Missive #22: The accidental missionary, part 1

I am in Cuba on a religious visa granted to me by the Cuban government.  When I landed at Terminal 2 of the Havana Airport on September 4, immediately upon exiting the plane, my name was called, and an airport official hand-delivered the visa to me so that I could pass through Customs.  

As I wrote back in September, I had no idea at the time whether the visa was to be used in conjunction with my U.S. passport, or with my Cuban passport, who had requested it, by whom it was granted, or what it had cost.  An e-mail informing me that the visa had arrived had  been sent to me, as well as to the Marazul Travel Agency, only days before my departure, but this was the real thing.

I hadn’t understood yet about the Cuban Pony Express or the fact that there is no overnight Federal Express between the U.S. and Cuba.  Thus, the genuine article had to be personally and physically taken to the airport, probably by the seminary chauffeur who met my flight who, in turn, gave it to the airport official who, in turn, gave it to me.

The religious visa (a colorful certificate like everything else handmade in Cuba) was good for 30 days at first.  Before my first month in Cuba had elapsed, Moraima, the seminary’s international-relations specialist, had taken my U.S. passport along with this visa to Havana.  Her mission was to obtain extensions for another several months.  

Originally, my plan had been to spend the fall academic semester in Cuba, from September 2012 through January 2012.  However, I soon discovered that the seminary’s academic year is divided into trimesters instead.  And the English classes were scheduled to be taught in the first and the third trimesters.  Thus, I quickly made up my mind to remain in Cuba through the end of the third trimester, or June 1, 2012, if the seminary was willing to extend its invitation.  

Not only was it willing, but it also agreed to pay for the monthly extensions of the religious visa through June 10, 2012.  In total, the seminary paid for my entire stay, 25 CUC per month times 9 full months.  

Moraima finally returned my U.S. passport to me, with the original visa, and three prórrogas, or extensions, attached, one on top of another.  The agreement to cover the cost of all the extensions of the visas goes back to when all of my money was stolen last October.

In our old apartment

The wooden door of my studio apartment had been forced open, deadbolts and security chains and latches and construction screws torn out and strewn on the floor.  My belongings were searched, a wallet emptied of its recently received Western Union funds -- enough for me to live on for several months.  

I remain thankful, these many months later, that nothing more than Cuban cash was taken -- not even the colorful fabric wallet from Guatemala. That same evening, I was transferred into much more secure living quarters within the seminary campus.  The seminary offered to reimburse me for the entire amount stolen but agreed instead to cover all of my subsequent costs relating to my stay in Cuba, such as the fees for the visa.

Right now, I am back in Varadero, staying at the Presbyterian Church’s lovely guest rooms a block from the beach, and ready to head back to the beach.  So for now, let me outline the names of the people to whom I’ve become an accidental missionary -- and that way, hopefully, on this Good Friday, which was just declared to be a national holiday by the Cuban government, due to last week’s visit of Pope Benedict, I will remember why I began this missive.

The reason I have a religious visa, I have finally come to understand, is because I am living at the seminary.  Any and all foreign visitors to Cuba must have a religious visa in order to stay overnight here.  

When Alice came to visit me for two weeks in December, she was not authorized to spend even one night with me in my apartment because her visa was for a family visit rather than a religious one.  (The seminary rector made an exception and granted us his permission for her to stay one or two nights but told me to keep entirely silent about it.  Breaking these government regulations could result in serious fines and/or removal of certain licenses.)

Notwithstanding the religious visa, which was needed by the Cuban government,  and  the Letter of Authorization from the pastor of my church in the United States, which was needed by the U.S. government, I have never in my life been any kind of a missionary.  And yet here’s the curious thing about living in Cuba, a supposed Marxist state, on a religious visa:  Cuba is a land of misiones.  

Just about everybody or an immediate family member está de misión -- is on a mission -- mostly in relation to medical and health care -- sent by the Cuban government, usually to Venezuela, but also to other neighboring nations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, among others.

I had always only associated the word “missions,” like “martyrs,” with religion.  Here in Cuba, there are martyrs and missions for every single political act ever sanctioned by the current regime.   There are, however, only political missions, political missionaries, and political martyrs.   The era of religious missionaries to Cuba, as well as of religious martyrs, is gone.

And personally, I have no problem with that.  I was born and baptized and schooled by the Roman Catholic Church, as were most Cubans born prior to 1959.  But I was happy to leave behind the veneration of the martyred saints when I was introduced to Protestantism.  And I have never been very keen on the idea of religious missionaries, to Cuba or anywhere else in the world.

And yet here I am, living and working and teaching as a stranger in my native land, legally sanctioned by both the Cuban and the U.S. governments, with a Cuban-issue religious visa attached to my U.S. passport.  Like everything else in my life, this is new.  

Becoming an accidental missionary has truly been a delight and an honor.  Let me tell you how and why. It has had nothing to do with religion or politics, but rather, it has had everything to do with just being me.  I have become an accidental missionary simply by interacting with certain special persons to whom God has introduced me in Cuba.  I meet new people every day, but the following few are distinguished by several interesting common characteristics and cultural factors:

1.      Pelly, the seminary worker.  His real name is Pedro. Back in October, he was the first worker to introduce himself to me -- and in such an endearingly bold yet timid and humble fashion.  He simply stated that he was getting ready to move permanently to the United States.  

Pelly

I was fascinated as I listened to his story.  He and his wife won the visa lottery and were assigned a sponsoring organization in Tampa, Fla.  Since that first brief introduction, Pelly and I have gotten together over my laptop computer to send and receive e-mail from the wife of a cousin who lives in Miami.  Just yesterday, he told me that at last, after many months of making trips to the American Interests Section (which the Cubans still tend to call la Embajada Americana), he was given his date of departure: April 26.  

The last e-mail we sent to his cousin’s wife was fraught with anxiety, asking her to please try to obtain that information from the immigration folks in Miami, where she lives.  He’d heard stories from others that they would show up in Havana on a Tuesday and be told that their departure date was that very Friday. And he was afraid that something similar would occur.  Imagine how difficult it is for a husband and wife to have to pack all of their earthly belongings into a couple of suitcases, for good, and for the remainder of their lives, and to say goodbye to people they may never again see, in less than 72 hours.  

I am reminded that I have to send the cousin the good news of his arrival.  Pelly and his wife will travel first from Havana to Miami and spend the first month or so there, visiting their family, before heading on to their new lives in Tampa.  I don’t know or fully understand the details of the sponsorship, but it entails a substantial amount of initial support with all the paperwork, with housing, and perhaps also with employment.

I told Pelly that I am glad he is going to be sent to Tampa instead of Miami.   I think that he and his wife will assimilate into the cultural environment in a much more natural fashion, mainly because there will be fewer Cubans around him than in Miami.

2.      Rosalía:  Margot and I were walking literally down the street Dos de Mayo (cleverly punned and called Dos Desmayos by the locals, meaning “fainting twice,” due to its very steep incline) on a Sunday morning, and the front door to her house was open, and there sat Rosalía, one of the ladies who crochets beautiful items as part of a community service group called “Tejedoras de Esperanza” in one rocking chair, with a gorgeous kitten on the rocker by her side.  She invited me inside, and I immediately fell in love with the little cat.  It was nearly all white with blue eyes and a couple of stray black marks here and there, and the triangular head and long limbs of a classic oriental.  

Rosalia with Semi

I explained to Rosalía that I was experiencing cat withdrawal, missing my Siamese cat Chester, and that I was seriously considering adopting one of the many strays in the neighborhood, if I could find one small and tame enough.  

Rosalía immediately said to me, “If you want this cat, I will give him to you.”   I was stunned and unsure whether to take her seriously.  How could any owner possibly want to give up such a beautiful pet?  But as we sat and talked, Rosalía explained that this kitten had been found abandoned by Rosa, another of the knitting ladies who lives right across the street, who had given to her.  

The kitten was a holy wandering terror from the start, going in and out of every open door up and down the street, curling up on anyone and everyone’s rocking-chair cushion or bed or pillow.  His favorite outdoor places to nap were underneath large vehicles.  

I had noticed that the kitten was missing most of his tail; the stub had not entirely healed and was still bleeding.  Rosalía then explained the horrible accident.  The kitten had taken to climbing inside the undercarriage of one of those old ‘classic’ cars, temporarily parked in front of her house and undergoing one of those perpetual repairs.  The car’s owner was unaware of the kitten, and its tail was seriously injured when he started up the car motor.  

Frankly, I shut my ears at this point of the story and told Rosalia I didn’t want to hear any more. However, it gradually became clear that Rosalía had felt so helpless after the accident that she had been seeking to find a new owner for the kitten.  

Semi in his early days with me

A few weeks ago, when I was finally ready to listen to the rest of the story of my Semi’s semi-tail, she related that a young boy further up the same street had offered to take the kitten right after the accident, only to further mistreat it by severing off the broken tail.   Neighbors once again brought the kitten back to Rosalía.  That was about a month prior to the time she gave him to me.  

Since that serendipitous moment several months ago, Rosalía has become as much a motherly friend to me as an accidental mission. And the cat became an accidental missionary to the entire seminary community.  He answers to “Semi” -- short for Seminario de Matanzas, a name truly befitting this royal feline gracing the high grounds of the seminary.  

Rosalía and her crocheting-club ladies come to the seminary every time there are foreign visitors, setting up their lovely wares to sell on the café patio.  Semi follows me, and I place him on Rosalía’s lap, and he stays there contentedly.  Rosalía is my mother’s age (my mother turns 86 today!) and has been living alone since her husband died six years ago.  They never had children, as she explains it, because they were never physically together long enough throughout her childbearing years, as both of them were nurses working different shifts at different hospitals.

She is a bit wobbly on her feet but still loves to walk a lot, even up and down that very steep street. We walked all the way to the baseball stadium for her first live game since before her husband died. The “fish guy” still brings her a kilo of fresh sardines from the river, and she holds them for me until our next visit.

The kitten kisses my feet

This past Sunday morning, a tiny kitten was found abandoned on the front lawn of the seminary house where I live.  Three of the little boys who often come to visit me and Semi brought the poor darling to me later Sunday afternoon.  It was nearly starved to death and tried to gulp down some milk but didn’t quite know how to yet (like the first time we fed my grandson Rory with a spoon).  

I immediately put the poor thing under the bathroom sink faucet, running warm water over its entire tiny body.  I asked one of the boys to fetch the shampoo for me, and all of us watched in horror as dozens upon dozens of adult fleas began to emerge from the kitten’s wet and foamy fur.  

Rosalia with her new kitten and the boys who brought it to me

He never once made a sound while I continually shampooed, picked off half-dead fleas, rinsed, and shampooed again, for nearly 20 minutes.  He began to purr as I wrapped him in a small towel and took him out to a patch of sunshine to rub him dry.  

By the following day, I was able to proudly present him to Rosalía, who immediately fell in love and began to nurse her new foundling.  We laughed over Semi’s mixed reactions of curiosity, hissing, swatting, and jealousy.  I am so happy to have been able to make good on my promise to Rosalia, after all these months since she gave me Semi, to provide her with a younger, more malleable, and more companionable male kitten.

3.      Eriberto, the seminary custodian, like Pedro, also approached me to tell me that he was finally and legally leaving Cuba to go live out the rest of his life in the United States.  When I first heard him say his name, I wrote it down as “Edilberto.”  Eventually, he wrote it down for me, along with his Department of Immigration case number, so that I could call the U.S. Interests Section on his behalf.  

Eriberto is the Spanish form of Herbert, and, of course, it should begin with an “H,” but when his parents went to register his name back when he was born in the late 1920s, the Registry Clerk misspelled it.  Over the years, what with carnets and marriage certificates and divorce decrees (he was married and divorced four times, and had to pay a lawyer $100 to search for and produce each of those documents in order to obtain his visa!), it was easier to maintain the original (mis)spelling.

The problem is that, when he called to find out what was happening with the visa, they told him that they couldn’t locate his file.  Eventually, after several days of playing phone tag between Matanzas and the U.S. offices in Havana, somebody figured out that it was because they were searching for his case number under the letter “H” instead of “E”.

Rolando, at a typical Cuban birthday party (music, cake, and rum)

An aside:  When I told Rolando, the president of the seminary students -- a Quaker, believe it or not -- physically disabled with a brilliant mind and very strange sense of humor that more than makes up for it -- that the name Heriberto is Herbert in English, he immediately made a typical Cuban double-entendre crack about “su pájaro” and something having to do with a girl and her gay boyfriend, and I looked at him like, “what the heck are you talking about?”  And he patiently explains that Herbert sounds like “her bird” which is translated as “su pájaro” and, of course “pájaro” is but one of several dozen words in Spanish meaning homosexual.

(To be continued…)

With love from Cuba,

Elisa