Graham Sowa’s Diary

If a history of Cuba was examined from the perspective of petroleum one could call the time between the end of subsidized oil imports from the Soviet Union and the beginning of similar subsidization from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela the Period of the Bicycle.

It is election time in the United States (Nov.4) and Cuba (Oct.21). While the campaign has been going on for over a year in my home country I have only just recently seen the candidate biographies for the Cuban elections posted up in the windows of schools, hospitals, and bakeries.

I’m at the Dr. Salvador Allende Hospital in Cerro, a neighborhood in south-central Havana. It’s a hospital campus that should be the set of any period movie set in 19th century Europe.

In high school I wanted to go to Cuba. This urge probably had something to do with my profoundly inspired, but inexperienced, political ideology. I renewed my aspirations to go to Cuba in University. But this time with more focus. I wanted to be a doctor.

Doctors and medical students, at least the ones I know, always have good excuses. These excuses involve talk of never ending workloads and numberless facts to learn and apply within a short time frame.

Cuba deals with its own daemon vectors. In the Caribbean the Aedes genus mosquito is responsible to passing along dengue fever. West Nile, which has been at the top of the news in Texas, is spread by the Culex genus.

In Cuba the Catholic sect of the Christian religion is proactively broadening topics of discourse in the country. At the same time, in Russia, a trio of female musicians is facing a 7-year incarceration for their less than one minute song protest in the Russian Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Last week I completed Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). Studying for this exam the past two months explains my literary absence from this collective blog of open-minded writing from Cuba.

I have less than 100 hours left before I will leave the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) as a boarding student. The coming academic year I will be sent to Havana City, most likely to the Salvador Allende Hospital, where I will complete my medical training.

When asked about the lifestyle and living conditions at the Latin American School of Medicine I have often described them as “like a military barracks, but without the discipline”.