Cuba: Day 3 - Part 2

Ismaël and his wonderful smile

Ismaël drives deftly across town to the opposite shore of the Port of Havana and into La Regla, an industrial suburb where the elementary school is named after a Viet Cong bomber who tried  to assassinate United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and future ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. when they visited Vietnam in 1963.  A bit of lingering dialectic.  Down the hill are the container dockyards, as well as the Shell and ex-Esso oil refineries belching their smoke into the blue sky.
       Our destination is a community art project called Muraleando, housed in an abandoned water tower.  Not only have Victor Rodriguez and his team refurbished this tower, turning it into a center for artists, dancers and musicians, but they have also rallied the entire area to reclaim the surrounding fields, clearing out tons and tons of garbage that had accumulated.  Victor takes pride in the group of musicians he presents, playing guiro percussion behind the star singer.
After the music, which again ends in us getting up and dancing, we tour the premises, marveling at the many frieze, the clown statue on the garden bench, the egg sculpture welded out of rusty mechanical parts, and many other works of art.

Then it’s back on the bus and back into Havana proper.  We’re given a choice:  either stay on the bus and ride back to the hotel for a rest or be dropped off along the Malecon and walk back on our own.  My legs need stretching, the beans and rice need digesting and my camera wants to see what it can see, so I hop off, along with the other photo buffs.

        We head hotel-ward, each at his or her own pace, clicking away as we go.  The sky is blue to the west but threatening to the east, and although the bay is calm, the Atlantic comes crashing over the seawall.  Two boys tempt fate, their mother admonishing them to stay away from the edge... but like children worldwide, the waves are too tempting.  The boys end up with squishy shoes, and me with a good photo.
  When the Malecon turns, I head up the Prado to the hotel, staring at all the vendors along this tree-lined promenade and at the people out on their terraces above, many hanging laundry to dry.  Or just leaning on the wrought iron handrail, gawking.


I get back to the hotel in plenty of time for the last activity of the day.  Another show.  This time it’s a children’s theater, La Colmenita (Little Beehive).  The founder lost his father in a plane crash and decided to turn his pain into something useful by creating this after-school program that uses song and dance to promote social values.
  The play we see is based on a Caribbean folktale.  The heroine of the story - Martina - is a ladybug (they call her a cucarachita - little cockroach - but she’s dressed in red and white spots so she’s a ladybug to me).  Martina wants to get married.  After turning down the boastful rooster, the goat, and some other problematic animals, she eventually chooses the lowly mouse.  Many of the grade-school children in the program graduate to professional studies and status.

Martina, la cucarachita

A touch I particularly appreciate, given my admiration for Montessori education, is the inclusion - in the front row of the bees chorus - of a girl with visible Down’s Syndrome. Although a bit less agile in her movements than the others, she’s totally integrated into the show and accepted by her fellow bees, and she knows all the lyrics.
  Yet again, it all ends in dance, with the bees descending into the audience and pulling the Yankees to their feet.

Dinner is at a different paladar.  (We never went to the same one twice.)  This one is the decidedly modern and minimalist Elite, where the walls are bare and everything is black and white, except the food.  Each succulent dish laid before us is a delicious work of art, complete with what I call the chef’s “art of the dribble”.
And then the bus takes us back to the hotel.  Quick to bed.  Tomorrow we leave Havana behind and go explore Cienfuegos and Trinidad.

Video of La Colmenita:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG-gh2tu_eA

Morro lighthouse, Bay of Havana