Miquila's first post :)

My Day 4


The walls were bare. The rooms were hot and tiny. Too many parts reeked of formaldehyde. “Hoy vivo en un palacio. Tenemos de todo.” I disagree, Senor Presidente. It’s not my place to say, and I didn’t. I just wanted to get out of there. A retirement home with the goal of rehabilitation (what does that even mean?) but, “Muchos estan aqui por siempre.” Frankly, I don’t know how they could be so excited to show us this place. And I don’t know why we toured it.

Except maybe because it was right next to the Paquito Rosales Special Education School. If I understand correctly, kids who need to receive Special Education in Cuba are sent to a different school than the rest of the kids, like this one. Here they have almost a 1:1 ratio of students and staff. They did not have us tour the building, which was probably smart. But the patients (they called them patients because some of the students were adults) gave us a heartwarming, beautiful presentation. I videotaped parts. They sung Guantanamera and did a dance performace where they dressed as major saints/gods/characters of Santeria and then invited us to join in. Adorable.

Like the retirement home, actually, the goal of this school is to enable the kids to become contributing members of society. The director said graduates could go into jobs like laundry service, gardening, and different sorts of manual labor. Then she said only 3 or 4% of students graduate.  I don’t know if the U.S. is doing any better in this area, but that made me sad.

So it was a pretty depressing tour today. But THEN we went to the bookstore where they handcrafted books. I bought one called Fast Track. It’s Cuban poetry. Pretty friggin cool stuff.