Travelogue 39, Cuba: Open and Courageous in Cuba! Living the Values!

          I spotted my values in the airport today, riding atop a bouncing set of breasts…the values were riding atop the breasts, not me! Dang those dangling participles! Actually, that one isn't dangling, it has a stated subject, it's just not clear which one is being referred to and that kind of ambiguity in the mind of the wrong reader can get a girl in trouble. Anyway, “LOVE ALL, TRUST A FEW, HARM NONE!” proclaimed the white lettering on the front of the breast owner’s black t-shirt. “Right on, sister!” I wanted to say and continue the conversation over coffee, but she disappeared down the concourse before I could tackle her, and thus we parted ways with nary a word exchanged.

I’m taking that spotting as a direct sign from God to refocus my telescope, and I don’t mean on women’s boobs. I mean on my values. This last trip to Cuba got mine all rearranged. Well, actually, it would be more accurate to say I was forced to adopt new ones that I didn’t even think of as ‘values’ per say, much less pillars of conduct worthy of handing out on a wallet-size, laminated card.  

This was supposed to be an annual training trip taken each July to “team-build” and polish our product (i.e. boost the Cuba programs’  #3 ranking in the company to #1) , but the training, honestly, was secondary to me. I was on a mission of greater importance. I’m not talking about one of those religious mission trips that announces itself in the airport with brightly colored t-shirts spouting Bible verses and proclaiming good intentions to save the poor, pitiful, ignorant, heathen souls of the third world. No, I’m talking about a self-serving, self-preservation charge: TO GET ME SOME WORK!  Of the nine trips I was scheduled to run this year, all but four have been cancelled. This “training” trip for me was about getting my name at the top of my manager’s list of favorites, any way I could.

I went about it deliberately and strategically; by playing the Cooperate America game. I’ve told you before that I love my job as a tour director and that hasn’t changed. What I don’t love is the return to: policies, hierarchies, chains of command, rules, reprimands, acronyms, competitiveness, bottom lines, hypocrisy,  brown-nosing, favoritism, ego stroking, image inflating and it’s-all-about-money bull poopy. I left teaching in public schools precisely to get away from all that crap. The saving grace here is that, at the end of the day, the ONLY thing that matters to the company is that our clients bypass "good" and check the “excellent” box on the post-trip evaluation forms. I don’t doubt my ability to make that happen, yet it can’t happen, if I’m not on the road with a group. But to get on the road, I’ve got to get on the schedule, which means influencing the people who make it…see where I am going with this?

We spent the first day of training in sultry Miami, freezing our asses off in a hotel conference room, drilling The (company)Values! and dissecting the reasons why we are failing miserably at them as a whole, despite our #3 ranking in the company (out of 40 some countries we travel to, mind you).

          After eight hours of pure who-ha, we, the non management peons begging reprieve, at the request of the management poobas, set as our number one area for improvement, a distillation of company values #1 and #2: 

“Open and courageous! Take Risks! Live the values!”

        Before we ever stepped foot on Cuban soil, it was clear to me that my mission for the next eight days was to be more opener, more courageouser and more riskier than any of my competitors. A whatever-it-takes attitude possessed me, all sense of prudence fell to the wayside and here’s what happened:

Chance # 1 to impress the hell out of them-- the boxing ring. One day we visited a boxing gym in Old Havana, where some of the best young boxers in Cuba train. We had the good fortune of finding one of the finest there to interview. We circled around him and did the same-ole, same-ole question and answers we call “people-to-people exchanges with the Cubans.” Boring.

“Isn’t anyone going to fight him?” I ask.

Glances exchange. Shoulders shrug. No volunteers.

“I will!” I shout, answering my own question while tallying up the brownie points this blatant act of open and courageous and stupid risk taking is going to earn me.

          Who? 5ft, 98lb farm girl me? Scared of a 6ft, 200lb, sweaty black man? It wasn’t as if I had never boxed before. When we were kids my brothers tried to train me to beat up our mentally retarded neighbor. They made a boxing ring in the basement out of sofa cushions, put a 45 of  Rocky's anthem, “Eye of the Tiger”, on the turntable and told me to dance around and punch the pillow they held up. Much to their disappointment, at the end of the summer, when it came time for the big match, I chickened out. Nary a punch was thrown. So, here was my chance, thirty-some years later, to prove myself, this time against a much more advantaged opponent.

          “Bring ‘m on!” I said, taking off my footwear and sliding between the ropes while somebody ran off to get some gloves. The smallest pair they could find swallowed my hands and arms half-way up to my elbows, which sort of splinted my wrists into prostrate, which painted the scene to be more of a wife beating her cheating husband with a rolling pin than a boxing match. ANYWAY! Some of my fans were shouting in Spanish, “Hit him in the balls!,” which I thought rather  unladylike, so I tried to mule kick him in the ribs instead.

The ref said that was illegal. So what?, I said, I won anyway just because I'm a girl.

Chance to really go out on a limb #2: Skivvies dipping

To break up the monotony of a five hour bus ride, we made a pullover stop along the coast for a look at the bluest of seas lulling into large swells down below a high cliff.  Without asking permission, I scaled off toward the beach, followed by a few puppydogish colleagues. For about 5 minutes we waded in the waves up to our knees, then someone whined that she wish she had her bathing suit and they should have warned us that we would have a chance to swim.

“What’s the hold up?” I asked, “You’ve got underwear on, don’t you?”

She looked at me like, “get real.” I looked back like, “dare me.”  Without hiding behind the rocks, I stripped down to not-matching bra and underwear and went plunging into the waves as if the whole ocean itself were a long lost lover.

Pretty soon the beach was littered with clothing and a group of seven was floating in the waves, belly up, like a pack of sea otters.

In an ultimate sacrifice to show I can Live the Value! better than the rest, I took off my bottoms in the deep water and slung them around above my head like a cowboy roping steers. Just in case the powers-that-be weren’t looking, I let off a war cry that would raise a dead walrus.

Chance to take one for the team #3—volunteer to be a haircut victim. In the case of the haircut, it wasn’t exactly that I volunteered, but rather that I didn’t resist when the barber came into the crowd yanking on wrists. A mere interview with a Cuban barber is not enough to get an “excellent” rating on the evals. Somebody has got to get in the chair for an authentic, entertaining interaction to take place.

Without consulting me as to what I might like done, he dove right into chopping out chunks. "Aren't you going to wet it?" I wanted to know.  No answer. The long “snip-snip’s” continued as I watched the expressions on my colleagues’ faces wordlessly warp into, “OMG!” When he spun me around to face the mirror, I saw he had combed my hair forward in an Austin Powers’ sort of goober-do, probably to cover up the bald patches he made.

 “It doesn’t look so bad,” one of my friends said as I got out of the chair and she handed me my ball cap a bit too eagerly.

“Thanks. That’s reassuring.”

“Now, that took some guts,” my boss said as he high fived me, “I never would have let them touch my hair.”

“Great,” I wanted to say, “I appreciate your verbal admiration, but if you really want to show some love, schedule me for a least ten trips next season and promise not to cancel them.”

Chance to take it to the hoop #4—jump in the conga parade. Cuba celebrates Carnival the last week in July and it's a huge affair--kind of like Mar-tea-graw minus the nudity. I’m not going to describe this one. You can see it for yourself, live, at the end of a video a friend made for me. “Gigi Gets in Trouble” he titled it. “Gigi Lives Does Will Do Whatever to Get More Trips” I call it. The first part is footage he took of Cuba and will give you an idea of what it’s like there, which lots of people ask me about. The rest…well…it’s what I do for a living. Enjoy!

Really, don't you think I deserve to be a prominent figure on the schedule?

I’m off to Easter Island tomorrow where I will spend a week being a tourist with a company I hope to work for some day. Then back to Oakland, CA and then ??????  until Oct 26 when I go to Cuba for reals i.e. get paid to do it.

Much love to all.