Havana Jam: May, 2001

We were finally on board the plane to Havana. My wife Audrey and I took our seats in a row about a third of the way to the rear of the charter. I strapped myself in the window seat and slowly exhaled. We had been warned that customs at Miami International Airport could be a gauntlet for those traveling to and from Cuba. We would be searched and re-searched, our bags rifled by attendants opposed to the Castro government, we were told. Yet aside from having to be at check-in several hours in advance and endure an agonizingly slow line of passengers, there were no real problems. It was the anticipation of hassles that made the morning tense until I heard the click of the secure seat belt.

Around us in the cabin was the edgy music of conversations composed of equal blends of excited English and Spanish. From the row behind me I overheard one woman mention to another that this was her first trip home in thirty years. Audrey and I were traveling to the conference sponsored by Callaloo and Casa de las Américas. There would be a dozen or so Afro-Amercanists to dialogue with each other and Cuban writers. I had recognized some of the names on the list of American conferees, but saw no familiar faces on the plane. I would learn later that, except for one other person, those from the eastern United States took the Miami warning seriously and arrived from other ports.

From a remote runway, we took off exactly on time. During the low flight path over the Keys and the Straits of Florida, I tried to imagine Havana. I carried with me images from guidebooks, from newspaper travel sections, from a half-dozen visits to Miami. A colleague at Indiana University had furnished me with a supply of book and article titles regarding Cuban history and the African presence in Cuban culture. I located an Afro-Cuban website. Just before the trip I had hauled out Amiri Baraka's early collection, Home. I remembered parts of its first essay, "Cuba Libre," a description of a journey to Cuba taken by an entourage of Afro-American writers and politicos. The year was 1960, just after the rebels had consolidated their triumph. I had remembered the essay as one of poignant, humorous and biting analysis, and it worked that way during the recent reading. For most of the flight, all these images and descriptions marched through my mind. I watched the Atlantic below, green in its shallowness, for I could make out the valleys and plains beneath the surface of the water. From charter boats I had fished in the Gulf Stream on several occasions and recalled it to be a very dark blue. Yet even the deeper water seemed placid that morning, nothing to bother, say, a descendant of Hemingway's Santiago or the forlorn sailor in Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream." I had heard the standard news about the economy, about blackouts and the long lines of customers to stores with near-empty shelves. By the time we approached Havana over farmland, I had concluded that I had no conclusions—I really didn't know what to expect—and that my course for the week would be to learn as much from as many Cuban people as I could about how they lived and viewed their lives.

During the three days before the beginning of the conference, we had a chance to see some of Old Havana. We had plans to travel to the mountains in the southeast, but had to drop those plans. From the first afternoon on we walked the neighborhoods in all directions from our hotel, the Presidente. I was instantly recognized as an Americano negro, no matter which hat or cap I wore, no matter if my camera had been left behind. In most instances this led to some good-natured joking. ("Americano negro, where you from?" "I'm from Chicago," I lied...