CUBA...."sooooo goooood!!!"

CUBA WAS AWESOME!!!!! It was definitely a highlight of my time abroad.

I went to Cuba with little knowledge of the realities of Cuba. The only knowledge that I did have however, was interestingly all negative. I had the ideas that Cuba was a dangerous, communist country where Fidel Castro led and was basically like the devil. I went in with a skewed picture of Cuba and left with such an opposite. I learned so many positive aspects of Cuba it was amazing!

Cuba is a colorful country. Art and creativity is flourishing. Music and beautiful paintings were all around. The actual city of Havana, where I stayed for a while, was so impressive! It was like I was living in a movie set. The buildings were so intricate, with cobblestone streets and old buildings from the 50's. The cars on the streets were all 1950's cars as well. After the revolution they stopped importing cars from the United States because of the US-Cuban blockade, which is still in affect today. But it is so impressive how they keep the cars from the 50's functioning and beautiful with just the parts that they do have. Talk about being resourceful!

The blockage between the US and Cuba is caused partly because Cuba is afraid of the US invading. The United States is trying to invade and take over. We are like a huge empire in need of control and the US is scared of Cuba because we can't control it. Really we should just leave it alone. Along with the embargo between the countries, the states has also stopped the allowance of tourists to travel there. Americans weren't allowed to even travel here, so that fact that I was granted a special visa to travel there made the time in Cuba even more exciting. Not everyone gets the chance to travel there. The United States does not want Cuba to benefit from the money from our tourists so they restrict us from traveling there. I felt the safest in Cuba than in the other cities San Jose, and Managua. How ironic how I expected to be scared and really felt the safest ever!

Cuba is a socialist country where Fidel Castro's brother Raul is in power now. Socialism in the opposite of capitalism. One thing that I learned on this trip was the what socialism looked like and how it played out in society. It was neat for me to compare and contrast our way of government with socialism in Cuba. Socialism aims to create an equal ground for everyone in doing so they strive to eliminate poverty and reduce the rate of consumerism. With the rate that the United States is growing right now, there are not enough resources for future generations. After experiencing such poverty and harsh living conditions in Managua, Limon and San Jose and writing a report on poverty I began to think of some ways we can eliminate the poverty. The distribution of wealth right now in the world is so skewed. A small percent of the worlds population hold millions of dollars, while the rest of the world lives off less than 2 dollars a day. 2 dollars! So with being faced with these harsh facts I began to brainstorm some solutions to help the poor. Some of these include, a better distribution of wealth, food, eduction, health care, housing and jobs for all.

Imagine life without food? Or housing and education? Where would we be? We wouldn't have any opportunities to succeed. We would be stuck. We would be poor. Now doesn't food, education, housing and having a job and health care all sound like basic human rights? Imagine if you could live in a place where all your human rights are met?

Cuba strives for this. I was so impressed with such a type of government that reached out to all these needs. All the governments I have lived in prior to Cuba the government tend to turn their backs to the poor and ignore the poor. We can't turn our backs to the poor when the majority of the population of the world barely make enough money to make ends meet.

The government of Cuba provided free education for everyone. And yes this included free college education. Imagine not having to pay for college tuition? And graduating dept free? May I also add, Cubans are brilliant and very highly educated. While visiting the schools, in one of my interviews with one of the elemenatry school Principals, I could tell not only the teachers but the students as well take a lot of pride in their school systems.

Along with free education, Cuba provides free health care to everyone! Absolutely free! And did you know that the Doctors in Cuba are some of the best doctors in the world? The United States actually sends some of the best medical school students from the U.S. to Cuba to spend time working along side them and participating in internships with them. The best thing to see when I was listening to the doctors in Cuba at a cartiataric hospital is, Cubans are not motivated by money. The doctors are genuinely motivated by actually helping the patient and helping them receive a healthier life. How odd this is for me. Doctors not motivated by money? In addition, the doctors in Cuba receive about 75 cents a day! Incredible.

So in addition to free education, free health care the Cuban government also provides food for everyone in the country. No one starves. I actually got to visit the place where Cubans go to get their food. Its is called a Bodega. Everyone in the country, no matter your status, is given a booklet, it looks somewhat like a passport, in which all your family members are listed and your monthly rations are kept track of. Basically what you do is go up to the counter at the Bodega and hand them your booklet so they can see how much you need. And then you receive your rations for 30 days. This only includes the essentials. Flour, sugar, rice, beans, oil, eggs, beef, cigarettes (tobacco is huge in Cuba). Granted the rations do not last the whole 30 days, but it is a meant to start the people off. Everyone gets something. Nobody is left hungry on the streets. There aren't supermarkets or stores where you can just pick up your groceries. It was interesting for me to learn, when my Cuban tour guide, named Ariel, went to visit the slums and poor families in Nicaragua and when he explained the Bodega system to the people there, they were so impressed by their system that they wanted to start that same system in Nicaragua.

So Cuba has education, medical care and food all taken care of. What else do the people of a socialist country need? A place to live? Yes the government even attempts to provide housing for everyone. Which is amazing. Did you know that less than 50% of Americans own their house? And in Cuba more than 80% of the citizens own their house! Impressive. There is a shortage of housing right now in Cuba because they are going through economic hard time, yet it is amazing to see the lack of homeless people in the streets. The government really looks out for the basic needs of the people.

In addition, the government provides jobs for everyone in Cuba! Finding a job was one solution that I thought about when I did my research paper on poverty. Yet many of the responses of the Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans is that there was a shortage of jobs available. In Cuba the government provides a job for everyone.

Now I am in by no means suggesting that socialism is the best and it is the answer to all the worlds problems. No way. I am just saying it was so interesting for me to observe and learn about this way of life in a positive light. Instead of focusing on all the negative I was shown a new side of Cuba that schools in the States do not teach us. My experience to Cuba put life and capitalism in the States into perspective as well. Right now I don't feel that socialism or capitalism is any more right than the other. But what I am saying is that they both have positive and negative aspects to both. I am glad that I got to witness Cuba first hand and learn the realities of life there first hand. It was nothing like the information I was taught in the States or went into in expecting.

On of the restrictions that the Cubans do have is freedom of speech. They only have 3 newspapers filtered by the government, 4 TV channels filtered by the government, the Internet sites are filtered, there are no commericals, and any billboard you will see on the side of the road is a billboard for supporting the government. With this I began to think. Are these people brainwashed? The government controls everything? But then I thought, even though they are limited so much in the media and freedom of speech what if the government in the United States doesn't restrict enough in our media. Maybe the United States government tolerates and allows too much to be displayed in the media, which could be harmful. This was just one way that my time in Cuba made me critiqually evaluate my country with theirs.