Christ Church Bronxville Youth Group (EYC) Travels to Cuba

After a harrowing 4 hour flight - passing above and through lightning storms, enduring airplane ham and cheese sandwiches, and with strangers seated well within my personal space, we were finally in Cuba.

When the humidity hit us as we disembarked right onto the tarmac, we knew it would be like something we’d never experienced before. The Havana international airport was shockingly tiny, and lined out front were all sorts of trucks and cars originally manufactured in the US in the 1950’s. Every route we took on our ride from Havana to the small farming town of Itabo was dabbled with colour - every vehicle, and every reconstructed, deconstructed and mid-construction house was pulled right from the rainbow.

When our bus - a surprisingly comfortable coach bus with A/C - stopped outside of our home for the next week, the Santa Maria Magdalena Church, it was just past midnight. Yet, there stood a half dozen Cubans, welcoming us warmly and hauling our bags from the bus without a second thought. This was my first inkling that Cubans had attitudes that could maybe change mine. Each day these wonderful Cuban women, men and children greeted us with the most wondrous meals - bread, espresso, mangoes and avocados picked right from the trees on their farm, and chickens and pigs we’d met the day before in their pens. And with each meal came wonderful time and conversations with these funny, kind and absolutely hospitable people.

Each morning, after leaving our splendidly cool rooms for the arduous heat, we headed to the fields for a few hours of good clean fun - hoeing out the thousands of weeds from the farm. Hoeing turned out to be tremendously harder than I’d thought it would be - three hours of constantly engaging my core and actually using my upper arm “strength.” The first day, the young Cuban man overlooking my progress insisted that he take over the area I was to hoe, so I gladly went to hauling rocks from the chicken coop instead. These seemingly grueling tasks weren’t so bad, even in the height of the beating Cuban sun, because we were together. The thirteen of us that embarked on this trip from Christ Church managed to keep up conversation despite the yards between us and the sweat we seemed to be swimming in. By mid-week we were not only dressed to the nines in dirt, but we were fitted with baseball gloves and catchers uniforms. It was Beisbol Across Cuba’s turn to show them what we were made of. Through dozens of generous donations, Steve, Claudia, and their son Zip were able to bring fifteen full bags of baseball equipment across the border. We played a full game of baseball, which to be honest I didn’t understand a second of, to the intense enjoyment of the local Cubans. They’d never played a game with full equipment before and they were absolutely ecstatic. The pure happiness they experienced because of something so many of us seem to have readily at our disposal was eye opening. Thursday and Friday were fiestas. DJ Bob blared everything from Nicki Minaj and Miley Cyrus to people I’d never come close to hearing; and every child, teen and adult, from two to sixty-two could dance like nothing I’d ever seen before.

Coming into this experience, I didn’t have any idea what to expect. But everyday without fail I had clean water, the freshest food I’ve had the pleasure of consuming to date, and I was surrounded by the most happy and welcoming people.

Written by Alekzandra Thoms, Senior at Bronxville High School