Only In Cuba…
In 1998, ten years after I first arrived in Cuba, I thought it was time for my first book about the island. Cuba´s history has always been moving but the 90ies were even more special. There was the fall of German wall and the breaking apart of the entire East bloc. The consequences for Cuba could not have been more dramatic and led to the so-called ‘periodo especial’, with sometimes unbearable conditions for the Cubans. Much to report about and so my writer colleague and friend Henky Hentschel and I started producing many stories just for this book. One was about Daritza, a six-year-old girl.
Amidst this deep crisis, in 1992, Daritza was born as a daughter to farmers living in the mountains of Pinar del Rio in Western Cuba. When Daritza was six and it was time to send her to school, her parents faced a problem. The closest school was 4 km away, too far for her to walk in the mountains. And the parents did not feel comfortable with the idea of sending the girl to a boarding school in the province’s capital. Without giving it much thought, Cuba’s Ministry of Education decided: If the girl can not go to school, we have to bring the school to the girl!
So, a school was built atop a hill just across the hill where Daritza and her family lived. Every morning, before sunrise, Giraldo, a primary teacher, would hitch a hike with a heavy-duty truck that took workers to a mine in the mountains. He would get off close to Daritza’s home, have breakfast together with the family and then he and Daritza would walk over to the other hill where the little wooden school had been built. And there, Giraldo would teach Daritza, in a school that had only one room, one chair, one table and one chalkboard. A school built only for one child, for six-year-old Daritza. Possible only in Cuba…
PS: The photo was first published in the book: 'Salsa einer Revolution'
