My Classes

One of the opportunities I am most thankful for is the chance to take all my classes in the University, with regular Cuban students. All of the classes, with the exception of the Ecology class previously described, are in the department of History, Philosophy, and Sociology. As you may already know, education from preschool to post-grad is entirely free for Cubans. The down side, in my opinion, is that this comes with a decrease in free will. In order to achieve the highest degree of efficiency, university students only take classes dictated to them, in their “carrera,” or major. For instance, as a 1st semester 3rd year history major, I would take Cuban History 5, Contemporary History, Patrimony, English, Jose Marti, and Cuban Immigration. With this system, students complete their undergraduate and graduate degree at the same time, in only 5, sometimes 6, years. This includes doctors and lawyers. To me, it’s not worth the rush because the classes lack personal investment, meaning individual motivation decreases. People skip classes all the time, people read through classes, talk to their friends, and complain about how much they don’t want to go. Sure, this happens in the US too, but it is way more widespread and more justified in Cuba. I’m not necessarily saying we do it better in the US, obviously our educational system is hugely unfair, but I’m just saying that it’s not perfect here either.
Like everything in Cuba, the foreigners with the money have more privileges and freedom in the University than the Cubans do. Though I basically have to take all my classes in one department, I can take whatever class in whatever carrera I want. So my classes are Cuban History from the Revolution until today, Cuban Immigration to the US, Latin American Thought, and Marxist and Leninist Philosophy. The History course is pretty lame. The professor is old and senile and half-blind and half-deaf, so he talks really slowly and jumps from idea to idea rather illogically. Sometimes he just lists names of people and dates without any explanation. It’s pretty amusing though, the entire class pays no attention to him. Most arrive at least 30 minutes late, or not at all. My friend Mikel hasn’t come in about 4 weeks. The ones that do show up blatantly read other books right in front of him or talk openly to their friends. I just keep showing up with the hope that there will be a glimmer of something interesting. The Cuban Immigration class is really good, mainly because the students have really strong opinions about the subject and the professor provokes them, in a good way. This class has been a lesson on Cuban habits too. As far as I can tell, Cubans cannot wait their turn to talk. When someone talks, they get maybe 20 words out and then 5 other people jump in and start talking over them. Basically, the class dissolves in chaos fairly often, but this is both informative and hysterical, so I like it. Latin American Thought is kind of like a history of Latin American philosophy and philosophers. For instance, we’ve lately been talking about this guy named Mariategui, a Marxist Peruvian who started a group of philosophers and wrote a lot of books. It’s pretty interesting, but the professor is almost impossible to understand. Cuban Spanish is REALLY difficult because it is really fast and endings are often dropped, especially s’s, and this guy is a classic example. Luckily, I’ve learned that if I’m staring at his mouth I can usually tell what he means to say even if no sound comes out. My favorite class by far is the Marxist/Leninist class. It’s early and long, and the professor is a hard-ass, but he’s also fantastic. We spend a long time on concepts, but he makes sure we all understand them because he makes us explain it to each other, by prompting us to make the same connections that past philosophers make. It’s like we are following the same trains of thought in this classroom that Hegel and Descartes followed years ago. He also uses really good examples to help us understand. Besides just generally being a good class, I really like it because the challenging part is understanding the concepts, not understanding what he is saying.
Despite a seemingly tough schedule, classes actually take up a pretty minimal chunk of my time. I have about 12 hours of class over 3 days each week and almost zero work. There is very little reading, maybe 1 hour or less each week, and never any homework. By the end of the year we have to write a 20 page paper for each class, but I’m thinking that this might not even be a big deal since I’m pretty sure all the professors think we don’t really speak Spanish. I heard of this Japanese student who really didn’t speak hardly any Spanish and so probably didn’t really write much of a final paper, yet still got full marks for the course. That’s the power of money here, unfortunately. For a socialist country, a huge amount of importance is placed on the dollar. But I won’t get into that now, it’s already a long entry.

¨Murcielago¨ is my favorite word

Though I have yet to say anything about my classes here, I actually have been doing something relatively productive at the University. I’m still not going to talk about most of them in this entry, but I want to mention the most unique class. I’m auditing this class on the Ecology of Cuba in the Biology department of the University of Havana because it is designed specifically for these three US students from Sarah Lawrence, and they just let me sit in. Every week is a different aspect of the ecology here, such as biodiversity, conservation, insects, mammals, etc, covered by a different professor in the department. They also take us on excursions every now and then, so this weekend we went to a cave to study bats! We went with two bio professors (Emanuel and Ari) who specialize in bats, and use this particular cave fairly frequently. It was about 40 kilometers South-East of the city, in tiny town called “El Mudo” (the mute). We got to stay at a Buffalo farm there because Emanuel and Ari are friends with the family who owns it. This on its own was an interesting experience, because it is a very different way of life than we’ve seen in Havana. It’s a fairly “primitive” farm, with no machinery, meaning the family does all the milking and harvesting and everything with their hands. They have about 40 buffalo on the farm, which is a government owned farm (of course), but they also make a fair amount of money selling the buffalo meat to touristy hotels. Despite extremely hard work and lack of a lot of comforts, for instance assured running water, the standard of living seems to be a little better in the country, or at least on a farm. First of all, there is motivation for work. In the city, a house painter makes the same amount of money if they paint 30 walls a day or half a wall, and the same if they do a perfect job or if it is spotty and ugly, so they have very little motivation to work fast or well. But on the farm, if they don’t milk every buffalo, or harvest their crops, they and their animals will suffer directly. There is more self-interest involved in their work, which makes it mentally easier to complete. Also, they have plenty of food, as much fresh milk as they need, and much less pollution and chaos. The fresh milk is kind of a big deal, because it is close to impossible to get fresh milk unless you have a child under 3, and even powdered milk is expensive.
So on to the bats. Apparently Cuba has one of the highest densities of caves in the world, but someone should check that fact because they love to exaggerate here. This particular cave is interesting to scientists because it is a hot cave. This means, that its bats live in a very tall cavern with a tiny entrance at the very bottom. The every day activity of the bats creates a huge amount of heat that only rises to the top, so the environment stays constant, only varying about 0.5 degrees C in a day. And the temperature stays at 41 degrees, only 1 degree below the temperature at which proteins denature. That’s hot. To get there, we crawled army style on a ground that was only guano (bat poop) and cockroaches, all the time dodging bats that fly right into you, despite their echolocation. I don’t have to tell y’all it was intense. Inside the cavern, it was pitch black, hotter than anything imaginable with 100% humidity, and chaotic. Our mission was to capture a couple different types of bats to bring back for studying, so we took turns waving a net back and forth hoping to grab something. We ended up with about 6 bats, 3 different species, and then we crawled back out. We were absolutely disgusting, covered in cockroach guts, poop, and soaked in sweat, but we couldn’t shower because the farm’s water hadn’t come yet that day. They have to wait until a big truck comes and fills up their containers, then take showers by pouring water over their heads from a cup. So instead we had a lesson on bat identification. It’s pretty straight forward. First you determine whether it is an insect bat or a fruit and pollen bat, which is determined by the presence of an urapatagio (a net in between the bottom feet that catches insects). Then you narrow down the species by wing shape, then look at the face. Usually there are two species that are easily confused, so we looked at comparison charts to be sure of the exact specie. We each got to hold one of the bats while we were iding them, and mine went crazy (or was crazy, I don’t know). It was trying to bite anything it could, and when no part of me was in reach, it chomped down on its own wing. The weird thing was, I couldn’t even get it to let go, even though it was chewing so hard that it drew its own blood. It couldn’t even fly afterwards. It was really creepy, and really shook me up for the rest of the day.
After a break for exploration and dinner, we went back out to the cave to learn about echolocation and scorpions. Apparently, bats make echolocation noises all the time, but also communicate with each other in sounds within the range of human hearing. These sound like bat noises, while the echolocation sounds like wings flapping rapidly. We heard this because we had a frequency transducer that dividing sound wave frequency by 10, meaning the frequency became audible to us. We also had a UV light, so we searched for scorpions with this. There were a bunch on the walls that look neon green in UV light.
So to sum up, it was an awesome weekend and a well-needed break from the city. The only other thing to add is that the Cuban countryside also has the best stars I’ve ever seen in my life, including on mountains in the middle of rural Vermont.

Eco Tourism

Tuesday, Oct. 10 was a holiday in Cuba, celebrating the declaration of independence from Spain during the first revolution, in the end on the 19th century. I wouldn’t have noticed (except classes were canceled) because there was a complete lack of commercial advertising for things you could buy in honor of the holiday. No “buy this 12 piece grill set for your classic American barbeque this Fourth of July!” Since we didn’t have classes, we went on this trip to a place called las Terrazas (the terraces) in Piñar del Rio. This is a river basin in the middle of a mountain range that has recently been protected from further development. In the early part of the 20th century, Cuba had a huge problem with deforestation because of the outside pressure to produce sugar cane. Thousands of miles of land were destroyed because of this. But during Castro’s rule, a huge reforestation project began all over the country, corresponding to the loss in value of Cuba’s sugar cane crop. Now, a lot of the land has almost been restored to its natural habitat. This created a new type of tourism for Cuba, eco-tourism. Piñar del Rio is one of these sites, though I think it was originally destroyed because of coffee production, but I’m not sure. Anyway, in 1968 the government started to reforest this river basin, and now its original biodiversity is almost completely restored. Besides a small community that lives and works in the reserve, no development can occur in the area. It is entirely devoted to eco-tourism. And it’s gorgeous. Thick, deep green jungle envelops a clear bluish-green river, speckled with smooth rocks and frequently interrupted by waterfalls. In several places there are natural pools that are deep enough to dive into, off the top of the waterfalls. I really liked it because it was totally different than going to the beach (which is closer and easier for us to visit). The water is a lot colder and the sun is not quite as strong. The beach is amazing, but the problem is there isn’t much shade, the sun is really intense, and the water isn’t very cold. Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out at the beach, but las Terrazas was a nice contrast. As you can see, I finally managed to add pictures! Enjoy.

The Social Life

The social life here is really interesting, and apparently pretty different than most other countries in Latin America and perhaps the world in general. This is because for the cubans, it all revolves around houseparties and dancing, but minimal drinking and clubbing. The great club scene you hear about in Cuba is mainly reserved for the tourists, because most cubans can´t afford the entry charge. The same goes for bars and other forms of drinking. Alcohol is just too expensive for normal cubans to consume on a frequent basis. The same goes for drugs, there isn´t much using of anything anymore. Earlier, the gov´t had a problem with tourists taking drugs out of the country, so 4 years ago they really cracked down hard on everyone. Now, since the penalties are so high, there aren´t as many people dealing and prices are a lot higher. Weed is about 10 times more expensive that it was 4 years ago. This dichotomy in prices and the exclusion of cubans from alot of normal activities results from the dual economy that exists here. I alluded to this briefly in the last entry, that there are two currencies here, CUC and moneda nacional (pesos). Tourists pay in CUC but cubans recieve wages in moneda nacional. One CUC is equal to about $0.80 usd, or 24 pesos, but judging from prices of commodities bought in pesos, I estimate that 1 peso is like 50 us cents. This means that to a cuban, a 3 CUC cover charge at a club is like paying 36 dollars. That´s a big difference. Thus, the gov´t and tourist industry can separate cubans from tourists by charging in CUC. But on the bright side, you can buy non-namebrand cigars for only 1 peso (5 cents). So instead of clubbing and bar-hopping, there are tons of house parties, parties in the becas (student apartment complexes), and parties on the malecon (the wall bordering the sea). For instance, last week I went to a semi-weekly dance at my friend´s beca. First let me say that these becas are a shitty excuse for student housing. They are really far from theuniversity (at least a 30 minute walk and at most a 30 min. unreliable busride), and really shitty buildings crammed with students. In the size of a small university double, they have 4 students. But if you don´t have relatives living in Habana, you don´t have any other choice. Anyway, between two dormitories is a small social hall with a sound system and space to dance. Even without much alcohol, these kids were tearing up the dance floor. I have never in my life seen people that could dance like this in such a high concentration. I can´t put their skill into words, but i´ll just say it is obvious they´ve been salsa dancing and shaking their hips since they were born. I´ve been learning to salsa here and have gotten to the point where my partners are pleasantly surprised when they dance with me. But that doesn´t say much considering they assume all north americans can´t dance at all. In comparison to the cubans, that is a pretty accurate stereotype. Although these individual or student parties are more fun than a club filled with strangers and extranjeros, the social life can be a bit of a hassle a lot of the time. For the beca party and a friend´s birthday party last night, we waited for a bout 45min for a bus crammed full of people, rode 30 min outside of the city, and then walked for a while. On the way back, we waited another 40 min at about 1.30 am and then had to run down the bus because it stopped at a different stop. But it was fun because to keep ourselves busy we started singing songs. Also, people cannot get enough of my ¨chubby¨ jokes, you know the one where you press your cheeks together and say ¨hi, my name is chubby...¨. I think they love it because of the southern accent, because they also love it when we say ¨life is like a box of chocolates¨ala
Forrest Gump.
Another interesting aspect of the social life here is the sexual life. I´m including sex as social because it kindof is here. It´s more open, and more common. People talk about it way more freely, and PDA is the norm. But then again, there isn´t much of a choice for that. It is really a challenge to have sex in private here. Most people live in houses with extended families, sharing a room or even a bed with at least one other person. So if you want to have sex, you either can risk being heard by a family member or have sex outside, sort of in public. For this reason, sex becomes less secretive and hidden. And amazingly, people have way more partners even with the obstacles. A cuban often loses theirvirginity at about 13 or 14, and by the time they are 21, have had over 30 partners. I´ve also been told several times that cubans are better in bed than any other ethnicity. My professor even said this in class one morning. My friend Adriana told me in complete seriousness that it is because the hot climate make bodies more-limber. I wonder if there is biological evidence to back up that theory.

By the way, I now have free internet at the university, so if any one emails me, i can probably write back somewhat soon. Write me at anna.vanderhorst@gmail.com. Also, i don´t have anyone´s email address, so y´all need to write me first.