Cuban Art & Living

Eduardo and Orlando’s mother, Nena, insists I come for dinner at the Garcia’s, every time I’m in town. 

Hugs and Kisses, then knee to knee in the tiny, tidy living room on the 2nd floor of a Havana walkup.  News is shared that makes friends feel like family.  Orlando got a passport, father Paco lost 25 pounds, Eddy and Yuliett are getting married in November.  Small gifts from Florida are presented.

In time, Nena moves on to the kitchen, the twins and I squeeze into their room and sit on the bunkbed next to the computer.  Orlando brings out their newest works.  I purchase a dozen sepia photographs and note a stunning painting on the wall, Eddy’s first significant work in oil.  Two artist friends drop in and the talk is young and lively.

At dinner the talk is of changes in the  Cuban “system,” the Castros, the Bushes, ironies, inequities, hopes and dreams.  We are all the same, we agree.  It is the governments that are different.

After dinner,  Eddy gives me a gift from his unjaded heart - the painting on his wall.  And when it’s time to leave, every eye glistens, and hopefully, we talk of change.  For now, only one of us is fortunate enough to cross the Gulf Stream both ways, but the friendship we have is a sturdy bridge across those waters of time and space.

“Fernando, there seems to be an overall, underlying sadness in the people.  How about you?  Would you say you are generally happy?   The waiter has been receptive to my probing in the past and he didn’t disappoint. 

His reply was a question of his own.  “Are you happy?”

Not ready for it, I had to think about it. “I have moments of happiness.”

“We have moments of happiness too.  My children and I do not live in fear.”

“You mean fear of the system?”

“No, I mean we can walk in the darkest streets alone.  My children are safe in school.  There are no guns.  And there is opportunity here.  We must find that opportunity however we can.  We must take it.”

I recently met a Miami doctor in the restaurant of Havana’s old José Martí airport.  Since we were the only two people in the room, we lunched together, and he shared his medical experience in Cuba.

“I’m not Cuban.  I’m American and I am 75 years old.  I’ve been coming to Cuba twice a month for seven years to do  arthroscopic knee surgery. We don’t do knee replacements here because the Cuban doctors can’t do the follow-up.  They are excellent at working in developing countries because their abilities are like that of 40 years ago… thorough, knowledgeable and caring .  But they don’t have the technology and don’t know what to do with the medicine that surrounds it.

“Anyway,  I just go in, do my work, and I do not discuss politics, U.S. medicine or anything.  I just do my job.

“I use to do this in the hospital in Havana, but the foreign student doctors would gravitate to me to learn. It was I who should have been listening to the Cubans.  So now, I work at a hospital in Pinar del Rio, where there are not all those foreign student doctors around.  I think I wore out my welcome in Havana.