Hope and healing in Havana, Cuba

Sun, June 22, 2008
Hope and healing in Havana, Cuba
By ELLIOT FERGUSON

"Cubano?"

The old man in the threadbare grey shirt asks repeatedly.

He reaches out a hand, crooked and weathered with age.

"Cubano?"

"Canadiense," a young orderly answers.

Inside a nearby room, another elderly man lies in his pyjamas on a bed.

Under a canopy, staff and residents play a game of dominoes.

Outside it's raining.

The last tropical storm of the 2007 hurricane season, Noel, which in a
few days would hit Nova Scotia, is churning its way over the sea north
of Cuba.

Oxford county resident John Dubois, 66, founder of the Dubois Charitable
Foundation, slowly walks through one of the dormitories. There are about
40 beds in this room and the next.

"We sent down all of these beds and the nightstands," Dubois says.

"These came out of a nursing home in St. Thomas."

The furniture is part of an ongoing effort by Dubois and volunteers from
across southern Ontario to help the poorest of Cuba.

This seniors residence in Ciego De Avila is just one of dozens of
facilities in Cuba -- old age homes, orphanages, hospitals, clinics --
receiving help from a charity Dubois and his wife run out of his
Woodstock-area home.

Religion doesn't motivate him, nor does politics.

"Our work is for the people," he says. "We have an obligation to share."

The organization originally focused on collecting obsolete medical
equipment from Canadian hospitals, but has expanded to include clothing,
household goods, toys and tools.

"We have so much in Canada. We are blessed, living in a peaceful and
affluent country," Dubois says.

Cuba's situation through the 1990s was, at best, precarious.

In 1989, close to 80% of the country's trade was with the Soviet Union
and its eastern bloc allies. Cuba sold its sugar in exchange for oil,
food and billions in subsidies and investment.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did Cuba's international trade
relationships.

Cubans call the next years the Periodo Especial, the Special Period.

By 1993, the country's gross domestic product had fallen almost 35% and
essential items, such as medicines, hospital equipment and construction
materials became scarce.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the
average Cuban ate about 3,000 calories a day in 1989. Four years later,
they were eating 1,900 calories, the equivalent of one less meal a day.

In the mid 1990s, the country embraced a new industry, tourism, and it
was on a vacation to the island that John and Marion Dubois were struck
by the lack of supplies at many hospitals and other facilities.

Coming home, they resolved to do something about it.

The first shipment the Dubois' sent to Cuba was in 2001 and consisted of
20 used dialysis machines.

Dubois has learned Spanish, and he and his wife Marion have built the
foundation into the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) working
in Cuba, annually sending more than $4-million worth of materials to the
island.

"Our whole bilateral aid program is about $5 million. The Dubois
foundation almost reaches that on its own," says Alexandra Bugailiskis,
who, in August, finished a four-year stint as Canada's ambassador to Cuba.

"The Dubois foundation would be the largest single Canadian NGO working
on that island and probably the largest NGO of any country working on
that island."

This year, the foundation sent eight shipping containers to Cuba.

All of this is accomplished without any government funding.

"That is what makes it sustainable," Bugailiskis says. "When you have to
rely on government it is not always sustainable.

The home front

The screeching sound of packing tape coming off the roll punctuates June
deKoning's sentences.

The box she stands next to is filled to the top with markers, pencil
crayons and books and is bound for an orphanage in Central Cuba.

"If you go there and you see the need that is there, then you'll know
why I do it. There wouldn't be a question to ask," she says.

DeKoning's is part of a group of volunteers network behind the Dubois
Charitable Foundation.

She sorts through a selection of books, eliminating those not suitable
for the Spanish-speaking children who will read them next.

Arthur's First Kiss, The Tutter Family Reunion and a Sweet Valley High
novel end up on the pile not making the trip.

A short distance away, Frank Gevaert rearranges the parts of a bicycle
so it doesn't take up so much room when packed into a shipping container.

He removes the pedals, lowers the seat as far as it will go and turns
the handlebars so it is parallel with the bike's frame.

Roberto Martinez, his wife Vivian Paz and their daughter Gabriela spent
their Saturday driving from Brampton to help finish packing a container.

Born in Camaguay, Martinez moved to Canada almost five years ago.

His first-hand knowledge of the hardships Cubans face makes volunteering
a matter of patriotic duty.

"I am Cuban. As a Cuban I will give to Cuba. That is why we are here,"
Martinez says.

"I come to help because I am 100% Cuban, always," adds Paz. "I feel
better when I can help my people, my country.

"I appreciate these people," she says of the other volunteers. "They are
not Cuban people and all the time they are helping," she says.

"We've all got the same love for Cuba," adds volunteer Steve Liard of
Toronto, who regularly drives to Woodstock to help load containers.

"It fills a need for them and it fills an emotional need for us," he says.

The Hospital

It's a numbing experience, walking through this hospital.

Room after room reveals more residents, all young adults, sitting in the
sweltering heat. Little in the way of a breeze can be felt drifting
through the darkened rooms.

Most, if not all of the 168 patients living, are severely mentally and
physically disabled. Many can do little to take care of themselves.

"It's not pretty, but it's reality," says Dubois.

"You can see the amount of laundry they do here in a day," Dubois says,
referring to the bed linen that hangs to dry everywhere.

Dubois recently sent a pallet of laundry detergent to the hospital. It's
all gone.

The facility's director, Rudy Garcia Cobas, leads Dubois over to a metal
door, locked with a heavy padlock.

Unlocking it, they enter to find the room filled to the ceiling with
stacks of mattresses and piles of walkers and wheelchairs.

'All I need is money'

Sandra Lopes is one of Dubois' partners in working to relieve the plight
of average Cubans.

In her late 20s, Lopes is tall and thin with long black hair tied back
in a ponytail. She is director of the Portuguese non-governmental
organization (NGO) Oikos' work in Cuba.

In her small office four blocks from the famous Malecon seawall, she
spreads an architectural drawing of a new facility which, if built, will
replace the crumbling building in which the residents currently live.

Spreading the blueprints out on her desk, Lopes explains that conditions
at the existing hospital are deplorable.

Oikos has committed to building a new home for the residents of the
hospital if Lopes and her staff of four can find the money to do it.

The next challenge is raising the needed $1.4 million.

"All I need is money, not love, money," Lopes says, echoing the mantra
of charities everywhere.

The future

The doors of the shipping container closed relatively easy this time.
With a few last-minute additions of wheelchairs and walkers, volunteers
pushed the doors shut.

This container included dozens of mattresses, toys, clothing, an X-ray
machine and a pair of medical imaging machines.

The volunteers often need to push on the container doors with a forklift
to get them closed and locked.

"That's how we know it's been packed right," explains Dubois.

Today, after four hours of work at Dubois' Woodstock-area house, the
propane-powered forklift is a victim of the near-freezing weather.

But the loss of the forklift is made for up by the sheer number of
people on hand for today's loading.

"I feel really good about what we do and I certainly want to continue,"
says Marion Dubois, 63, who organizes much of the packing and sorting
done by the volunteers.

Last year, Marion Dubois spent more than 1,200 hours on foundation
business and all three of the couple's sons -- Damien, Chris and Greg
and his wife Suzanne -- are involved as are seven of their grandchildren.

Getting the next generation involved in the foundation's work is
important to its future, Marion Dubois says.

"I hope we can interest some younger people," she says.

"Obviously, if we're going to keep this going we need a nucleus of
younger people."

http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2008/06/22/5950671-sun.html