of the tones similar to the first in length but a bit lower.  Each tone is one syllable or one word.  


The first time I heard it, called out from the street clear as a dinner bell for all to hear for at least a block or two, I thought it was indeed someone from the Comedor, the seminary dining hall, calling us in for a meal.  (Actually, they ring a real dinner bell for that.)  I began to hear the same three-tone sound all over the place, both here in Matanzas and again in Havana.  It was always the exact same tones, but the words changed.  Sometimes it was sung by a man, other times by a woman.  The same tune was sung several times, slowly and deliberately and almost mournfully.  


I finally put together the sound and the person singing it, and I noticed that the singers were usually pushing a cart or a wheelbarrow, or carrying a large basket.   So then I had to try to figure out what they were singing.  It was the item, usually a specific food, they were selling!  It would go like this:  Fri—JOOOOOOO--les (if black beans are the item of the day), but I swear that every one of these street venders knows how to carry a tune!  They sound like Cuban Gregorian chants.  


Interestingly enough, although avocados are now in season and are being sold literally on every corner, the four-syllable word is not sung.  If so, it would sound like this: a—gua—CAAAAAAAAA—tes.  In Havana, I also heard a man singing: com—pro—OOOOOOOO-ro (I buy gold).

Today I’ve met two Swiss residents of the seminary, both from the only area in the country I know somewhat, from the high-school year I spent in France:  Geneva and Lausanne.  Benedict is a student, and Rocco is one of the two IT guys in the (nicely air-conditioned!) computer room for the students.  


I had noticed a very slight accent in their Spanish, but it was hard for me to trace.  It was very nice to chat in French with them; in less than two weeks, in this small corner of my home country, I’ve already found people with whom to fluently converse in English (a Jamaican seminary student who sings beautifully and always leads us in a song before a meal), French, and German.  


My Cuban Spanish is getting a bit better every day.  All these silly idiomatic expressions--phrases I’d only ever heard uttered by my parents, and had not entirely understood, because the context was not always clear, and I’d never seen it written--keep popping into my head at night before I fall asleep.  I’m going to start writing them down so I don’t forget them.  One that I recall my father using all the time is:  “Alabado sea Dios” which literally means “Praise be to God.”  The confusing thing, however, is that he only ever uttered that phrase in annoyance, convinced that he was about to hear that something bad had happened.   No wonder I’m confused.

Living and teaching in the same place with all of my students is really great because it allows us to tear down the classroom walls.  Already, my students naturally speak to me and to one another in English outside the classroom.  This afternoon, two students of mine who are a married couple invited me to their apartment after lunch for some coffee.  We sat in their small kitchen in two rocking chairs brought from their home in the center of Cuba.  Another one of their professors dropped in, just before the next class they had with him:  The History of the Protestant Church in Cuba.  


This man immediately recognized my name, and he knew the story about Chana and the statue of the sculptor of the Alma Mater, along with my entire family history, better than I know it. He grabbed one of his most recently published books, titled "PROTESTANTISMO EN CUBA" and dedicated it to me:

Para Elisa Menocal, amiga y colega, y nieta de la “diosa criolla,” con especial afecto y gratitud.  Carlos R. Molina SET/Matanzas, 15 sept. 2011

“For Elisa Menocal, friend and colleague, and granddaughter of the “Creole Goddess,” with special affection and gratitude.”

This morning, I spoke with Ariel (I'll later relate the story of how to make phone calls in Cuba), who is the caretaker of my grandmother’s house in Varadero.  As my cousin Virginia had mentioned, the house is entirely rented out through the middle of next month.  But Ariel told me that a room will be available for me to come and stay from October 16 through 20.  I looked at the calendar and saw that those dates include my two teaching days.  When I mentioned the problem to my students at lunch, they immediately said, NO PROBLEM! WE COME TO VARADERO FOR ENGLISH CLASS! 


No joke, either.  The four of them have already organized it so that they will take the bus (very cheap with Cuban money) to spend the day at the beach house with me: SWIMMING IN ENGLISH.

Missive #4 - Matanzas, Cuba - September 13, 2011

Missive #4

Matanzas, Cuba

September 13, 2011

I dedicate this to Andrea Trexler, of Richmond, Calif., whose birthday it is today. 

We were sitting on the front porch of my house in Haverford on a really hot day this past summer, as I made my usual excuses about being incapable of understanding or doing a single thing in this oppressive heat and humidity, and Ron said, “Elisa, how are you going to manage when you get to Cuba?”  I forget now how I answered him, but it was a good question. 

It is amazing to me, and yet it makes utter sense, to what degree the everyday life of an entire nation is affected by extreme heat and humidity.  The heat dictates everyone’s every moment of the day.  Mostly, it means that everyone simply admits that the human body has limitations, and then they go about their lives, taking those limitations into account.  


I must have thought that Cubans just kept on going like they do in Florida:  stay inside and turn up the AC.  But, of course, they can’t, and they don’t, because they don’t all have air-conditioning.  And even if they do, since the majority of people in their immediate world have already readjusted their lives to deal with the intense heat, they would too.  


Anyone and everyone who has any serious work to do, and has no AC, does it early in the morning, and then their day's work is done. But even the most important of government offices or tourist-related offices and businesses, with all the air-conditioning needed at their disposal, cannot function in a void, so they take frequent long breaks and quit early as well.

I also mistakenly assumed that after living in a temperate climate for 50 years, I’d lost some kind of Cuban immunity to the heat.  But Ron would be surprised to hear how all Cubans complain even more than I do about the heat and the humidity.  (Oh, how nice it is to be surrounded by people just like me!  And we also adore the snow and the cold!)

In addition to frequent breaks and a very short "work" day (unemployment is at 80% in Cuba, I was told in Havana this past weekend, because it's easier to not work and get paid the same), a lot of Cubans seek the shade, a breeze, or the dark, and they take a nap or a long break after the midday meal.   

In Pennsylvania, I run the water for a few minutes before it gets hot, and since I hate to waste any water, I usually collect it in large plastic watering cans to use for the plants or the aquariums. In Cuba, it’s the opposite. The water in the shower is only cool for about 45 seconds before it turns warm.  I take a lot of 45-second showers.  I also change my sweat-soaked clothes about five times a day. 


If you must go outside into the sun for even a few minutes, there should be a very good reason for it.  And you cross over to the side of the street that has even the most minimal amount of shade, you wear a hat, and people carry umbrellas rain and shine.    

Enough about the heat in the air!  Let me tell you about the heat in the music and the culture and the hearts of this incredible island where I had the great fortune to be born.  This past weekend in Havana, just between Thursday and Monday, I attended one free outdoor live concert, one incredible Shakespeare a la cubana theatrical performance, and the most beautiful ballet skits of my life--all within walking distance of my aunt’s house.    


My cousin Virginia, along with her daughter Claudia and her boyfriend Antonio, arranged the tickets to the play and to the Ballet National de Cuba. I asked them about the cost and found out that they were practically free.  We arrived at the play a bit late, and it was crowded. Virginia found a single seat, while Claudia, Tony, and I sat down on the floor in front of the stage.  People just filled in all around us, grabbing extra chairs and sitting down in the aisles as well.  Nobody seemed particularly concerned about having an emergency exit, in case of a fire.  The entire theater was on fire from the get-go.  


I’ve seen dozens of Shakespeare adaptations all over the world, and it’s a good thing I’d seen this one traditionally performed at least twice in two other languages, or I may not have understood the plot.  The plot, I don’t think, was the point.  The director has a well-established and well-respected reputation for taking any well-known play, and “cubanizing” it to his heart’s content and to his audiences’ delight.  


My cousin and her daughters spent many moments analyzing and discussing the director’s singularly peculiar style, which could be summed up as: sex, music, and literary allusions, in that order.  Figuring that out was all I could do to keep up with all that was going on at once on that stage right in front of me.  


What shocked most people the most, even though by now they should have come to expect it from this director (sorry, but since I didn’t grab the program, I don’t have his name), was the contrast between the total male nudity (uncircumcised penises flapping up and down and around like tassels on nipples) and total female coverings.  Besides all the sexual allusions and male-genitalia displays, the sheer dynamic and physical energy behind every single pronounced or sung or even silent syllable in that play, by every single one of nearly three dozen actors on that stage, every single moment of the entire performance, was like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life.

The following evening’s five short ballets left me nearly paralyzed, so moved by each performance.  I don’t understand exactly what happened to me, but I found it so beautiful that I was afraid that I would start to cry and that I’d then have to leave the theater.  As we were exiting the theater to walk back to the house, I was told that the ballerinas that evening were only the third string, as the first and second strings of performers are on international tour.  If you get a chance to see the Ballet Nacional de Cuba performing anywhere near you, go!

Just outside the theater, three identical boys, each dressed in white guayaberas, and their parents, obviously good friends of the family, greeted us, and each one of the boys kissed me. What sweethearts!  They were triplets, just starting sixth grade.  From the little I know about multiples, I figured that there had to be at least one fraternal among the three.  But wouldn’t you know it:  I just met the 1 in 15 million sets of triplets who all came from one egg and are truly identical! All three boys are studying ballet, which is why they were there late on a school night.  I hope that I can see that family again, because those three boys and their mother and father were very sweet and very interesting people.

On the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, Cuban television showed an American movie with Spanish subtitles. Again I neglected to note the title. Who’s the British actor who plays Remington Steele and 007?  He played the father in the movie, whose estranged older and now newly reconciled son goes to his office in one of the two World Trade Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001, and is killed, while the father is saved because he is accompanying his equally estranged but now reconciled young daughter to her private school in the company limousine.



The dinner bell is about to ring at the seminary on the hot-and-humid hill, and I bid you all good night.