In the summer of 1998 after living for a year in Mexico City, I traveled for a few months with a friend I’d met at the UNAM. Our destination? Adventure. Last stop, Havana. We started in Vera Cruz with a shaman in the forest, then days and weeks on all night buses and boats through the land of the peje lagarto to the hills and mountains crowded with coffee and Zapatistas. It was all part of a journey I started at 16 when I read the communist manifesto – suggested reading for my high school English class in San Francisco. 

From San Cristobal to Merida and a short flight to la Havana. Upon arrival I asked the immigration officer to please not stamp my passport. My friends in the DF, two Cuban diplomats who had encouraged my trip, advised me to do this. My traveling companion skipped the stamp in her Iranian passport, too. 

A throng of friends we’d never met before greeted us at airport exit. Buoyancy, smiles and noise surrounded me. I was weighed down by my 20k backpack, stuffed with thick blankets and woven warmth from the damp green hills of Chiapas. This new bare limbed energy felt like freedom. 

A few kids our age, Ernesto and Marina, took us first to their aunt’s house on the outskirts of the city, but when it became clear that we were not suburbanites, transferred us to Juanita’s flat one block from the main plaza in La Habana Vieja. 75 years living life to its fullest. Juanita drank a shot of rum every morning and played old LPs all day. Ballads, rumbas, tangos, cumbias, strings, brass and percussion filled her rooms. Her “grandkids” from all over the crumbling concrete building complex stopped by to bring her gifts or barter for basic goods. Her rum cabinet was well stocked. 

I remember squatting in the cracked white bathtub cupping my hands under a trickle of water trying to rinse off a bit of soap from my armpits and eyes. 

In la plaza de la revolución we met a group of Rastafarians and artists. One night they took us out to San Francisco, an underground gay club. I vaguely remember being called ‘la Madonna de la Havana’ by clubgoers by the end of the night. It was my platinum blonde phase and I had clubkid roots. 

After a week or so we wanted to get out of the city so Ernesto and Marina and a few other friends took us via guagua a few hours away. It was a camping site for young people. My traveling companion and I joked privately – were we going to communist youth camp? Sort of. Small concrete block bungalows littered an overgrown field about half a km from the beach. A beautiful seaweed and trash strewn white sand stretch bordered turquoise water. 

Marina’s cousin hated mosquitos. So she sprayed the entire contents of the three cans of Autan that we’d brought from Mexico throughout our bunker. No one slept. Most coughed and choked all night. 

Our last night at camp there was a friendly competition and party. 50 or so campers sat on bleachers and followed the lead of the local emcee. I was with the Havana club, there was a group from Varadero, and another from Cienfuegos. Somehow, once the talent competition stated, I was pushed to the front and voted by my group to represent Havana. 

I had spent years trying to wash the blood from my hands. The blood I felt sticky and hot, result of my country’s despotic actions and policies in Latin America and the Caribbean. My country’s politicians’ hatred of social and political and economic policies were more firmly rooted and lived and breathed in Cuba than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere. I felt ashamed. But Marina and Enrique and cousin and a dozen smiling faces cheered me on. I went to the centre stage, even thinking that some were probably laughing at me, not with. 

First was the dance competition. Years of dancing salsa in the kitchen with mom helped. As did the crash course I’d had the week before with Rolando, a principle with the Cuban National Ballet who taught me the particularities of Cuban salsa pauses on the dance floor at the Copacabana. He, like all my new friends at communist youth camp christened me true friend of Cuba and disbelieved that yankee could have such rhythm. 

Needless to say, after dancing salsa, singing Hotel California and hula-hooping for several minutes nonstop, I was unanimously voted la flor de la Havana. The irony of voting was overshadowed only by the irony of my citizenship. I felt acceptance, humbled, and at the same time certainly no more exceptional than anyone else. It was kindness and not talent that won the competition. 

Into the night we danced, drank rum, joked and laughed. It was natural to hold up a bottle and cheer, Hasta la victoria, siempre! Compañera, flor de la Havana! We hid the remaining mosquito spray from cousin and braved the small jungle campsite in sneakers and bare legs. It was too hot for a campfire and there was no electricity for miles. But the moon and stars were bright enough to see our way. 

Days later we rode to the airport in the back of an old Russian Lada makeshift wagon, stopping along the way to siphon petrol in from a roadside station. A dusty billboard hung over the highway: Viva la Revolución! 

Indeed, it was alive.