The time of visits

March 25

(Becca's brother Mike (the tall one) and family with friends Roman and Katrina and family)

Over the past couple of weeks, we have had some wonderful family visits. Both my parents (aka Nana and Papa) and my brother, Mike and his family (with Lisa and nephews Jake and Kyle as well as grandma Karen) have come visit Cuba and to see us. They stayed in Varadero which allowed us to see how the other side lives by checking into their respective hotels for a night. We loved the beach and loved seeing our family! The hotels were a bit of a disjunct, though. It is hard to reconcile the amplitude of the food and resources with what we see and experience, to some extent, in daily life. Just as a small example, beef was forbidden for Cubans until recently. It is now possible to buy beef in the stores but it is prohibitively expensive. Cows are used for milk for children. But there is beef in abundance at the hotels. The excess seems so unnecessary to us, knowing what we know about how little Cubans have for their daily needs. What a metaphor for the problems of the world!

It is not possible to enter the hotel grounds without wrist bands. When Emma and I tried to do it to see Nana and Papa’s room, we were (very politely) stopped. Our Saturday afternoon at the beach was made all the more pleasurable by sharing it with three Cuban seminarians and a professor. At the end of the day the guards questioned our use of the deck chairs. We explained that there were four paying guests (we had four chairs) and that we were visiting our friends. He let it go, but this kind of socializing (between paying guests and others) is still strongly discouraged. Emma said she felt like it was discrimination like there used to be in the USA against African Americans. I said it wasn’t quite the same...she said, “Yes it is, Mom.”

Those who gathered at the Lenten Retreat at SET

Nana and Papa were able to be with us at the seminary for a couple of days and Mike, Lisa, Jake and Kyle and Karen (Lisa’s mum) for a day. We were so excited to have them here - I couldn’t stop talking. Emma kept rolling her eyes at me! The seminarians were warm and welcoming to them all. Papa was able to offer a reflection at a Lenten retreat while he was here and Nana got to meet with the president of the Cuban SCM (Student Christian Movement) – she has spent most of her adult life working for the SCM in Canada and it’s mother organization the World Student Christian Federation.

We also had a visit from Cuban-Canadian friend Leonel
and his girlfriend Tina. Here we are on our balcony with Tina.

When Mike and family came to visit, everybody saw in Kyle a striking resemblance to David. We had lunch in the comedor (dinning room), and walked around town. A highlight was the ice cream we stopped to get. Between us we had five dishes of ice cream, some with several scoops for about $1.50!

Mike and Lisa’s hotel was completely isolated at the far end of the Varadero peninsula. We enjoyed being there but felt a bit stuck. It is so big that you do feel you’re in your own little village but it is such a gated community. Mike and Lisa traveled with friends Roumen and Katrina and their kids – we enjoyed being with them as well.

Friends Sarah Shepherd and David Gillman are in Cuba now traveling on their own and stopping by for visits with us. Emma has been able to hang out with them some (I am hunkering down with my books trying to finish end of term stuff) and we’ve enjoyed some nice meals together.

The garden at SET which feeds seminarians as well as the community.

These visits are wonderful. It is also challenging to figure out where we belong. We are here living with our Cuban friends in this safe and relatively privileged community (we eat meals in common and have resources that other Cubans might not have, including decent accommodation), but still life is simple and we depend on each other for help in daily matters. When we visit the fancy hotels or travel around with our friends we become more obvious tourists. We have the financial capacity to enter that other world (albiet briefly). It is a reminder of our relative wealth and it feels uncomfortable. It challenges all our assumptions about what is important in life and how we chose to invest our time and money.

I find it really hard to navigate between the worlds. For now, I have chosen to live for a short time in this Cuban community. While I’m here I can help a little and so I do in whatever way I can (by buying extra food, sharing what we have, requesting special items from home – Alan has received and sent several lists of stuff with each visitor). The sorting out will be ongoing process.