Tuesday was also full of professional meetings. The first at
the Latin American School of Medicine where every year Cuba educates thousands
of doctors from over one hundred different countries including (quite
surprisingly) the United States and then sends them back to their home
countries to provide care to those in need. After lunch we visited one of
Cuba’s third and highest level of care medical hospital/institutes. We didn’t
really get to see anything by way of the physical facilities, but did have some
interesting conversations with the doctors. In spite of caring for 1500 cases a
day, they profess to have a staggeringly low number of complaints (10 a year)
which they conclude is a credit to their strong focus on communication with
both the patient and the patient’s family. I’m sure there is some of that and
some difference in the culture in general, but the fact that the hospitals are
owned by Castro's government must have some part also.
For dinner Tuesday night we went to the National Hotel in
downtown Havana. First we had a drink at the bar where the walls are covered
with montages of celebrities who visited the hotel grouped by decades. Everyone
from Johnny Weismuller, Betty Grable and George Raft to Jimmy Buffett and
Leonardo DiCaprio. Then after dinner we piled back onto the bus to travel via
the tunnel under the harbor to the Morro Castle which was built around the turn
of the 17th century to defend the city against pirate attacks. Nowadays
they hold a nightly ceremony to reenact the old cannon shot that used to signal
that the gates of the city were closing to secure the area for the night.
Unfortunately it started raining, More unfortunately, in
spite of the fact that I was the one who had sent out an email to all of the
delegates encouraging them to bring an umbrella because you ‘just never know
when a squall is gonna kick up’ in the Caribbean, I did not have my umbrella
with me. Our tour guide, Beatriz, was apparently pretty surprised that we elected
to go on out to the point to see the firing of the gun. At every dry spot, she
would stop and ask if we were all continuing on. We would say, of course. She would seem surprised. And then we'd go a bit further. The rain was off and on and
variably heavy, but it was a lovely view from up on top looking back to Havana. And, seriously, how many times do you think you are going to be in Havana? So rain or shine, we were watching the cannon shot.
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