Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Vale la Pena: It’s Worth It

Published
by
Isaac
on September 29, 2007
in cuba, global, health care, poverty and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

a distraught school boy in Camaguy by Isaac Holeman.

 

My academic program here in Cuba revolves around learning Spanish, exploring Cuban culture academically and as a participant, and pursuing an independent photojournalism project. I’ve chosen Cuban Health Care as the subject of my journalism project. Just a few days ago, I was interviewing a prominent Cuban actress and her words struck such a chord with me that I’d like to share them with you.

“I want to tell you a personal story. I am a cancer survivor. I was diagnosed in 1992; I had an operation, they did chemotherapy and gave me a medicine called tamoxicin. 1992 was in the Special Period, during which we had nothing. I don’t know why they call it the “Special Period”. “Special” usually means wonderful. But no, it was horrible. Horrible. You guys don’t know the meaning of “nothing”. Sometimes we ate just white rice with oil. And my husband, who is North American, never called his mother to tell her “Mom, we have no money, we don’t have shoes.” Never. He said, “I chose to live here and my problems are my own.” So in ’92 the food ration was minimal.

When they operated on me, all of my coworkers gave me their rationed fish, their rationed chicken- protein so that I could get better. This is worth it. This is worth so much more than money. And I got all of my medical care for free. When I was in the US I had a friend who had terrible cancer and the chemotherapy cost her so much she couldn’t pay for it. The tamoxicin was costing her $499 a month. I took it for ten years for free. I have never had to pay a cent. And now they have me on a drug that costs $800 a month and I couldn’t live without it. So of course there are things that are worth it. There are good things that are worth fighting for.
Nobody has to say “I’m going to die because I can’t pay.” How awful for someone to say “I won’t get treatment because I can’t pay.”And that the US, such a powerful country, doesn’t have a medical system that can take care of the health of its people, well that’s terrible, no?

I know that Cuba has a lot of problems. Tons. I never, ever said that Cuba is perfect. I’m not religious. I don’t believe in perfection. I believe that all human beings have to fight to make life better. This I believe in. And I believe that people are good. And you can’t convince me of the opposite.

I believe that Cuba has achieved a crucial social interaction. We help each other out- everyone. We share, we lend each other clothes. I don’t have much. But if someone needs something I’ll give them everything I have. We have learned in the way to be more human I believe. We know that we have to help everyone and not just ourselves. I think that his has helped Cuba a lot. This is the truth. We have learned that people are different for different reasons, not for racial reasons or religious or sexual. We are more than just that. And these are values that I hope we don’t lose to materialism, this is the spiritual material that we have to fight to maintain. These are so much more important than material values. And I understand material values. I love things, I love them. And I think it’s pretty important to have something to eat, too. But you have to fight more for those spiritual things- the things you believe in.”

Health care in Cuba is far from perfect. The whole country is so poor that they don’t always have money to buy the more expensive drugs, and tourists do get preferential treatment. At the end of the day, however, the structure of their health system says that they have figured out that the people - every last one of them - are the most valuable part of their society. Life in Cuba is imperfect, like life in the US is imperfect, but there are so many things worth fighting for. For example, lets all fight to build a society where “nobody has to say ‘I’m going to die because I can’t pay.’”

The Devil if you Ignored the Details: The Unnecessary Brilliance of Consumerism

Published
by
Isaac
on September 24, 2007
in cuba, global and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

Juice, Juice by Isaac Holeman.

The adage you don’t know what you have until you loose it is realized in many interesting ways in Cuba. Some are positive, some are not positive. Some are just weird.

Fruit juice boxes like those pictured above are the fruit drink of choice or necessity in stores and restaurants all over Cuba. It’s the only brand you can get in most places. I think they highlight a very interesting difference between the consumerism we practice in the US and whatever it is they practice here.

Look at the packaging. Functional, familiar, but look at the images. The pictures they are pushing are not fruit. They are subtly unappetizing. The cut in half mango and orange are supposed to be dripping with tangy real fruit juice, which is signified here by the flabby growths. Look specifically at the Mango’s flabby growths, the light source comes from above, a little to the left, and in between the viewer and the box, but the shiny bright spot on the side of this mango obviously indicates that a primary light source comes from the right and perhaps slightly above and closer to the viewer. This primary light source is probably supposed to the be same light that shines on the whole mangos to the left and in the background, but the placement of the three shiny spots is slightly uncoordinated, so each mango seems to have a unique light source. The mango on the right is just doing it’s own thing, I guess they haven’t figured out that you can’t coerce people into buying things that confuse them. A million light sources (see leaves, water droplets as well) for a batch of fruit that should have just grown out in the sun will not bring in the big bucks.

The droplets of dew on the half mango, if you look closely, do not conform to the shape of the mango which means that they are actually dew pellets. In nature (where fruit should come from) I’ve only seen that in the sap of some conifers. Look at the vine the fruit grows on. Have you ever seen a mango tree? Was it a eucalyptus tree?

I can vouch that the juice is very good, and it is probably organic (about 80% of Cuba’s produce is organic, according to a video I watched on peak oil and agriculture in Cuba). I would bet that it is nutritious, but the packaged whole looks so much less natural than the sugar from concentrate+food coloring they push in the US. I guess the poor Cubanos haven’t figured out that people will rarely waste their money to buy more than the can/should consume when so many of a product’s relevant details have been ignored. If they would just open up the economy, the invisible hand of competition would show them that it’s unnecessary to allocate such great resources to managing the quality of the juice. All that is necessary is to pay attention to these few important details that make the pre-purchase experience that much more tempting.

Exploring Authencity, or Choosing not to

Published
by
Isaac
on September 19, 2007
in cuba, global, poverty and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

Two Strangers on the Malecon by Isaac Holeman.

My Mom once told me about a short story written by a couple that had been budget traveling around Cuba and had some minor fiasco on the street. I think one of of their bag’s broke and some important papers flew into the wind and onto the street. A nice Cuban couple helped them pick up their things, struck up a friendly conversation, and eventually invited them to come to their home for dinner a few days later. After a wonderful dinner and some very interesting conversation, the Cuban couple asked if they traveling couple might help pay for the dinner, Cubans don’t have much money they said. This seemed reasonable, except that the price the Cubans were asking was significantly more than a reasonable restaurant would have charged for the fare. This seemed a little bizarre and unfair to the travelers, but they felt indebted for the hospitality they had received, and it was clear that despite their tight traveling budget, they certainly had more worldly goods to call their own than this Cuban family. They paid what the Cubans asked for the food.

Later, after more witty and exotic conversation, the Cubans began repeatedly mentioning things that other foreigner friends had gifted to them. A stereo from a Canadian family, a TV from England, a load of school supplies for their darling child. Before long it was clear that this traveling couple was also being asked to give great gifts. There was never any real fear involved, not a thought of danger. Just guilt, how foul is that? These Cubans were just being really friendly and then rubbing it in that respective social/economic systems leave people with drastically different access to commodities, often with place of birth being the greatest distinguishing characteristic of the individuals involved. How rude of them to ask for all kinds of things they don’t need, just because they were charismatic enough to very quickly become friends with people who do have those things. Or, how right, perhaps. How is it that people like me develop such a great sense of ownership that we feel indignant when others ask that we, of our own will and expense, put them on an equal playground.

I say people like me because I speak from experience, sort of, maybe. The other night coming home from dinner, one of our friends was waylaid by the classically Cuban conversation starter “wha cantri you fram?” Their child was breathtakingly cute, dancing wildly to the regatton blasting in the distance. The couple were so engaging, we talked politics, religion, and music there on the street while the ladies from our group danced, chased, and hugged their little girl. They also talked about foreigner friends, and ended up showing us the shirt and backpack their Canadian friends had bought for their daughter. I got a bad vibe early and remembered the story above, but my friends were enamored. Before we left they had invited us all for dinner and dancing in their home, told us to bring as many people as we could. They would call to remind us and then would pick us up at the hotel, even though they lived so far away they would need to take hours of bus rides to get to our hotel. When they called to remind us, my friend sensed something very creepy and as of about half an hour ago, we decided not to go have dinner with them. I was sort of expecting to get scammed, but the word scam really doesn’t describe the sick twistyness of it. I still wanted to go, even if to repeat the heinously awkward circumstances of the other traveling couple. Anyhow, I admit relief at not having to risk saying no, or yes, to friends.

ps For those of you who aren’t very familiar with Cuban culture, this set of experiences is no more representative of all Cubans than thieves, pranksters, and neoliberals are representative of all US residents.

Libre in Cuba: My arrival in Havana

Published
by
Isaac
on September 15, 2007
in cuba, global and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

The Color in Habana Vieja by Isaac Holeman.

As some of you may know, I now write from Havana, Cuba. Smiley face X !!! to the power of * is how much I like it here, so far. Yes, I know that’s an impressive number. I’m on the honeymoon with this country.

On the way from the US I stopped for one night in Cancun because standard airlines may not fly directly from the US to Cuba (don’t forget the economic/political blockade our tax dollars have built up around Cuba). I met the other twenty six students and my professor at the hotel and various airports along the way. This group of people is great and I am overjoyed to be here with them.

Cancun itself is horrid. It boasts a reeking blend of the frivolity of Vegas (in it’s reputation, I’ve never actually been to Vegas), the numbing commerciality of WallMart, and a truly impressive concentration of embarrassingly drunk and ostentatious tourists from the US. An advertisement for Señor Frogs, a popular club/disco, summed it up will with the slogan where nobody knows your name. Cuba is rather different.

To begin with, shops and restaurants put up signs, but there are no further advertisements (a particular shock after Cancun). Instead, the streets of this country are marked by mural sized quotations of famous activists, leaders, and poets.

The Old City, Habana Vieja, recalls a very humid, crumbly, grandiose city in Eastern Europe. I makes me wonder what parts of Budapest might look if it’s most noble neighborhoods were also its most decrepit. You might click on the picture to see the rest of an album from la Habana. Today I discovered that the Lonely Planet Guide to Cuba features the same bearded man wearing a starred hat that I photographed in the picture with a lady in a pink dress.

Havana already begins to feel like home. I just came back to its familiar places after a ten day tour of the southern and eastern parts of Cuba, but more on that later.

Good For Nothin: Where the homeless build thier homes

Published
by
Isaac
on September 2, 2007
in poverty and stuff in my life
. 0 Comments

James builds Dignity Village by Isaac Holeman.

I met this guy the other day, I guess we can call him James. His shirt says he’s Good For Nothin, but he looks like a worker to me.
James is a member of Dignity Village, which doesn’t help to clarify James’ “status.” Part protest, part political experiment, part pragmatism in the face of desperation, Dignity Village was founded by a group of homeless individuals who set up a camp on the waterfront to protest their housing situation. According to Erik Stenn, Portland’s progressive city commissioner, the business community was upset, but Stenn “didn’t see any reason for moving them.” Dignity Village gained a beachhead on what it is today when Stenn and other individuals worked to find them a permanent piece of land for their squatters camp. Many of the initial tenants have gone, but Dignity Village is now on a small concrete lot near the airport.

In my opinion, the most interesting aspect of Dignity Village is how it calls into question the nature of homelessness. Once given a place to call community, James built himself a home. He used mainly the scraps that others had thrown away, and built for himself a comfortably humble place to stay warm and call his own. I don’t know James’ entire history, I didn’t ask. But when I watched, and helped him work it became shockingly clear that, if he had been homeless before, it was not just a house he was missing, per se. He was not too lazy, to drug addicted, to crazy, or too short sighted to build himself a home. This experience really made homelessness itself seem more a state of social exclusion than a condition of material haves and have nots.

I had a similar experience later that week working at Operation Nightwatch. Operation Nightwatch is guided by the premise that people who sleep outside need friends too, in fact, if they are sleeping on the street, they could probably use a friendly gesture even more than the rest of us. Operation Nightwatch is a drop in center where individuals can come to drink a cup of coffee, eat a sandwich, get a clean pair of socks if they are needed, and just know that they will find a friendly change of pace from contemptuous streets. When there are enough volunteers, as was the case the evening I worked there, the volunteers spend a lot of their time just playing scrabble, or a card game, of just chatting with the dozens of nightly visitors.

After helping make a huge batch of tuna fish sandwiches, I sat down to play a game of scrabble with a man that might have been named Eric. Wearing a red and green Christmas plaid with slacks and beard in shades of grey, Eric could have been Father Christmas’ oddball skinny uncle. Eric was pretty quiet, other than exuberant ho-hums and giggles when he found a new word. While we played I listened in on the table behind me - an engaged group of “the least of these” talking politics. The wide ranging discussion touched on coercive monopolies, the pragmatic failures of Marxism, the origins of an unrestricted or “free” market in Belgium, and of course, global hegemony. I couldn’t help but remark that I do not know very many people that could have actively followed and contributed to this conversation. I definitely know people with PhD’s who would have been flat lost.

Why do people become homeless? I was wondering. Having met a few, they are not as stupid/dumb/crazy/lazy/mean/addicted/scary as I was led to believe, so what is it that makes them different enough to merit asphalt rather than a bed at night? And why do I justify that unless I am choosing to do some service, I try not to acknowledge them when they ask me for the change I don’t really need. They way I had perceived (or strategically avoided perceiving because of guilt) homeless people was feeling kind of crazy when Eric giggled a little and then placed the letters S A N E on our crowded scrabble board.

I ended my work with Dignity Village and Operation Nightwatch ready for a good hard think. I think thinking like this often leads to thanking, and that was the case this time. I keep remembering a word Eric taught me. Oh, yes, Eric told me he speaks Hebrew. Slightly skeptical, I asked him to teach me a word. He said it would be good for me to know the word Teshuva, it means repentance or a return to God. It really is crazy what the crazies learn at the public library these days.