She was from Scotland, and was there to do a television documentary on vacationing in Cuba. She asked where I was from and when I said I was American, she said, "Naughty girl!" So I felt obligated to tell her we were there with our government's permission, on a mission trip. Unfortunately, there were others in lines nearby who were American also and who did not have permission to be there. You see, Cuba does not stamp a passport visibly. They use some kind of invisible ink. So Americans going there are taking a chance that the US passport checkers won't use the special light they have to check for such ink. And apparently, there are quite a few willing to take that risk.
So, when it was my turn, I stepped forward and had my credentials checked. The lady in the booth stamped my credentials. I was given a little slip of paper which would be required to get back out of the country. It sounds strange, but I could almost feel the oppression as I walked through the door toward baggage claim.
Next we had to go through a metal detector with our suitcases. Certain people, however, were being pulled aside and having their luggage checked by hand. This could be a problem for our group, because all of us had contraband Christian materials. Sure enough, two people from our group were pulled aside. The rest of us waited to go through the metal detector, and passed through into a sort of lobby area.
Meanwhile, a whole group of people cut in front of the two who had been stopped. This was certainly an act of God. You see, if the literature they carried had been discovered before the rest of our group got through, we would all have been rounded up and most likely had all that stuff taken away from us. But because they were held up, everyone else had already passed through customs. When the inspectors began telling them they were not allowed to bring such things into the country, our guide told them that the rest of our group was already through. And even though it shouldn't have been, that was good enough. They were allowed in with all their material intact. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that the rest of us were all sitting in the lobby praying!
Once we left the lobby, the Havana airport looked much like any other. There were rental car agencies, souvenir shops and coffee stands. My first encounter with the reality of Cuba came when I went to the bathroom. I was expected to pay a lady at the door for some toilet paper. I gave her a quarter, she turned the roll once around her hand and tore it off. It wasn't much.
Outside, there was a bus waiting for us. We rode for about an hour to get to our hotel in the heart of downtown Havana. We saw people standing around under overpasses and our guide told us these people were hoping someone would stop and give them a ride. They were too far out of the city for the bus and had no cars of their own. The overpass, at least, was shady. I'm sure it was about 90 degrees that day. We saw other people just walking down the side of the road, some with small children.
The city itself is dirty. There is a visible layer of grime on everything. Although I know there are nice, fancy resorts on the island, we saw none of that. This was the true Havana. Here's the view from our hotel room:
More later!
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