We're all teachers, we're all learners.

For the first time since setting foot in Cuba, I realize what day of the week it is. It must be Sunday, the people are flocking to church. I have much to write about, as I sit on a rocking chair made the same year Mr Castro was born. I am using pen and paper, lately, as it does not sit well with me to display my Macbook Air in a country struggling to feed its people. 

Life looks different here– a world less affected by globalization, like if the clocks were turned back a half-century. Life is different here– namely, no food abundance, which is immediately evident upon talking with and looking at, the people. And the empty markets. Ohhh the empty markets. There is an undertone of despair in the air, a look of sadness in the people’s eyes when they share the story of their country. 

I learned yesterday, whilst conversing with Reynaldo, the “complete history” of socialism in Cuba, and that more than 70,000 people have fled the country in the last year alone. Seeking food security. My new friend, Fe, shared that the Cuban salary, plus the government’s allotment of food, is enough to fuel them through just fifteen days in a month. After that? Scavenger mode. 

I am consistently amazed at how much others have to share and teach when space is provided for them to do so. 

It’s grim here, and yet also beautiful– just like Havana’s pastel-colored, vine-coated, half-occupied, and crumbling colonial residences. In the same breath that they illuminate their struggles, an aliveness radiates from their souls. Despite the country’s prevalent scarcity, it’s people embody abundance. I had to say no three times to Palillo yesterday, who insisted I take his cigars, cow’s milk, and coffee. I finally said yes and lit one up with him, his pig squealing in the background, as we overlooked the street. 

Ohh the streets. 

Cars yield to people here, not the other way around. Their hang-out space is the curb– no privacy, no fences, and no anti-depressants. Their doors don’t have locks and shit, most houses don’t have doors. There are no guns and crime is not a thing (barring petty theft). Kids run rampant in the streets, impossible to tell who the parent is– because it doesn’t matter, the kids are theirs. All of theirs. Wifi is expensive and not yet pervasive, and only the “rich” have televisions. Their evening entertainment is in the form of opening their hearts to the street. Their security doesn’t, can’t, come from commas in a bank account. Nope. 

Security here, resilience here, still comes from the place it always has: thy neighbor. And thy neighbor’s neighbor, in an interconnected and interdependent fabric that an American might remember as a community. 

As I sit, facing the street, on a metal rocking chair made in the year of Fidel Castro’s birth and listen to Javier laugh with his longtime band-mate, joy emanating from every pore of their collective being, I am reminded that I, and we, have much to learn. 

And they have much to teach. 

I am all ears, Cuba. 

We will be learning and teaching together October 4th - 8th in Peacham, VT during our Harvest Field Trip. If you feel you have something to offer, please join us. If you feel you have something to learn, please join us. Deets here. Tell your friends.