All quieted in the city of Habana today when a tropical rainstorm hit the city for more than three hours booming and blasting over the entire landscape. Some of the students were lodged in the Presidente hotel our usual haunting ground for internet where apparently taxi cabs were literally bobbing up and down in the street from the flooding. Others were stuck at a luxurious lunch at the Mediterranio restaurant located literally next to our house contentedly conversing with a young and successful Cuban who was describing her rise out of the special period and into fine dining and privately owned cars. Some even were stuck at the house of our professor Julie lodged in a permanent interview where Julie would not permit a brief but wet jog down the street and back to our house.
I was located far off on the forever-surprising partially ruined campus of the ISA where I was certain I would be stuck for days. At first the rain poured and the other students and I reveled in it dancing and acting out all sorts of song and dance and rain-oriented performance. Following this we bravely ventured across a field at full speed ahead in order to doge the massive rays of lightning that seemed to be falling only within a mile or so of our school. It was exhilarating then we sprinted through the partially reconstructed school of art shaped in a women’s form and as we ran the breast like cupolas poured rain watter on us from all sides. We arrived at the center and the usually dry yonic papaya was over flowing with water and new blood red color was brought out of the brick. We layed in the rain on the floor of the school and made major water angels and splashed and played for a hour.
Then a friend and I ran off together and hid in the music ruins looking to see the school of dance flood over which frequently happens in these situations. The river had risen almost two and a half meters and was entering the flood prone school of dance at a dangerously rapid rate. We watched in tragic silence as the building, the beautiful ruin a testament to art and the spirit of Cuban hope, submerged into murky depths of a river made out of shit. Finally after talking for hours and waiting for the rain to subside, I returned to the dorms and changed out of my old clothes and into new and borrowed ones.
From the school it was to the bus stop where the road had been flooded as well the busses were in a state of chaos and no one could get anywhere they wanted. In the end it took me three hours to arrive at my final destination.
The point of this story is to make sure it is clear that Cuba is a forever-contradictory nation where the citizens and foreigners alike still have the capability to revel in the rain with the knowledge of its implications. We appreciated this force of nature but also suffered its consequences. I did not suffer because as the constant estranged foreign presence I got an “experience” out of it. Maybe we all travel to reduce life into experience because in mundane everyday life we actually have to direct our focus toward the true nature of our suffering and how the “experience e of being alive is to suffer.