I left Havana as a 6 month old fetus in November 1959 and I was born and raised in England. In my entire life in
the UK I have never met more then half a dozen Cubans and I grew up with a very scant knowledge of the Island.
At home there was a statue of the Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre on the mantelpiece in the living room and a
statue of Santa Barbara in my parents bedroom. The sounds of Tito Puente, Perez Prado and Celia Cruz often
filled our home but to myself and my elder sister growing up in England, it all seemed a bit strange. To this day I
can only speak a few sentences in Spanish and I prefer Jamaican Reggae to Salsa and my accent is more like
Bob Hoskins than Andy Garcia's.
As I grew older I began to ask more and more about the land of my conception and I read everything I could
on the Islands history and its people. To this day I have never been able to feel fully British despite being born
here and I have never felt really accepted even in today's multi-racial Britain. For me there has always been
something lacking in my life and it has been my Cuban roots. No doubt it would have been different had I'd grown
up in Miami like my cousins, but I didn't and for that reason my experience has been very different, indeed difficult
in some ways, to others of my generation who left the Island after Castro's revolution. Most of my family still live in
Cuba in both Havana and in Nuevitas, my father's home town, and I have only spoken to my half-sister who as far
as I know still lives in Havana. I have many friends who have visited the Island, as Cuba is viewed in a very
different light in Britain to what it is in the US and today the British are the second or third largest number of
visitors there. But I have never strolled along the Malecon or gazed up at the Morro castle or walked through the
streets of old Havana like I would have done had it not been for the course of history. That has been my loss as it
has for many others of my generation who were either born outside of Cuba or who left when they were young.
In 1996 at the time of the Atlanta Olympics I was living and working in Galway City in the Republic of
Ireland and one warm balmy evening as I strolled through the city's center I went for a drink in a wine bar at the
Spanish Arch, an old extension of Galway's city walls which was built in 1584 to protect the quays. The Spanish
Arch is situated on the banks of the River Corrib which flows out into Galway Bay and the Atlantic Ocean and it is
the nearest that I've ever been to Cuba since leaving there as a fetus. It is also the last spot in Europe where
according to legend Christopher Columbus set foot in Europe before discovering the New World in 1492, and for
some reason that evening Cuba was very much on my mind. As I walked into the bar I couldn't help but notice that
the barman looked Latin-American and as I ordered a drink he asked me where I was from in an accent that
sounded just like my father's. “You look like a Cubano” he said as I told him of my origins and he shook my hand
and introduced himself as Juan. Juan was exactly the same age as myself and from Havana and he told me that
he had been a scientist in Cuba and that he had been part of a scientific delegation to Europe and that he had
defected at Shannon airport. Half an hour later Juan finished his shift and joined me for a couple of bottles of wine
at a table outside. As we watched the swans dive for fish in the waters of the River Corrib he told me of the
hardships and sufferings of the people of Cuba and of how much he missed his family back in Havana. I guess it
must have been a real shock for him as much as it was for me to meet there, right at the spot where Columbus
had last stood on dry land before reaching the New World. As the night wore on we got more than a little drunk
and we sang Guantanamera to the amusement of passers-by before shaking hands and saying
goodnight.
I strolled home feeling light headed along the dark mysterious waters of Galway Bay until I reached the
house where I was living, all the time thinking of my uncanny meeting with Juan, an exile from what should have
been my hometown. As I sat in my arm chair and poured myself a drink, I turned on the TV to watch Ireland's RTE
network's coverage of the Atlanta Olympics, only to find that they were showing the final of the Women's volleyball
between the US and Cuba. The Cubans won the Gold Medal that night and amongst the team was a woman with
the very Irish name of O'Farrill, another strange coincidence I thought, and just after meeting Juan as well. It was
so uncanny and I felt like walking down to the bay and stowing away on a ship bound for the Caribbean or
swimming for it. Damn Castro, damn the embargo I thought I wanted to be in Havana, I wanted to walk along all of
those old streets like La Calle Galliano and Neptuno and Prado that I'd heard my mother and father talk about. I
wanted to smoke a Monte Cristo and sip on a Daiquiris at the bar in El Floridita, with the ghost of Papa Hemingway
floating in the background and failing that I would have settled for Coconut Grove in Miami's Little Havana. I fell
asleep in the chair that night and dreamed in Cuban. One day I know I will walk through those streets and return to
the place where I should have been born and raised and live in a free and prosperous Cuba that is neither a one
party dictatorship or a playground for rich Americans to exploit. A Cuba that is independent, tolerant and that is
the paradise that Jose Marti dreamed of.