Cuban Holiday with Daddy

As I write this in December of 2012 I'm visiting Haiti doing mission work with Haiti Under God (HUG) where, among other duties, I help to operate an orphanage of seventeen girls. 

            

   At exactly this time of year when I was in third grade, my father took me on a cruise to Nassau. I had the very first Barbie doll hot off the store shelf, and my mother had made a complete wardrobe for her to match mine. Then Daddy, Barbie, and I set sail, just the three of us. 

   We never made it to Nassau because of a late season tropical storm that forced us to land in Havana in the middle of the Cuban revolution. Most of the vacationers decided to stay on the ship. However, my adventurous father and I chose to do otherwise, and wandered under the watchful eyes of men in uniform who were on the street & atop the Citadel with their machine guns.

   Daddy, Barbie and I went to a wine tasting at a winery, and at nine years old, I tried the many wines in the little glasses. We hopped city buses & rode to the end of the line until very late at night. I knew, we both knew, it was dangerous, but we only went back to the ship to sleep. I remember seeing so many people of all colors stretched out on the park grass together in groups and in kissing pairs. 

   That whole experience in my young life was both frightening, because I sensed my father was frightened, and exhilarating because we enjoyed it so. I can thank Daddy for my lust for third world adventure and my love of third world peoples.