The morning after Mardi Gras nine Lewis and Clark students found themselves sprawled across an abandoned corner of the Cancun airport admiring their new Cuban visas. It was just after noon and we had a flight to Havana departing at three. Our saga begins the moment we tried to check in our luggage. A wonderful Cubana Airlines representative explained to us that the Mexican government charges an exit fee to all tourists. Twenty-six dollars for those who’d spent less than twenty-four hours on Mexican soil. Fifty-nine dollars for Sam. These fees were supposedly included in our tickets, but after fighting this point back and forth for almost an hour we ended up taking the tourist’s way out. Throughout this process we watched other passengers file by with huge Saran wrapped appliances that that they had purchased in Mexico and now intended to ship back to the island. Flat screen televisions, air conditioners, miscellaneous thirty kilogram boxes. These are some of the ways in which wealthier Cubans circumvent shortages.
After paying our penance we got through security and played a bit of whack-a-mole as our flight bounced from one gate to another and the departure time started to extend further away from us. The flight itself was as unremarkable as the government-issued saltines that we were served in our seats. Reuniting with the tarmac in Havana, we filed off the plane and into the Soviet style airport with its grey and red concrete facade. Now, it bears mentioning that the visas which we were hoping to leverage our way onto the island with contained numerous factual errors. Besides mine listing my gender as “femenino” all of them had not only confused the dates of our program, but the visas had actually expired altogether. Considering these details irrelevant we made our way towards customs. There the airport authorities stopped us, took Jack Carrick’s passport, and kept us on an airport bench for over an hour as one employee after another shuttled the little blue document back and forth between offices.
One of the officers eventually walked over to us, escorted us up to customs’ counter and pushed us through to the other side without much of an explanation. On the other side we were reunited with Elliot Young and introduced to our communal Cuban mother, Julia. We rode through the outskirts of Havana in a 1953 Chevrolet Model One and arrived after dark at our home for the next four months; a colonial mansion that housed the Cuban Vice President under Grau San Martin. The night ended with a solid dinner at a nearby café, and our group celebrated the journey deep into the night sharing stories and emotional burdens. It’s an enigmatic city and we are all looking forward to exploring it further. I love you Mama.