By: Mark Moffa
WASHINGTON – When 17-year-old Kelly Damm went to Cuba this summer, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
During the summer between her junior and senior years at The Peddie School in Hightstown, Kelly spent four weeks in Cuba. The first three weeks were spent taking Spanish classes at the University of Havana.
The trip marked the culmination of a program called Principio, part of an experimental alternative curriculum at The Peddie School focusing on hands-on experiences as opposed to textbook learning.
Kelly and her group were given a $2,500 budget to plan a four- to six-week trip anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
"I kind of went down there expecting the Cubans to be brainwashed that communism is the answer," Kelly said. "It was kind of hard to tell whether they actually believed it."
Kelly’s mother, Peggy Damm, teaches at the Windsor School in Washington Township. She knew a few families from Cuba who lived in the area and thought it would be a good idea for Kelly to talk to them upon returning from her trip.
Cuban natives Alicia Parylak of Washington and Mercedes Rangel of Plainsboro met with Kelly to share their experiences and hear from Kelly about their homeland, which they have not seen in more than 30 years.
"I don’t want to go back to Cuba right now," Ms. Parylak said. She would like to return someday if Cuba were free of communist dictator Fidel Castro, but for now, she will not return. Ms. Rangel feels the same way.
Ms. Rangel was born in 1958, one year before Mr. Castro took control in Cuba. Her father, who was in the Cuban army, had always been pro-military. But he didn’t trust Mr. Castro.
"When Castro took over he was one of the first people that said ‘I don’t like this man, I don’t think he’s going to work out,’" Ms. Rangel said. "So, my father was in hiding for a couple of years, because he was with a militia group that was trying to overrun the government."
Her parents split up when her father went on the run.
"All this time my father was in hiding he had a different name," Ms. Rangel said. She remembers obscure visits with her dad at the zoo in Havana.
"It always had to be in a very public place," she said.
"We had to be careful what we said, we were like brainwashed (by our mother) – ‘You can’t say you saw your father you can’t say where you saw him, you don’t know him by his real name’" Ms. Rangel said.
The government eventually caught up to him and sentenced him to a jail term of 18 years.
"He was in solitary confinement for a while," Ms. Rangel said. "He’s told us very nasty stories.
"He really can’t speak about it because he gets really emotional, and in a way, I don’t want to hear it because it upsets me too," she said. "It’s just things that you try to forget and you just move on. There’s a lot I wish I could sit down and ask, but…."
In 1980 the United States agreed to accept political prisoners from Cuba in the Mariel boat lift, and her father was one of them.
Ms. Rangel’s family did, however, have to pay $10,000 to get him home, and although he didn’t arrive on the boat on which he was scheduled, he eventually made his way to Key West, Fla., and then to Arkansas.
"They (the American government) had a military place in Arkansas, and that’s where they were putting everybody because they had to investigate who these Cubans were," Ms. Rangel said.
In addition to political prisoners, other prisoners, including dangerous criminals or the mentally ill, were shipped to the United States.
Kelly told the story of a present-day Cuba segregated between Cubans and tourists.
"We were promised the reality tour and we really didn’t get the Cuban reality," Kelly said. Instead of staying in a guest house, her group stayed in a three-star hotel with air conditioning, HBO, and maid service.
Medicine, Kelly said, was readily available to tourists, but hard to come by for Cubans.
"If you go into the hospital, you have to bring your own sheets, you have to bring your own pillows, you have to bring your towels, because they don’t have any bedding," Ms. Rangel said.
The differences between Cuban and foreign accommodations became obvious when Kelly and a few friends traveled south of Havana to Santiago for a few days. There was a train for tourists and a train for Cubans, and separate sections in the train stations as well.
On the trip to Santiago, the group rode on the regular train, for cultural experience, and because it was $12 cheaper.
"On the way there it was raining," Kelly said. "It came through the ceiling and it was all over us. It was a bit chilly because the windows wouldn’t shut and the seats were kind of really hard.
"On the way back they put us on the tourist train even through we didn’t pay for it and it was absolutely freezing and they don’t have blankets," Kelly said. It was freezing because the air conditioning was at full blast, she said.
"There were actually some Cubans around us who, I guess, had managed to pay for it, and we asked the woman if it would be possible to turn the air conditioning down a little bit and they were like, ‘No, we love it!’" Kelly said.
"They’re lucky if they have a fan or even like a hand-fan to fan themselves," Ms. Rangel explained.
As Ms. Rangel and Ms. Parylak looked over Kelly’s pictures from the trip, Kelly explained the other reason she ventured to Santiago.
Besides seeking the "real" Cuban experience, which she did find by staying with a family who was illegally renting out half their house for extra money, Kelly was on a mission from a Cuban friend at school to deliver a package of medicine and money to the friend’s grandfather.
Bringing the medicine into Cuba was probably legal, Kelly said. Delivering money, however, is not legal. But she made it to the grandfather’s house and delivered the package.
The pictures and talk of Cuba had Ms. Rangel and Ms. Parylak reminiscing about the trail and tribulation they endured as young children trying to leave their country.
Three years after Mr. Castro took over Cuba, government officials entered one of Ms. Parylak’s family pharmacies. Her family owned three pharmacies and a drug wholesaler in Cuba.
The government told her family that they had to sell the pharmacy. Officials took over the other two pharmacies the next year, in 1963.
"They came in and said, ‘We’re taking over the pharmacy you have to leave,’ and that’s it, you couldn’t even take a piece of paper with you," Ms. Parylak said.
"After they took the pharmacies, I think, there was a shortage of pharmacists, and then my mother was employed in a pharmacy so she was making money," she said. "My father, however, he could not get a job."
In 1964, the family applied to leave the country, a process that took four years.
Then, in the darkness of a night in 1968, government officials came to tell her mom that it was time to leave.
"They came into our house and they told her, ‘OK, you have to leave,’" she said. "The military guy, he waited for us.
"They walked with my mother and my grandmother room-to-room with a guy with a gun in his hand," Ms. Rangel said, recalling her 1967 experience.
A government official went through the house, taking an inventory of all possessions.
"They wanted to make sure that when we left the house, whatever they saw, we didn’t give to our relatives that were staying behind," Ms. Rangel said.
"We had to make sure that we didn’t touch anything," she added. "If something, even a picture, was missing, they would use that as a reason for detaining you from leaving country."
Ms. Parylak said her mom called a friend to ask for a ride to a relative’s house.
"We stayed at my aunt’s house for a couple of weeks or so, and my mother constantly had to go to some office to find out when we could leave," Ms. Parylak said. "That’s the only time I have ever heard my mother curse. She was so upset because she had to go early in the morning until late at night every single day to see when we could leave.
"Finally, we got a call at my aunt’s house, again in the middle of the night, saying for us to come to the airport," Ms. Parylak said.
"It’s like the Holocaust," Ms. Rangel added. "They just come and they take an inventory of everything you have, and you’re only allowed a suitcase, and everything stays behind."
The Cuban people, Ms. Parylak said, are disappointed and frustrated with the restrictions and limitations imposed on their lives and dreams.
"And if you do have dreams you can’t really fulfill them in that society," Kelly said.
She mentioned that during her trip she didn’t see any people her age.
Ms. Rangel explained that most children ages 13 to 18 are in military "war camp."
"This is a government camp where you are forced to work for the government," she said. "They treated you like you were slaves, they didn’t treat you like a person."
Her cousin and two brothers had to go to camp.
Kelly said the college students at the University of Havana said the younger kids were "still in school."
She also described how the Cuban police would question any Cuban seen with the tourists in Havana.
"Every time we would walk with a Cuban, they would card them. They would call them aside and card them so they were responsible for us for the night – so if anything happens to us they would know," Kelly said.
"Well, actually, that’s what they are saying," Ms. Parylak responded. "They probably want to make sure that you’re not giving any dollars to the Cubans or that you’re not bringing them to places where they’re not supposed to go."
In keeping with the theme of segregation, certain establishments like bars were off limits to Cubans.
The conversation covered a plethora of topics, ranging from rations in Cuba to the women’s arrival in the American school system without knowing a word of English.
Ms. Parylak said she recently met a Cuban woman on a plane and asked about the current rations. The woman provided a list of the monthly rations for food and other items. The list includes a mention of soap – every person is allowed half a bar of soap every two months.
"The soap that they get is horrible, it doesn’t smell and it hardly lathers," Ms. Rangel said. "And they have to very careful how much they use, because if they don’t have any soap they can’t wash their clothes for the month."
She said she remembers Cubans having a choice between bar soap and laundry detergent, so that one had to either wash their clothes with bar soap or wash themselves with laundry soap.
Ms. Rangel said that many resort to stealing as a way of life.
"You steal from me, I steal from you and that’s how we all have a little bit of everything," she said.
People steal pure alcohol from hospitals to make their own potable alcohol in a pressure cooker. Others may steal nails from a textile factory so they can hang pictures on the wall.
As Ms. Parylak sat in her dining room with Ms. Rangel looking at Kelly’s pictures of Cuba, the Cuban natives realized that their homeland may be near the United States – it sits 90 miles south of Florida – but it still is so far away.

