Christ Church
Cathedral parishoners visit Cuba
by Francean Campbell-Rich

We met at the cathedral, at four-thirty in the morning. I was afraid the taxi would not come, and had called twice. I was first to arrive. All locked up. No one in sight. Snow on the ground. But I had dressed for this moment. I told myself it was not the first time I had flown south in winter. Then they started to arrive, all of them, the Dean first, then the others, and the bus. Bags loaded, ‘two to take, one to bring back’. We were on our way. Before the day was out we had been welcomed in the parish hall of our partner Cathedral in Havana, by Juan Ramon, the dean, his family, and the vestry, with food and drink, talk, music and dancing, and by our guide and mentor, Francisco de Arazoza. The first day.

Foolishly, I missed the first morning’s events, believing I needed an hour or two to collect myself. This happened once again, to my regret. (Don’t let this happen to you who follow). There had been a meeting with the bishop, Jorge Perera, and the first visit to a happy day centre for seniors, (I’m still hearing about it), then to an imposing monument, singular, but the first of many commemorations of the Revolution. We were to hear this word countless times during our stay. One or two of our group had been to Cuba as tourists in recent years. For the rest our acquaintance had been sketchy indeed, my own impressions shaped by the great popular arts of music and film, the affections of Ernest Hemingway, the aura of rum and cigars, and a single painting by Abela that I had once owned.

The next morning Francisco took us round the block to meet a family physician. Picture this; storefront office, small waiting room with posters proclaiming common ailments, health and herbal advice and cautions, lists of arthritis, osteoporosis, heart disease, HIV, STD - the lot. The doctor, a pretty woman of about thirty, two kids of her own in school, her office and treatment room adjacent. Her patients are the 600 persons in the neighborhood. She has no car, does house calls on foot, or by bus. Some people know her and give her rides. She refers patients to hospital when necessary, teaches regularly, practices education and preventive care. She readily answered our questions, there was no suggestion that she was overloaded, overworked, understaffed, underpaid, underappreciated, or in any way anxious to change things.

Our tour continued to a general clinic for chronic and emergency conditions, with an impressive group of specialists on staff. Then to a primary school next door to the Cathedral. We crowded into the small office of the dynamic principal, who regaled us at some length with what we were to recognize as Cuban educational theory framed in cheerful post-revolutionary rhetoric. She led us from classroom to classroom, not more than twenty to a room, often taking over teaching herself. She knew each child. We could see where the writing materials we had brought would be put to use. The children, in neat uniforms, (colour identifies the school level), remained in their seats, polite, healthy. (I put some of latter down to the care from the doctor nearby). Outside, rows of raised vegetable gardens fitted in with what we learned from Francisco; to the age of seven, all Cuban children are provided with some food basics by the government. It appeared they were learning to grow it themselves. By now we had seen the evidence of the two best-known facts of post-revolutionary Cuba: lifetime medical care, and 100% literacy. More, we were soon to see.

Francisco had planned a full-time program. Some of our visits were to tourist attractions, old Havana, the great Morro Castle and fortress, the huge statue of Christ of Havana dominating the distant landscape, museums - a spacious, modern one, filled with Cuban art. Dean Juan Ramon, who joined us when he could, took the trouble to point out one large canvas dating from long ago foreign occupation, an aboriginal scornfully declining Christian salvation, preferring to die at the stake. There was the dance museum, focused on the history and memorabilia of classical ballet, and dedicated to the great Cuban dancer, Alicia Alonso. Some of us remember that day for the heaviest rainfall we had ever experienced.

The obligatory visit to an ancient cigar factory which is operated by the workers, several hundred of them, all young, each at his or her own station, flashing hands fashioning fine cigars, to be packed in cedar wood imported from Canada, and a voice, through the speaker system filling the huge, mellow, tobacco-fragrant space, reading a current novel chosen by the workers themselves.

Our mission, however, was to come to know, and to make ourselves known to the Anglican community, and to its essence in Cuba, the house church, a living vestige and testament of the very house churches of the early Christians. We were invited to Veronica’s, a modest house on the outskirts of the city, assorted chairs around the walls, a simple table serving as altar. Nerva, tall, motherly wife of the dean, herself ordained, (the first woman in Cuba), presided in Spanish over the sacrament that we share here in our own Cathedral. The familiar words, the motions, drew us close to each other from that moment. We learned that the lay reader in each of the house churches of Cuba serves the little congregation, as a good pastor would do, and keeps in constant touch with the cathedral.

All this time our base was the Cathedral, but we were lodged in private homes, licensed by the government, within a few minutes’ walk from the Cathedral and our eight-o’clock breakfast. Nevertheless, I managed to lose my way in the rain the second night without my map, returned to the Cathedral in panic, was taken in by the dean’s family, where I watched commercial-free Cuban television and required a personal escort, from the Dean, back to my own quarters. Still living it down.

The visits went on for our enlightenment and there was fun. Havana means ‘night life’. Dinner and a show found us in a 1930’s decor night club, mojitos, now our drink of choice, at the ready. A professional stage show, climaxed by a contribution from our table, Alan and Kathryn, jitterbugging with abandon. Kathryn, the temptress, facing off with Alan, for all the world a bullfighter on his night off, ending with Kathryn tossed flat on her back, and up again, to a roar of applause. Hemingway would have recorded it all with delight.

There were highlights. The more than lifelike metal reproduction of the idol of Cuba, John Lennon lounging on a park bench, our own Irene Maycock seated serenely beside him. Mischievous Bev Johnston determined not to miss anything, least of all, the Caribbean Sea, splashing her feet in the crashing surf of a beach club. The delicious vegetables, with unknown names, served at every meal in the parish hall. The fruits and vegetables piled around the altar at the Offertory in the Cathedral. The Cathedral cat, at home among the pews, like our ‘CC’ in Hamilton. Our dean and rector Peter, of The Three Cantors outside his day job, singing, unaccompanied, first in response to the gift of a song from the seniors and then in the intimacy of a house church and finally in the Cathedral at the Sunday Eucharist, music expressing what words cannot. The mystical explosive spray of the seawall, Malecon, drawing us back, again and again, amazed and refreshed. The morning e-mails from Alison, our administrator, at her desk in Hamilton, to Karen, her counterpart in Havana, always with a laugh…for us, with us, at us...

And now we are back. How to remember every detail. When I am asked, 'Did you have a good time?' My answer is yes, of course, we had a good time, but more it was a time of good. A transforming time, says Peter Wall. The people of the Niagara Diocese have a church family in Havana, let us hope and pray that the reverse is true.