By JEFF MCDONALD/ Unless there are flight cancellations, by the time you read this, I’ll be in eastern Cuba in the country’s second biggest city, Santiago de Cuba. Why travel to Cuba now, with the much-publicized fuel shortages and power outages? Several reasons.
First, I am working with an organization called Not Just Tourists (NJT) that gets medical supplies to countries in need. They do this by asking people who are travelling to take an extra suitcase and deliver it to a medical facility. I’m taking two to Cuba, each weighing 50 pounds.
Because I’m travelling to a much poorer and less-visited part of Cuba, NJT has asked me to deliver a suitcase of specialized supplies to a maternity hospital, and the other, which contains supplies for heart surgery, to a cardiac centre in Santiago.
NJT was formed in 1990 by Dr. Ken Taylor, a Canadian who witnessed first-hand the shortage of medical supplies in Cuba. He and his wife Denise started taking supplies to remote areas, and other travellers to Cuba began doing the same. NJT now has chapters around the world and has delivered more than 10,000 suitcases and 2,000,000 pounds of medical supplies and equipment to 82 countries.
Its website states that NJT’s mission is to “change the way people travel and start the journey for ordinary tourists to become humanitarians” and to “prevent the waste of usable medical supplies and get them to those in most need.”
NJT takes donations from Canadian hospitals, clinics, medical suppliers and individuals. Supplies include gauze, bandages, surgical instruments, masks, gloves, antiseptics, IV kits, urinary supplies and birthing kits. (The equipment I’m delivering to the maternity hospital includes an infant-size resuscitator.)
The second reason to visit is direct financial support for the Cuban people, especially now.
Going there and spending money is the best way to do that. Cubans have been facing hardships created by a non-market economy and U.S. economic sanctions for a long time, but most people in Canada will be aware of even greater challenges emerging in recent months, especially Trump’s blockade preventing oil from reaching the island.
It’s always interesting trying to figure out how things work in Cuba. Many of the country’s systems aren’t working well, for sure. Layers of opacity created by decades of rule by an authoritarian dictatorship make it tricky to understand why things happen, or don’t happen, the way Canadians think they would.
But I’ve been to Cuba often and have had hundreds of conversations with Cubans about their desire for the political system and economy to change. Trump’s tactics in trying to force a new regime are hurting a lot of people, especially older people, women and children. Cubans don’t like him, but they want change too. To me, that’s the only thing that should matter: what Cubans want.
I’ve found that Cubans don’t want to be told to support a revolution that happened before many of them were born, which did have some successes but has also failed in so many ways. Younger Cubans are not much interested in socialist ideals and slogans; they just know they don’t have much, with few opportunities to improve their lives and little hope for the future as things currently stand.
The third reason I’m visiting is connected to the second. I’ve become close friends with a talented group of musicians in Santiago de Cuba called Sones de Oriente, or Sounds of the East, referencing their roots in eastern Cuban music and culture. The big drop in tourist numbers means work has dried up in the restaurants and bars they usually play in, and supporting themselves and their families is tough. I’ve been looking for ways to bring the band to Canada to tour and earn some money, but that’s not easy. We did have success in getting them visas to work for three months in Mexico later this year.
But while we work on that, I’m supporting and accompanying them on a week-long trip to Havana where they have lined up some concerts, which means a few paydays for them and their families.
(Jeff McDonald is a reporter for the Peachland Post in the Okanagan, BC).
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