This week the Lewis & Clark Alternative Spring Break (ASB) group arrived in Havana. They were here for ten days, and in that limited time they got to grapple with numerous Cuban realities and were able to see this space as the intellectual playground that it is. It was simultaneously bizarre and refreshing to have thirteen familiar faces injected into our isolated American community here in the capital. It felt like an enormous privilege being able to share our experience with them and understand their perceptions. Our group is great, but new ideas and opinions are as necessary as new socks and underwear. As our experiences have become more entrenched here in Havana, the novelty of our situations fades taking with it some of the raw excitement that I originally had for just being an American student studying in Cuba.
The brand new group of gringos allowed us to share our normalized realities with a renewed zeal as we watched the ASB students tackle Cuban society fully for the first time. We were able to come together for meals and other moments, and craft a combined narrative of this space, this system and these citizens. What a treasure. Dragging old friends to the ISA to show off our abandoned campus, and bringing other friends with me through formal interviews within Cuba’s renewable energy bureaucracy, allowed my friends and I to explore Havana through multiple different lenses. I’ve talked about this before, but it still bares mentioning that this country is exceptional partially because of the tiered contradictions that construct its reality. Acknowledging this allows for a much deeper understanding of Cuba both holistically and within the infinite smaller interactions that occur in its streets, busses and cafes. However, keeping up with these contradictions can be exhausting. Having new eyes, ears, and cerebellums to contend with made this week with the LC ASB absolutely phenomenal. It has also revivified my experience here questioning the realities around us and the norms that we’ve begun to take for granted.