Americans in Cuba...
Posted: Monday, June 11, 2007 5:15 PM by Jaclyn Levin
(From Gina Garcia, TODAY Researcher and Booker)
Fresh off of our trip to Cuba, the questions are pouring in. What was it like? How was the food? Were people friendly? What did you see? How difficult was it to do interviews? First, I’ll answer a few of these questions and will share one of the most interesting things I found out about Cuba.
Cuba is naturally a beautiful island and you can see that in its hay day, Cuba was an architectural marvel. The food was a delicious mix of rice, beans,
ham and cheese sandwiches and ice cream- their signature treat (I ate it everyday for a week straight). The people are friendly with a hint of reservation, and depending on where you go, they speak out about politics and “El Jefe” as Fidel Castro is called there. I saw muscular 5yr olds playing baseball in the park with a stick and wadded up paper. El Malecón (the boardwalk) was a popular spot for deep conversation and impromptu singing and dancing, and classic cars, bicycles and hitchhikers lined the streets. Surprisingly, we also met many Americans while preparing for the live show.
U.S. Citizens were in Cuba working out trade deals for rice, beans and dairy products, traveling to do missionary work, and 24 Nurses were on a humanitarian and research mission to learn about Cuba’s health care system. One of the most interesting things I learned about Cuba is that there are also 95 American students attending the prestigious Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba on full scholarship. One day many of them will return to the states and could be your physician. American med students in Cuba? When Fidel Castro heard from an American congressman that areas of his large district did not have even one doctor, he offered up full scholarships for American students to attend med school in Cuba. This program offered American students who don’t have the family or financial assistance the opportunity to go to med school. Politically motivated you wonder? The system that allows this program has made huge efforts to maintain it as a non-political program. For the majority of students, the focus is to get the training in the med school program so they can return to the United States and become a doctor for underserved communities.
Tuition, room, board and most of the books are included. As a tradeoff, American students give up everyday luxuries and live off of $4 a month. They wear uniforms and do not have access to water through the night. They share books because there aren’t enough to go around and they share rooms and bathrooms with up to 40 other students. The entire med school is in Spanish, which proves difficult for those who’ve never spoken the language. American students in Cuba must also go through an intense first year of Spanish immersion and science classes in Spanish before starting the actual med school. In the six-year med school program, students study at one campus for the first two years, and then go to another of Cuba's 21 medical schools, which are located throughout the island, to complete their studies. The Cuban medical training model combines theory and practice and is oriented toward primary care, community medicine and hands-on internships. Cuba Med students also undertake a residency prior to graduating but they, like American med students, must go through at least a year of residency in the States and must pass U.S. licensing exams in order to be licensed to practice. They are not required to stay in Cuba after graduation but it is understood that they will practice medicine in poor and under served US communities. For Howard University graduate and a fourth year medical student Melissa Mitchell, the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana was her first choice, not a last result. She chose Cuba med school because of the focus on social medicine. Social medicine is free healthcare that’s available to any and all citizens. She says not having the everyday luxuries and being away from her family and friends has made her a much stronger person. Although she feels the hardest part of studying in Cuba is feeling disconnected from the world, Mitchell is proud of the program and says there are absolutely no regrets to her decision to go to Cuba to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.
How does she respond to critiques of the program she’s involved in? When asked about her feelings regarding Castro, she shares that she doesn’t consider herself political and is focused on graduating from med school, passing the exams and returning to the states to practice medicine. For the critics who say she’s being used as propaganda for the Cuban government she responds “I’m here to be a doctor so that I can provide healthcare to those who need it most, if critics see my training and serving those communities as propaganda, that’s fine.”
>Melissa will spend this summer in the states as a volunteer in health care services. After graduating in 2009 she plans to go to New Jersey and complete her residency. She dreams of one day being a part of a health care complex where patients can get anything from hang nail treatment to open heart surgery for free.
So how easy was it getting around and doing interviews in Cuba? Everywhere we went, multi-layered permissions were required and a government official came along, sometimes requiring that we pick him or her up. While Melissa and I sat chatting in the school lobby, a guard hung on our every word, until we snuck away and toured the school dorms. Everyday Cubans we bumped into would regularly say life in Cuba, No es Facil, which translates to “it’s not easy”. They were more right than I could ever imagine.
