I lived in Cuba for 20 years. Moving back to the US has me questioning the meaning of 'home.'

07.05.2024 - 10:45 / insider.com / Fidel Castro

Whitening. Herbal. Charcoal. Color changing? I'm in the toothpaste aisle at Target, dumbfounded by a selection that runs several shelves long and as many high. After more than 20 years in Cuba, where Close-Up and La Perla were the only choices for most of that time, I'm overwhelmed by the number of options. If Target triggers paralysis, I shudder to think what terror Costco might elicit.

I was 32 when I left New York after the World Trade Center attacks. I was looking for a more humanistic and peaceful place to call home. A place where telling a good joke and checking in on older neighbors means more than what car you drive or the whiteness of your teeth. I was hankering for more community and less consumerism.

In early 2002, the door of opportunity swung open: I packed a single suitcase and a box of books. A reporting job was waiting for me in Havana.

The first Cuban saying I learned was "no es fácil." No, it's not easy. I resigned myself to eating rice every day, sometimes twice, to quiet my stomach. I had no cellphone or internet — technologies not yet mainstreamed in Cuba — or even a landline. Instead, I leaned on friends with connectivity — a hard, early lesson on the favor economy that keeps Cubans afloat.

I rode the bus and took collective taxis, usually a 1950s Detroit hunker with wire hangers for door handles. I thought my Spanish was OK, but Cubans laughed when I spoke, including the kindergarten crowd.

It took years, but I pushed through tears and despair to adapt and thrive. I covered Cuba's medical disaster team in post-earthquake Pakistan and Haiti, crossed the island on a 1946 Harley-Davidson researching a book, and had an 8-hour marathon meeting with Fidel Castro, among other adventures.

After spending two decades in a country so wildly different from my own and experiencing more than most, I didn't realize how "Cubanized" I'd become.

Related stories

Back in the US, where privacy, personal space, and punctuality are prized, I'm realizing that in Cuba, I was more of an immigrant than a visitor or an expat. The distinction is nuanced but important: immigrants integrate, visitors and expats replicate. Diplomats, retirees, and business people living abroad often try to recreate a semblance of home.

In Cuba, there are upscale "foreigner" neighborhoods — like Siboney and Cubanacán — and international schools for children. There are specialty stores that stock familiar items, making it possible to approximate a more-like-home diet. Some of these expats may not even make an effort to speak Spanish. As an immigrant, on the other hand, I made efforts to adapt, sponging up all the information and mechanisms for how to get along in my adopted country.

Alas, with my sponge saturated and my family