• Submitted by: manso
• Editorial Articles
• 12 / 08 / 2010

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By Dwight Dana. Published: December 07, 2010.FLORENCE. Dr. Hunter Stokes and J. Parks Garrison said their recent mission trip to Cuba proved to be an eye-opening experience.

Stokes, a retired Florence opthamologist, and Garrison, a retired oil company executive, detailed their visit during the Florence Golden K Kiwanis meeting Tuesday morning at Steve and Donna’s Restaurant.

The visit was a humanitarian trip through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in which they along with others in their group delivered medical and educational supplies.

Stokes said President Obama has opened Cuba up to some American tourism.

Parks and Stokes gave a slide presentation of their trip in October. Their group spent the first three days of the week-long trip in Havana. They stayed in a luxurious hotel that had to use water from tanker trucks because the water pipes to the hotel aren’t fit for use.

“The people in Cuba don’t own anything,” Garrison said. “Restaurants with 12 chairs or more are owned by the government.”

Garrison said downtown Havana is crumbling. Nothing has been done to upgrade the buildings since before Fidel Castro took over in 1959.

But they enjoyed the ballet “Dracula” while visiting and also watching Cubans have heated discussions on the “hot corner” of a park. Garrison said Cubans are baseball fanatics and most of the arguing was about baseball.

The housing for average Cubans is in squalid buildings. Laundry has to be hung out to dry because there are no washer or dryers.

And most of the cars are vintage 1950s’ American models. They showed a slide of a 1937 Ford taxi and another of a 1950 blue Ford with bullet holes in the side.

The group Stokes and Garrison were traveling with dropped off their medical supplies at a Catholic mission. They deposited their educational material at a school in the countryside.

“Each community has a physician,” Stokes said. “Medicine is totally socialized, but the doctors know all the people they serve in the community.

“Health care in Cuba is excellent. It far exceeds what we have in this country as well as anywhere else in the world. Their education system is also good.”

Stokes said all Cubans receive $30 a month from the government. This includes those who work and those who don’t work.

He said their guide was one of the lucky ones. In addition to the $30 she receives from the government, she was also allowed to keep the tips from those in the group, a sizeable amount compared to the monthly allotment.

Stokes said Cuba “desperately needs money,” but infrastructure-wise, it’s not ready for an onslaught of tourism. He said it can handle small groups, but a cruise ship would cause havoc because Cuba doesn’t have the accommodations to handle that many people.

“We felt safe the whole time we were there, even at night,” Stokes said. “The Cubans are clean, nice and pleasant people. There are no drugs or guns.”

Source: www2.scnow.com/news/2010/dec/07/