Nearly 14 years ago, as a 50th birthday present for Jeremy, we booked a week in Cuba with our son and our nephew.  It was a revelation, an inspiration and a week filled with music, history, beauty and poverty.  From the 50’s american cars

to the faded glamour of The Tropicana club and the Hotel Nacional

to a Sabbath spent with the elderly of the Orthodox synagogue in Havana

to a meeting with a minister from the Cuban Government, Signor Oltuski,

and much more besides.  It was a week that I think of very often and a trip that I am so glad that we made.

For those who are interested ……read on……for those who have better things to do, please do them.

It started like this.  “What do you want for your 50th birthday?”  The answer was, “A visit to Cuba and a meeting with Fidel Castro”.  No problem then!  I had found the newly published autobiography of Enrique Oltuski in my local library before we set off.  Oltuski had fought with Che Guevara and Fidel in the revolution and was a minister in the first revolutionary government.  He was now a man in his seventies and was, when we visited, the Minister of Fisheries in Cuba. Oltuski, as his name suggests, was a descendant of Polish Jews who had made Cuba their home. Some Jews settled there at the turn of last century and other Jews were given sanctuary in Cuba as they fled the Nazis in Europe.  They stayed and prospered, they established synagogues and bought land for a cemetery. Post revolution many left for the shores of Florida but Oltuski stayed and fought for a better and more equal country for all its citizens.   Armed with Oltuski’s book we landed in Cuba and a couple of days after arrival I asked the operator of the hotel to connect me with the Ministry of Fisheries. When the telephone was answered I asked to speak with Senator Oltuski saying that Signora Freedman of London wanted to discuss his book.  I was banking on a newly published writer’s vanity – and it worked.  Oltuski came to the telephone and I explained who I was, that I had read his fascinating book and that I would like him to join us in the Synagogue on the Sabbath in Havana.  Oltuski said, “We are a poor country and I have to work six days a week so I cannot join you at the Synagogue but if you tell me which hotel you are at I will try to meet you on Monday evening for a drink.”  The intervening days included trips to the countryside, which was stunning

and to markets and a cigar factory and a night at the Tropicana where a beautifully attired showgirl hauled our son out of the audience and danced with him on the stage.  Lucky man.   On Friday afternoon we moved into a Havana hotel near enough to walk to the Synagogue.  We had made contact from London and had offered to sponsor a meal for the community when we joined them on the Sabbath.  The members of the synagogue were the old, a few young couples, teenagers and children and mostly people left behind after the revolution who had decided to stay in Cuba or been unable to leave.  They reminded me of the community we knew in Lviv, Ukraine, living hand to mouth and relying on overseas charity to keep their institutions open.  We were made welcome and our visit was worth the sleepless night in the Havana hotel.  Sleepless because music played and people danced, it seemed, from morning to night forgetting their poverty but revelling in the cuban rhythms and the warm and humid tropical air.  Whenever we stopped for a drink anywhere in Cuba there was music playing.  We often talked with the musicians, many of whom were highly educated but trying to earn tourist dollars to supplement their meagre wages.  All were, however, eligible for education and healthcare and much of this healthcare put to shame their “rich neighbours” in the USA whose poorest citizens relied on medicaid or were unable to access any free medical services. Our son and his cousin spent an evening with youngsters they met on the streets of Havana and invited them to their home.  Poor and with few of the gadgets and household appliances we take for granted, they were more concerned about access to the internet which was not freely available.  Human rights was also an issue yet they spoke about with our kids,seemingly unafraid to talk.

On Monday night, back at our hotel outside Havana, we waited to see if Enrique Oltuski would show.  I was thrilled, he did. We ushered him to our table, presented him with a bottle of single malt whisky and sat back with our mojitos and talked the night away.   This was “living history” a man who had fought with my teenage hero and idol, Che Guevara (yes, his poster was on my bedroom wall),

    

a man who had been Minister of Communications in the first Castro government and devoted his life to his country.  He spoke with the boys and castigated our son on being, at the time, a capitalist “stockbroker”.  He talked of his visits to Scotland now that he was Minister of Fisheries and his visit to Israel.  He was charming and good looking and great company and, at the end of our evening, he took out his wallet and proudly showed us photographs of his grandchildren!.  Ok, it wasn’t a meeting with Fidel Castro but Signor Oltuski told us that if we visited Cuba again he would try to fulfill Jeremy’s wish.  We never returned and I read, tonight, that Oltuski passed away in 2012.  So farewell, belatedly to Enrique Oltuski and, today, farewell to Fidel Castro. Courageous men who fought for their beliefs and tried to make Cuba a country free from the corruption of Batista.  Revolutions falter and no system is perfect and, no doubt, Cuba is about to change as America opens up trade and travel but I hope that the beauty, music ,character and vibrancy of Cuba will survive. Vive la revolution!