July 25, 2015
Vanderbilt Athletics takes great pride in offering its student-athletes the same educational opportunities available to all Vanderbilt students. We encourage our Commodores to study abroad when possible; we typically have a team or two take an international trip each year and we are especially excited about our international service trips that we began a few years ago.
We have partnered with Soles 4 Souls on wonderful trips to the East African nation of Tanzania and to Costa Rica in past years. Last Saturday (July 18) we once again partnered with Soles 4 Souls, sending 14 students and staff to Cuba. When we first began planning we had no idea that our timing would become historic as we became part of the first briefing from the new United States Embassy.
Cuba is only 93 miles from Florida but has been closed to many Americans for a half century. If you followed our prior international trips you were used to receiving daily reports from our student-athletes on the trip, but this time we haven’t been able to post a report as of yet. There is a reason for the apparent silence which I will explain shortly, but here is our “first” report from Cuba.
I must start with my/our expectation of Cuba. Since Cuba and the United States have not had diplomatic relationships since the 1960’s and the United States had imposed many economic sanctions, I did not know what to expect and expectations probably differed among our party. I can personally recall Cuba prior to its revolution, which contributed to the breakdown between Cuba and the USA. I associated Cuba as the home of Desi Arnez, the television and real life husband of Lucille Ball from the famous 1950s sitcom “I Love Lucy”.
When the US Embassy opened guess who can say they were there #DoresInCuba pic.twitter.com/EPnP5KbX3z
 vucommodores (@vucommodores) July 21, 2015
But I also remembered the early 1960’s Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in high school when President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stood toe to toe on the issue of whether the Soviet Union (Russia) would be allowed to install missile bases in Cuba pointing toward the United States. Many of us worried if this was the beginning of World War III. As we know, the missiles were removed and war avoided, but so began many years of tense relationship with the new socialist government of Cuba.
I recalled the great Cuban athletes that we competed against in the Olympics, Fidel Castro’s trip to the United Nations when he refused to stay at the fancy New York hotels in favor of the Hotel Theresa in the heart of New York’s Harlem neighborhood. I recall the Bay of Pigs and the many Cubans who became exiles, settling in the United States while leaving behind family and friends who they might never see again.
So I had many thoughts, memories and wonder about what was in store for our group. After all, it was a country that I honestly believed would not be open to me and other American for many more years, if at all. I had similar thoughts before my first trip to South Africa before the fall of apartheid. I tell our students and my own children that history is not just something you read about in a book; history is something you live and experience. Embrace it. For the 14 Vanderbilt student-athletes and staff as well as the staff member from Soles 4 Souls, we were living and making history. How lucky could we be!
Why are you reading this report from me and not one of our student-athletes as you normally have done in our past trips? A very simple answer: getting information back to the United States from Cuba is extremely difficult. For all practical purposes you cannot email or employ social media out of Cuba because it lacks technological infrastructure. While our student athletes are writing blogs and our on-site staff is documenting the trip, their work likely will have to wait until their return to be published.
El mejor grupo en Cuba #DoresInCuba pic.twitter.com/84lJMVUzbb
 vucommodores (@vucommodores) July 24, 2015
So, along with the fact that Cuba doesn’t accept credit cards of American banks (this should be changing) and the only currency allowed in Cuba is the Cuba CUC (that means you basically cannot purchase anything with American dollars), Cuba remains a country close in distance to the United States yet light years away in many ways. Let me offer a few of my observations:
1. With all of the tension between our two countries and the fact that we employed that lengthy economic embargo, I was worried that the Cuban people would not be very welcoming to Americans. I was completely wrong. The Cubans are extremely warm and friendly and actually enjoy, welcome and love the American people–even while not always enjoying our government. One thing that you cannot miss is the love of music that every Cuban seems to have, along with the love of Salsa dancing.
2. We were required to be at the airport four to five hours before departing Miami for Havana. One cannot simply purchase a ticket to Cuba. You have to fly on a chartered plane and you must have a special license to do so if you are American. While Cuban-Americans have a more liberal opportunity to visit their homeland, our group had to meet a number of regulations. One other thing about our departure – on our plane were people returning to Cuba for the first time in years to visit relatives. Items they were taking to Cuba were interesting. The airport had machines that wrapped large items such as large screen televisions to secure them for the trip. While you cannot take more than $400 worth of goods out of Cuba, you can bring much more into the country for relatives.
3. Speaking of airports and relatives, I expected the airport in Havana to be extremely cumbersome with lots of questions and customs searches. Not so; our departure from the plane through customs and picking up our bags took little more than thirty minutes. Once we located our guide and exited the terminal we were greeted by a host Cubans anxiously awaiting their family members. To watch some of the celebrations and welcomes was enough by itself to make me realize how much the Cuban people welcome the reestablishing of relationships with the United States.
4. The Cuban Revolution is still alive in Cuba. You still see billboards and pictures of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other key members of the revolution. The people are proud of their fights for freedom, first from Spain and then from the government of Batista.
5. The average Cuban earns $28 a week. However health care, education, housing, transportation and many other things are free in Cuba. While the standard of life is clearly different from ours, the Cuban people appear to understand and accept their level and standard of life.
6. Most buildings in Cuba are aging and air conditioning is a problem. July temperatures there are typically in the mid-90’s — not the best time to be visiting. Our hotel was the Riviera (made famous in the Godfather 2 movie) and while extremely clean and functional, it was essentially a 1950’s hotel. We worried about getting stuck on the elevators, for example. There was some level of air conditioning in our individual rooms but it was spotty at best and it did not exist in the common areas of the hotel. We could still sense this was once a glamorous hotel in its prime.
7. One of the truly high points of our visit was our trip to the newly opened United States Embassy. In fact, we were part of the very first briefing conducted at this — the newest of United States Embassies. Once again Vanderbilt is at the front in making and being a part of history.
There is so much more to talk about and tell but for now this is enough. This will be long remembered by everyone on the trip and is further evidence of Vanderbilt’s leadership in developing the total student-athlete. We look forward to further reports soon.
