What Exactly Were You Doing in Cuba?
Coming through U.S. Customs after visiting Cuba
February 12, 2008
By Susanne Walker Wilson
“You will be dragged before governors and kings (and customs officials) for my sake to bear testimony before them and the Gentiles. When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Creator speaking through you.” –Matthew 10:17-20
“What exactly were you doing in Cuba?” he asked sternly with little inflection in his terse, bureaucrat’s voice. Minutes earlier I had pushed the ostensibly random customs line button that flashes either green (“Go ahead and have a good day.”) or red (“Sucker. We’re gonna make this hard for you.”) at each returning passenger. Having been unlucky on my way down, receiving a random luggage check as we entered Mexico, I was confident that by sheer mathematical odds I wouldn’t be tapped for “special treatment” on the way home as well. No such luck. The light flashed red. I watched as most of my church group, with whom I’d just spent 10 days in Cuba visiting our sister congregation, passed effortlessly through customs toward Charlotte, N.C., sparkling airport bathrooms and into marble-floored, English-speaking corridors while I waited in the red light line for whatever was yet to come.
I had nothing to fear. In my small 25-year-old suitcase without wheels there was nothing to hide. Nothing to declare, as it were, except the Gospel. I had bought a generous handful of book marks to share among the children of our home congregation. Their worth was the sum total of US$6.00 and were they confiscated or destroyed I wouldn’t be heartbroken. Wrapped carefully in wads of dirty, quick-dry clothes was the only tangible treasure I was bringing home: a tiny, ceramic leaf bearing a traditional Cuban water jug and the hand-painted name of our sister city “Camagüey.” I’d not even bought it; we’d each been gifted with one—12 in all, one for each traveler and a one for the worship altar of our Asheville congregation. We’d met the artist who’d fired and painted this clay. He had come to the mid-week worship service to share them with us amidst song and praise and a powerful sermon about the walls we build in our lives—walls that keep us safe and help us know where home is and other walls that separate us from one another and from God.
In my hand was clutched a copy of our church’s official religious visa. A multi-page, legal-eze document issued by the U.S. Treasury Department that was proof our trip had been on the up and up. Our pastor had wisely had each of us keep a photocopy of it with us, on our person, the entire trip. It was as essential, perhaps, as our coveted American passport in proving our legitimacy. In Cuba this four-page, stapled wad had been a nuisance in my itchy, bulging passport holder. Now, suddenly, it was of essence. The stale air of the airline hung on my clothes and my Mexican-bought water bottle had long since been poured out into a trashcan (for security reasons) before boarding our flight home. My throat was dry.
I could hear the children behind me pestering their moms with quiet, tense questions. They too had randomly gotten the red light. These kids from our church (fourth and fifth graders respectively) had been such troopers in the past 10 days—flexible, patient, and increasingly relaxed as the trip had unfolded. They’d each found food they liked and friends within the Cuban congregation and at each guest house we stayed with whom to hug and joke. By day three they were remembering not to throw their toilet paper into the commode but rather in the trash can beside it (1950s plumbing can’t handle toilet paper). By day five they were in the hang of greeting each adult and child in a room as one entered with a light embrace or airy kiss. Along with their third grade travel mate, herself a repeat visitor to Cuba, these kids had eagerly learned Cuban history in much detail and would later go on to explain in a presentation to our home congregation why Che and José Martí were their favorite revolutionary heroes. The kids hadn’t been perfect—there was the often spilled drink in carelessness or gluttony and the occasional upturned nose to new foods they were too tired to try; but for the most part, these children had been hugely happy on this journey and offered their best to our friends: singing in worship, gracious manners, genuine hugs and kisses, and open minds and hearts. None of them were ready to go home yet at trip’s end. Not once had they been really afraid in Cuba. But now, back in Charlotte, they were scared.
Scared of what? We’d broken no law and spent less than $30 each in 10 days on things we were bringing home now. No coffee. No rum. No cigars. Just a hand-stitched banner of an angel that had been made by a women’s church cooperative—this was our contraband. “Mommy, I’m stressed. The one thing you adults didn’t want to happen on this whole trip was for us to be questioned at customs and now we’re gonna be. I wanta go home,” whined my 10-year-old goddaughter to her mother behind me. “They should let us kids go on through! This isn’t fair. Why do we have to do this? What are they going to do to us when we get to the front of this dumb old line?”
There was no time to explain to Kenzie in that moment that this interrogation process was part of how our nation flexed its border patrol muscle. There was no use to explain to her about our beefed up homeland security. There weren’t words to help her understand that in a customs line the destination of Cuba leaves one highly suspect. I, momentarily made impotent despite my unearned white privilege, U.S. passport, graduate education and many financial safety nets, was standing before the powers and principalities. This must be just like my Latino and African American friends feel when they’re pulled over for a “routine” license check—fully innocent and no way to prove it if the guy with the power decides otherwise.
“Next!” A harsh voiced snapped, obviously having said the word more than once to me already without me having heard him, deep within my daydreams. I obediently scurried forward determined to be polite, calm, and all together forthcoming as my interrogation ensued.
“Visa” he barked. It was Sunday afternoon in January. If this poor guy hadn’t been working he could have been home watching football on the couch with his kids.
“What? Oh, yeah. Here you go, sir. It’s a travel permit.” I smiled, fumbling to hand him the now damp wad of well-worn but never-read paper in my sweaty hands. “Shoot.” I thought to myself. “I should have been listening or reading along on the dang thing as my friend (now behind me) had scoured this document an hour earlier on the plane to quell her fears about the worship banner she was bringing in.”
The customs officer proceeded to unpeel the Treasury Department document—one our church had worked hard to obtain from our ever-tightening government and one we’d all committed to protect and respect through no tourist activity and strict adherence to our church trip agenda. (One stipulation of our travel permit was to keep a log of our activities and make it available for Treasury official inspection.)
“So this was a religious trip, huh? What did you do while you were there?” He glared at me.
“We visited our sister congregation in Camagüey, sir.” I replied respectfully.
“But what did you do there in Cuba?” he persisted.
“I don’t think I understand what you mean. How much detail do you want? Like what we did every day? I want to be cooperative, sir. Really. What shall I tell you?” I was groveling with the sir thing—Jeez. I’d used that word more in this 30-second exchange than I had in the whole last year! And it wasn’t working; this guy was clearly getting agitated with me.
“Tell me everything. Tell me everything you did while you were in Cuba,” he sighed.
And so I took a deep breath and found a genuine smile as I allowed myself to retrace our steps and conjure up the welcoming and faithful faces of those we’d met along our pilgrimage. I began. . . .
“Well, we arrived in Havana at 1:00 a.m. and were greeted by this nice pastor named Osvaldo and his teenage son who loves basketball. While we waited to exchange money at the airport, he told us all about a Vacation Bible School they ran this past summer for urban kids out in the countryside. Children dressed up as pirates throughout the week and their theme was searching for the treasure God had planted in them and others. Once we had our luggage and money squared away, our driver, Nestor, took us by church van to the Martin Luther King Center there in Havana where we finally got to sleep about 2:00 a.m. The King Center is an ecumenical retreat center and organizing hub…popular education and justice work are its primary emphases, I guess. It reminded me of the Highlander Center in Tennessee….
“Then, the next day we drove to Matanzas. There we stayed at and worshipped in the Kairos Center. It has similar youth hostel-like sleeping quarters. They’re known for integrating the arts into worship. They hosted a gathering of church outreach workers to share with us their ministries in a nearby impoverished community, La Marina, I think it was called. Social workers using popular education methods to empower local people in changing social problems themselves. Paulo Friere stuff. We visited an exquisite, ecumenical seminary that afternoon and met with student leaders there. Their organic gardens feed all of them, a nursing home and a nearby public school. We heard an amazing concert of indigenous Cuban music mixed with Christian songs and then shared a Friday night worship service for peace with the congregation there. We offered a song of our own, not our best rendering but we hadn’t practiced first…and then everyone wrote down ways that we pray and work for peace in our world. …
“Finally we made it to Camagüey, but not in time for our sister churches weekly worship service. That’s a long story but we goofed on the timeframe by a handful of hours because they’ve changed their worship service from early evening, like ours is, to mid-afternoon….and lunch at a restaurant on the highway took almost two hours.”
I stopped for a second to see if I was pleasing him or annoying with this much detail. The hard part was, I couldn’t tell. He was peering at me with attentive consternation but nothing in his body language said I should stop, so I pressed on having found my voice and now awake to what was happening in this interchange.
“In Camagüey we had lots of time for fellowship, singing and dancing, sharing photos and prayer requests from our congregation…all in the pastora’s house. We stayed in the government-regulated guest houses—kind of like bed-and-breakfast places. But we ate most of our meals at Pastora Angelita’s house. The lay leaders of the church spent days with us, showing us their city and especially their work with homebound disabled and elderly folks. We visited some of these people in their homes and worshipped with many blind congregants on that Wednesday mid-week worship service that they have….”
Again, I tried to read him. Should I just keep plowing on? Was I wearing him down?
“Oh yeah,…then on Thursday there was the foot washing. …”
“Alright! Alright! That’ll do,” he cut me off. “That’s enough. Stop.” Turning to his customs partner he said in exasperation, “Don’t even ask those other women and kids anything. They’re with this one. Just send’em all through.”
They did not open our bags or question our children. It was done. We were free to come home and to bring the treasures of this trip with us.
A group of 11 members of Circle of Mercy Congregation (Asheville, N.C.) visited Cuba from January 10-20, 2008. This was the fourth visit to the congregation’s sister church, Iglesia Getsemani, in Camagüey, Cuba’s third largest city located in the eastern part of the country. © Susanne Walker Wilson