Esplendido means Splendid

I am an international cigar smuggler. I'm not worried, my name is already on their list. I brought only a small carry-on home from Cuba. My international flight from Mexico got shuffled through customs in Houston.
I went on instinct when I declared that I'd been in Cuba. Why not? I have a valid travel license from the Treasury Department. I approached the desk and handed the agent my papers.
"So, you've been in Cuba?"
"Yes, I have."
"And why have you been in Cuba?" I reminded myself to keep it simple.
"I go to school there. Here is my license."
"You'll show that at your next stop." She scribbled something on my paper.
"Welcome back."
I walked down the long glass corridors separating domestic and international travelers. It had been so long since I'd been so air-conditioned. I walked past the baggage claim and up to the next place where the masses are arranged and funneled through.
"Don't forget your bags." The next agent was helpful.
"This is all I've got." I gave them my papers. There was a large "C" by my name. I figure it was either a C for Cuba or a C for "Check this one out". One and the same I reckon.
"Ma'am, please follow the red line around to the left."
The red tape on the floor led me into a large room with several men dressed in serious uniforms. So this is where the "red tape" saying comes from, I thought to myself. I was the only traveler in there. I walked up to the second table.
"Where do you want it?"
"Right over here, please."
I set my bag on the cold, metal examining table. They were going to dissect it. They would find my pretty little wooden box full of Cohiba Esplendidos all wrapped up in pink lacy lingerie.
There was some small talk. Agent Next was about my age. I decided to be more engaged with this one, but not too talkative because thats suspicious. We talked about the school, cuban food, and cuban baseball and then he got serious.
"So, did you bring anything back from Cuba?" He hadn't looked through my bag yet.
"No."
"Nothing at all. Not even a rock?"
"Nothing."
"Are you sure? You did not make any purchases? Because if you brought anything, anything at all back, and you don't tell me, you are going to be in really big trouble." I paused.
"Ok. I have a box of cigars." I smiled slightly and kept my eyes locked on his.
"Oh, so you lied to me, because just a minute ago you said you had nothing." He walked away and came back in a few minutes with another agent.
"She is coming from Cuba," he said to agent 2. He handed him my license.
"Well this is a valid license. She is allowed to be there." The conversation between them went on and it became clear to me that agent 2 did not know about the cigars. I said nothing. He eventually walked away.
"So let me ask you again," said agent number 1, "Do you have anything from Cuba with you? Anything at all? Any alcohol? Any tobacco or jewelry?" He was rummaging through my few things.
"No," I said with the same slight smile. He undressed the negligee from the box.
"Good. Because you could get into a lot of trouble if you did." He smiled and I went running off to catch my flight to Austin.


This blog is my work, my income. This is how I intend to support myself through the next 5 years. I need your support. I don't have the same access to loans and grants that other medical school students have. While Cuba has given me this full scholarship to study medicine there, it does not cover the cost of books and supplementary materials, nor does it cover the cost of traveling back and forth from the island once or twice a year to be with friends and family. I need donations. My book wish list right now is over $1000! These are the materials that I need to be studying to do well on my US Board Exams.

Donations large and small are very appreciated. I am also interested in large personal loans. I will post the stories of my adventures in medicine on a monthly basis. Life in Cuba is really fascinating. No doubt there will be some great tales to come! Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions. Also, share this blog with anyone you know who is interested in medicine or mischief! Thank you so much for your support! Heather*

Letters from the first year

Here are the letters that I sent home during my first year in medical school in Cuba. These were my first experiences in the school and on the island.


September 9, 2009

ELAM (Escuela Latina Americana de Medicina), Week 3, Year1:

Hello Friends and Family…

here’s the word from cuba …there is a toilet paper shortage…if you see some, buy it! or you will end up wiping your rear with the weekly news…

also, due to the swine flu pandemic, ELAM students are under mandatory quarantine until 10 days after the last student arrives (looking like October). so, if you are new here, it is best you make a friend who owns a bucket, so you can take a bath after they turn the water off at that arbitrary time in the evening.

Altogether, the adjustment to life here is going smoothly (my digestive system disagrees). The US delegation is a colorful mix of personalities. We have a group of 22 pre-meds and first year students…the largest group to come down, so far. Within this group, we have a train-hopping NYC apartment squatter, a latina drill sergeant microbiologist, a very square fella who did research on developing antibiotics for farm raised carnivorous shrimp (not so square when he ended up the first one on and last one off the dance floor at the Dominican party the other night), a NYC bike messenger who got run over by a truck last year and has a skin graft on her whole upper right leg, an NFL football player whose career goals changed with an injury, a 240lb super fit gay black LVN man who sports black-rimmed glasses with hot pink rhinestones and can make his pecks jump to the beat, and some very lovely younger people. Several of the students have volunteered with the peace corps and others are just getting started on their path of higher education and participation. My place in the delegation seems to be health and survivor style nutrition advisor…some have been coming to me with their upset tummies and others asking me to teach them yoga poses to alleviate their aches and pains.

The second year students are refreshingly welcoming this time around. My new friend Liz showed me a great spot to go swimming, yesterday. You have to sneak past the guards (friend, you know I can’t be perfectly good) and walk to the edge of the campus where after a short hike through the bushes, you come to the place where the canal meets the sea. The bottom drops out quick, but you can still see your feet where you can’t touch. It was pleasant to float with my ears under the water, hearing only my breath and the ocean, having spent days without privacy.

So, this is where I will be for most of the next two years, before moving into the city of Havana to start learning hands-on-Cubans style of medicine at the Hospital. I feel comfortable…thinking back to the forest defense days, I’ve been in far less desirable situations with food and housing …and I’ll take a cockroach to a bear any day. Beans and rice are good and thankfully they serve that far more often than the spaghetti with minced Spam. Spanish is getting easier to understand and I’ve already learned how to Meringue. My MD is a short six years of bucket flushing away!

One of the most interesting things about being here is that all of Latin America is represented. Just the other day, some Chilean students approached me and another US student to see if we would like to do a joint commemoration of the 11^th of September. For them, it was the day that in 1976, Salvador Allende, their democratically elected president, was assassinated in a bloody coup, commencing the reign of terror under General Pinochet. I will be participating by doing an interpretive dance to represent civil war, two wars on terrorism, and all of the innocent lives lost throughout, while two others sing and play Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” in front of a silent film projection of images from 9-11. There is so much to learn from the students from other countries, and so many unique ways to participate in life on campus.

The word on the stoop is that school starts next week. Hope so! Thank you all for your love and support! Please write every once in a while and let me know how it goes. If you reply to this letter, please start fresh with a new email…the computers overload easily and it would take me my whole hour to open my mailbox…

If you want to write a real letter, it would be like a present to get it in the mail! Also, friends from years advanced say that packages do get here with most of the stuff still in them! Take care, friends and loved ones…

much love,

heather star

March 12, 2010

Hello Friends and Family! Saludos desde Cuba ! I am fully immersed in my second semester here in my first year of medical school at ELAM , a.k.a. Revolutionary Disco Summer Camp. The only thing I’m missing to make this the best time of my life is a pair of roller skates.

I’ve tried before to explain a typical day here and it just seems impossible. It could involve a front porch discussion of racial dynamics in Malaysia with a Malaysian of Indian descent, or it could be sneaking rum into the hospital with my flaming Chilean friend and dancing the night away with a Peruvian and a Mexican, both in full leg casts, occasionally taking breaks to translate between the new boy from Vanuatu (small pacific island near Fiji) and the sassy Cuban nurse dressed in the typical sexy Cuban nurse uniform, complete with fishnet hose, platform heels, mini-skirt, cigarette and WWII style nurse’s hat pinned lazily to the back of her head, batting eye-lashes thickened with blue mascara. Or, a typical day could start at 8:15 am with morfophysiology class, followed by history; lunch and PE (yes, I have to take PE and pass tests just like the President’s Fitness Test from elementary school) then go to a series of meetings, some of which I’ve organized, before hitting the books for hours to end the day. I might stop to dance bachata with a Dominican boy in the hall between meetings. you know.

I’m doing well in my classes. The first semester was pure biochem and now we are doing anatomy in the order of bones, muscles, nerves and then organ systems, with embryology interlaced throughout. I accidentally advanced to the finals of an academic competition last semester that set me up to have to give a semester review of embryology in front of the student body as the second part of the competition. I prepared all weekend for the presentation, showed up the Monday morning of the exposition and discovered that I had not understood the directions clearly (pinche espanol!). I was to have prepared a powerpoint presentation (like the other 4 finalists did) but instead found myself standing on a stage, a panel of judges behind me, me wrapping myself in a microphone cord as I chased around the pages of my loose-leaf, handwritten notes that had taken turns escaping my grip…the audience in unison chiming in to provide the Spanish words I was missing or pronouncing horribly. I think I was more of a comedy act that day. I simultaneously distinguished myself as a scholar and a fool through it all! I took a bow at the end.

I’ve gotten involved in student government, as well. Last fall, I was elected as General Secretary of Gender. This means that I get to organize and deal with all things related to gender. So far, that has included: bulimia outbreak in one of the dorms, a self-defense workshop, trying to create a safe environment for the gay community in the context of 50 homophobic countries living together, and the 20 or so girls who get pregnant per month. Earlier this week, in celebration of International Women’s Day, my friend Cassandra and I did a slap-stick silent film style comedy skit called “El Platano Caliente” , The Horny Banana, set to Esquivel’s song “Mucha Muchacha.” We taught the importance of putting condoms on vegetables.

I live in a dorm. There are 14 in my room. The girls are from Honduras , Panama , Venezuela , Guyana , Ecuador , Uruguay , Brazil , and last week, the first North Korean arrived at ELAM . A seventeen year old who also got put in my room. She annoys me. Living like this is amazing. I get to practice patience. I also get to practice telling people to stop doing irritating things. I have totally adjusted to the lack of privacy and the fact that 13 people could see me drooling on my pillow any given afternoon. I have found peace in my little, purple pieces of foam that I shove deeply into my ears…I love my earplugs!!!

On the other hand… Cuba is so full of the kind of sound that you do want to hear! The music is slammin! Just walking down Calle Obisbo in old town Havana on a Friday night you can hear Son and Bolero bands in every bar, or the bata beats of a Santeria ceremony from a house down the alley. The concerts just keep on coming, too! So far, my ears have been privileged to live performances by: Compay Segundo’s band (cuz he died), Manu Chao, Juanez, Orisha, and Los Van Van! Then there is the average Cuban musical genius that you will no doubt run into (because they are everywhere) at 6 in the morning on the malecon (sea wall), rapping an improve un, dos, un, dos, tres rhyme while you are waiting for the buses to start running again. Going to Havana means committing to staying up all night long…which is not hard to do!

Cuba has already given me so much. Aside from the medical education, I have been given 20 rolls of toilet paper, 2 bottles of shampoo, 4 razors, 4 dollars a month, 2 roll on deodorant sticks, 6 bars of soap and a pair of shoes…any of which I can trade for sugar. The opportunity to live internationally has been a great gift, too. I have learned so much about so many different places in the world just by hanging out within the 2 square miles that make up this sprawling seaside campus. I have learned that no matter what small corner of the world someone comes from, or how old they are, or what language they speak, they still like to talk about poop. And it just keeps getting more interesting the more we all learn about the human body.

So Yes, Life is entertaining here. Of course, I find it entertaining when I say something in Spanish like: “I like food without preservatives in it.” Then come to find out that preservativos means condoms. Well, who does like condoms in their food!? I think it is even more entertaining for my friends. And they finally started serving something other than chicken mushy noodle soup with rice in the cafeteria…though we still get it every other day. My friend sent a package to me and it got here with everything in it (thank you Boozy!!!), just to let you know in case you want to send me some FOOD! like yummy raw food bars that don’t have condoms in them (loose leaf mate and earl grey tea would be great, too). It does take a month or two to get here (my b-day is in a month and a half!), so send it soon before I lose the 5 pounds that I tried really hard to put on so that I would have more on the back side to “pop it” like the Caribbean girls taught me with their “bend over” dance…yeh!

Take care Friends and Family. I look forward to reconnecting next summer…

Lovin it, missing you!

Heather Star

P.S…I will be doing an interpretive dance in the Chilean Gala this week to a song called “Viver en Paz” that my friend Vasti is singing in commemoration of the earthquake victims in Chile . I dedicate my dance to my sweet grandmother Lulu who passed away peacefully at home this week and to my mom who gave of herself so much so that Lulu could be at home. I love you*