In Cuba

The small boats are gathering in the harbour to escort the pope across Grand Harbour from Kalkara creek. He is scheduled to meet Malta's young people at the Valletta waterfront during the next hour. I will go up onto my roof to see what I can. All of Malta it seems has turned out to catch a glimpse of the pontiff as he rides in his popemobile through the streets, or appears in balconies or on specially constructed stages.

I just wanted to get this post started - I have been promising it for months! Malta's weekend fete for the pope has got me thinking about it. When Fidel Castro ousted the dictator Batista to move his country towards post-colonial independence, he recognised the importance of the catholic religion for Cuban people and he did not try to use force to eradicate the church. It makes Cuba into a fascinating island of contrasts where church and state are separate and warily tolerated. In Havana, we even stayed in a hotel run by nuns in their convent. The photo is a street scene in Havana.

Thursday. I've just got back from the lunchtime concert at St Catherine of Italy. This evening I'll go down to Valletta Waterfront for the University Wind Ensemble playing at Sagrestia Vault. Sometimes my life becomes too crowded to fit in my writing.

But Cuba has become part of my life now. I am reading a fat book called "In conversation with Fidel" by Ignacio Ramonet. Ramonet suggests that Cuba cannot be dismissed as a quaint anomaly, an outdated and fading remnant of a communist era. Today, old man Castro remains an inspiring leader of radical resistance to globalisation. In this scenario, identification with a unique local culture is enriched and empowered by an awareness of the interconnection of all local contexts in a global network. I would like to think that old people in general may be part of the radical resistance to globalisation. Malta is my new base, my beloved and respected "local", yet I remain connected to and concerned about the global forces that shape our lives. In a small way, perhaps I can use the freedom of privileged old age to make life a little better for some of the other people who share this globe at this point in time.

One of the ways we tried to do this when the Brisbane Combined Unions choir started planning our trip with the Australian Union Singers to the International Choral Festival in Santiago in Cuba was to invite everyone to carry with them small gifts like toiletries, educational and medical supplies. We were advised that giving individual gifts was frowned upon but that we could donate to organisations who would distribute among their networks. In fact it wasn't as easy as this. When we arrived, we gathered all the gifts together, made a list of everything and tried to locate the appropriate bodies to receive the considerable piles of items. We would have liked to sing in a hospital and a school as a marker of our gifts, but it just became too complicated to coordinate such a process. After a lot of democratic debate on our part about what we should do, we just ended up giving everything to the organisers of the festival, together with the list of items in the hope that they would be able to distribute appropriately. I realised then how real is the issue of re-distribution of resources. We were trying to act in an immediate context transferring a tiny amount of resources from one local to another and we couldn't really negotiate a satisfying way to do it. That experience must be magnified enormously by the huge amounts of aid being shuttled around the globe between governments and NGOs.

So many levels to discover in Cuba! Perhaps that is why I have put off writing this blog. At the tourist level, Havana is fascinating and deserves weeks of wandering the streets and visiting the galleries and monuments; Santiago's history as a birthplace of the revolution merits more time than we were able to give and the countryside, the sea and mountains call me back; the old cars and buses and motorbikes are iconic; there really is music all the time in the streets and bars. Mohitos, the national drink with rum and mint, became a daily ritual and that reminds me that the mint I am growing in a pot on my kitchen windowsill is now prolific and if I get some rum and look up the mohito recipe, I could resurrect that ritual from time to time!

The focus for us, of course, was the music. For eight days in Santiago we fitted in the tourist visits to the beach and to the sights around our daily rehearsals and performances. Our hotel was right in the centre and overlooked the busy central square. From the rooftop terrace where we had breakfast, we looked across at the bell tower of the cathedral and beyond that to the river. The hotel management found us a room to use as our base and here we met every day to rehearse and plan our schedule. Sometimes it was very hot but everyone managed to keep their shirts on both literally and metaphorically. Our performances were well received although they were very different to the Cuban presentations. In Cuba, the choirs are professional with choristers selected at a young age to make music their lives. The choirs sang beautiful, polyphonic music and presented themselves in formal costumes. Our choir are all volunteers who sing rousing tales about social justice. We are used to singing with gusto outdoors at rallies and on picket lines. So it was not a surprise when the founder director of the festival, a man in his 80s who taught us a song and conducted us when we sang at the music school, said to our base section that we would sing more beautifully if we sang more softly!

On a personal level, Cuba will always be spending three days with my sister and my nephew. My sister travelled from California and my nephew from New York to meet us in Santiago. It was difficult for them to get there because of the USA embargo on its citizens visiting Cuba so they came via Mexico. They had never met my choir before yet they agreed not only to come to Cuba but also to act as interpreter/MC and official photographer for the choir. My sister has been learning Spanish for a few years and my nephew would like to be a full-time photographer. Cuba has become a memorable node in my global network and I will treasure the memory of my sister standing on stage in front of a huge Spanish-speaking audience and daring to address them in their own language, of my nephew flashing his camera with great joy as we nervously undertook our first sound check. Today my nephew has his first exhibition in a NY gallery and I am so glad to have a link with his achievement in another part of the globe. I hope he continues to flash his camera all over the world!