 a talk show and books that we think you should read. Today we're trying to prove to you that a book can be both inspirational, political, and practical. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and my guest today is Heidi Sipkas, the author of Cubicle to Cuba. Heidi has actually authored three books and she's working on her fourth book right now. She's an adventurer, she's the creator of LUCAP Mantra, and she is also a TEDx speaker. Heidi has more than 10 years experienced in travel to Cuba and her insights on the history, the culture, and the politics of the area are very precious to me. Heidi, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Better said, mahalo, or gracias, today. De nada. I'm practicing my Spanish here. Well, let's just dive into it and I'm going to start this conversation trying to help our viewers find out how did you become the expert in travel to Cuba? How did it all begin in white Cuba? Press rewind about 20 years. I moved to South Florida and South Florida is kind of the epicenter of where a lot of Cuban Americans have called home. My neighbor was a Cuban American. There was Cuban food. There was, I almost thought I needed a passport to go from my county, from Broward County down to Miami Dade. It was such a different culture and I had traveled since the age of 10 and I was always very curious and I had even studied abroad in Spain and became bilingual in Spanish and English and I was confused why there was mixed messages going on in not only stories that I heard about Cuba from neighbors, colleagues, but also in the news and so I wanted to uncover some of the truth or to experience it myself. So after nearly 10 years of living in South Florida, I took the plunge and experienced Cuba myself. I have gone to the once forbidden island about 100 times, whether that's my own personal travel to create the stories for Cuba to Cuba, whether that's going on the cruises that used to go to Cuba or being a tour guide for the educational people to people travel that was open basically early in the Obama years. Well, this is absolutely wonderful and in my effort to create an authentic show, I even arranged for a rooster in the background. I don't know if you've noticed that. That's actually in Hawaii. It's not in Cuba, but it is what it is. So your book has a lot of stories about your travels to Cuba and there are all sorts of challenges and there are all sorts of solutions to the challenges, but my personal question to you is, do you ever clash with the Cuban police or military and what was that like? Never personally was I in a clash, but when you are in a country, I guess I would say this about any neighborhood, someone else's home or someone else's country. You should respect the laws or mannerisms of that family neighborhood country. So in Cuba with the relations between the United States always being kind of on teeter-totter, I did my best to work with the Cuban government as well as the counterparts on the US side. As a tour leader, that meant that I needed to follow a program of educational activities with my participants that ranged from talking to a Cuban baseball player to doing a Cuban cooking class to having a discussion with a Cuban diplomat about US-Cuba relations, but all of these things were approved not only from the Cuban government side but also the United States side and I needed to write up and submit this to the Office of Foreign Asset Control in Washington DC. However, I did have a couple occasions where the Cuban government stopped our buses when we were in Cuba and they said we need to fumigate because there's a mosquito issue in this province, so no questions asked. We all vacated, the bus got out, didn't know how long it was going to take, but you know when on island time you've got to throw out your New York minute. I guess another occasion that I maybe had any questioning from the Cuban officials was upon entry to Cuba because they wanted to know what I was doing there, what I was doing with whether it was 20 or 30 individuals and they wanted to know how much money I was bringing into the country. Very important. Yes. So you're the creator of Lukap Mantra and I'm going to let you actually explain it in the two sentences. I love that description and I'm sure you had to use it occasionally. Am I right? Yes. So earlier in my life I had a traumatic accident that made me reevaluate how we can deal with roadblocks that happen in all of our personal lives, but also when you're traveling you run into quite a few hurdles and so Lukap is a reminder for us all to do two things and that's be in the moment and find the upside in whatever situation that may be and when you're traveling with two dozen people in a foreign country there are going to be quite a few hiccups whether that's power outages, whether that's no water for the shower, whether that be a hurricane coming towards Cuba and we need to get back to Miami the following day. Many things along the way forced us to be in the moment and say, you know what, right now we can enjoy our dinner and we'll figure out what the next step is after we finish dinner. I think we all should do this anytime not just when traveling and not only just in Cuba, right? Yeah, you can do it here well in the Hawaiian Islands traffic if you're stuck in Waikiki traffic or let's face it Lahaina traffic going back to Kihei or elsewhere we all could take a moment and say what's the upside? Well I get to look at my rear view mirror and see a beautiful sunset or I'm listening to my favorite radio station. Well speaking of upside and I'm going to move the discussion into the more serious portion and today it was announced that the State Department will resume processing immigrant visas for Cubans that want to immigrate to the US primarily based on our I think it's the type of visa given to family for family reunification so that's great news. I should mention that the last time such a visa was processed was in 2017 so it feels like this is great news but the US-Cuban relationship has been one step forward two steps backward and I wonder how if this affected your traveling to Cuba first of all and secondly your Cuban families the Cuban friends or families that you know there how do they look at this relationship between US and Cuba? Do they trust it? Do they doubt it? They want more of it? Do they want less of it? Well US-Cuba relations is kind of like two families that are kind of at odds the Pat Beals and McCoys or maybe we can go back to the Romeo and Juliet that they have so many commonalities but for 60 years they have been very tense and as many of you may have heard about the embargo that has been in place since Kennedy's years that we have isolated Cuba quite significantly economically speaking and so it is a testament I think to Cuba that they have survived with this embargo for the last 60 years. What we've seen in the recent past however is a warming of those relationships with between the two countries specifically speaking under President Obama that was when travel was opened. One large economic plus that the Cubans have had with that warming was an increase in remittances so Western Union and having family members in the state sending money to their families in Cuba as well as for the first time in about 80 years a sitting US president actually traveled to Cuba and traveled with his family to Cuba so showing that it was safe to travel that Cuba was not a terrorist nation as it was on that list until Obama and it was then later put on with President Trump. One of the things that also happened was commercial flights to Cuba as well as cruises to Cuba so that more people from the United States could actually experience the beauty of this culture the of course the Rolling Museum with the 1950s American cars that everyone is enamored with but also this contrast of 1900s architecture Baroque architecture the classic Caribbean colors also arts music on every corner it was a wonderful time that I think my Cuban friends that I call family as well as anyone who had traveled with me whether on tours or with the cruises thought that this was like the heyday this was the the water shed moment that things were going to warm up at the end of Obama's term he did something that was quite interesting and he reversed the wet foot dry foot policy which meant that if a Cuban came either via the ocean or via land and ended up in the United States that they could claim asylum and then start the process of becoming a citizen and he reversed that and so so many people were puzzled about this but that meant that the United States was treating Cuban immigrants just as they treated anyone else coming from another country so many people had mixed emotions about this because he thought opening up but then closing but the exodus from Cuba by the youth has been really not necessarily a problem for Cuba but sad because it creates isolation family members in the states or in other countries and not being able to go back to Cuba also that the youth are taking their education and using it elsewhere so it kind of creates a brain drain in in Cuba so let's talk post Obama we get into Trump and somewhat closing back of the doors limiting travel limiting remittances to $1,000 a quarter as well as ending cruises to Cuba limiting flights to only Havana so there was kind of the opening of doors and then shutting them closed and that was economically very stifling for Cuba it depends on tourism as one of its economic venues it's not its most fruitful it's actually its most fruitful export is its own Cuban professionals I'm not sure if you know but they have an excellent medical education and system in Cuba and they actually export doctors nurses and other specialists to other countries and that's one way for generating income or revenue for Cuba so let's talk to modern day you mentioned the visa require opening up of family unification visas this is tremendous for Cubans I have to tell you almost every Cuban family is split whether it's they have immediate family in the states some in Cuba and maybe some abroad that are doctors nurses or other professionals that have been export exported to do a stint abroad so this family unification is something that is an absolute godsend a gift so that people can be with their loved ones the meaning of family in Cuba is is so much more than just your immediate family it's a very warm culture where your neighbors your colleagues are also your family and I think this is one of the ways they have triumph over the decades by working together some other pluses that are happening right now as I mentioned the remittances Biden is increasing that amount of money that Cuban families can send back to the island as well as opening travel once again so at the beginning of his presidency I think Biden had a little bit more on his plate to worry about than the Cuban and US Cuba and US relations so I think now that we're kind of getting over the hump of the pandemic we're seeing that more steps are being taken to warm up our our relationships with Cuba and for those that may be thinking that oh my god all the Cubans are moving to the US I wanted to let them know that this type of visas for family reunification actually takes years to process so you know I know some may interpret it quite differently it's a good sign at the same time it's going to take years until those Cuban families get reunited I think at at one point in time they were saying that for a second degree relative like a brother or sister there's a waiting list of all six years no matter where you come from so it's not happening that fast but going back to the exodus from Cuba I was surprised to read on the to read the news that a lot of Cubans are crossing the border through the US or trying to come to US through the US Mexico border and as a matter of fact just in august of this year there have been 19 000 encounters between Cuban immigrants and US border patrol and those Cubans were sent back to I guess Mexico and Cuba why do Cubans want to why why is there such an increase in number of people that want to come to to us now from Cuba I think every country was hit economically from the pandemic and in particular Cuba with a lot of its economy depending on foreign tourism you're seeing that Cuba is almost repeating history there was a time in the 1990s that Cuba called this decade the special period so as just a recap of history 1959 the El Castro triumph and the United States pulled out its support to buying sugar Castro took American-owned businesses properties and made them Cuban governments so it really was a break in our economic times but they needed to find another partner in crime to fill that void and that happened to be the big brother or you know the next best thing at that time in the 1960s that would have been USSR so they made a partnership with USSR and basically that the Soviet Union economically floated Cuba for the next the 60s 70s 80s three decades so during that time you'll see Cubans instead of studying English as their second language studying Russian you will see Cuban families naming their first foreign second board Colorado or Katya because they were showing their gratitude for this culture that came in an economically it took the place of Cuba but when the USSR collapsed their economic funding of the country also collapsed and Cuba had nowhere to turn they decided we're a beautiful island country let's start tourism but before tourism could really set foot in the 1990s they went through a time with rolling blackouts no gas for their cars food shortages and it's said that most Cubans that made it through that period they lost 20 pounds and many people are saying that the economic crisis that has happened over the pandemic is somewhat similar to the special period so you're that's why you're seeing the mass exodus because of primarily economic reasons more than anything so back to traveling to Cuba what should a traveler to Cuba or somebody reading about traveling to Cuba learn about or learn from this experience first and foremost it is such a warm and inviting culture people expect because of our country's political relationships that Cubans are going to look at us as foes or enemies but they are so much enamored with American culture they love us like family members neighbors most have family members in the United States so it's so contrary they embrace us so I want to first debunk that they don't want Americans there they certainly do it was shown when Obama came just that this was their moment that maybe the tide was turning and I certainly hope that that is going to be the near future one thing Cubans have is being in the moment is the really the way to approach life when the electricity goes out or you don't have milk or eggs or yogurt in the grocery store or x y and z that could happen along a typical Cuban day they typically have a joke for everything they kind of laugh it off and they they celebrate the moment whether that's enjoying a cup of coffee they find a way to Cubanize whatever the situation is and when I say Cubanize it's kind of in the States how we jerry-rig things that we find a way to make it work until we can go to Home Depot or until we go to Napa auto parts but Home Depot and Napa auto parts don't exist in Cuba so a Cuban solution to a toilet not flushing may be taking out an earring and replacing the chain or perhaps underneath that 1950s American classic car maybe there is a diesel engine that has Hyundai in it instead of the original Chevy or Ford engine or perhaps they've even fabricated melted down parts to create the rolling museum of Cuba most people say underneath the hood of this classic car is the United Nations because there's parts from all over the world and even individually fabricated but that's amazing another thing that you will probably as an observer of Cuban culture you'll see that the arts are so appreciated at a very early age if a child has a deptness to be a dancer a singer a musician they are put into art schools and the appreciation of the arts was very paramount with the Castro's government and you see this throughout every aspect of Cuban culture whether it's singing while you work whether it's musicians on corners people that you don't expect to to sing dance or recite poetry coming out of the kitchen of your restaurant and they are beautiful dancers or poetry readers or even guitarists themselves so the arts are creme de la creme in not only Havana but across the beautiful country well Heidi I knew that 30 minutes would not be enough for this show because it's fun to talk to you about Cuba and all your experiences but before we close I do want to quickly ask you what are you planning to what's your fourth book about my fourth book is about the look-up mantra so my three previous books were my stories and when I share my story people share their inspirational true stories of overcoming obstacles and so I want to tell the stories of others in a collection of stories from all walks of life so men women adolescents people from all seven continents of really overcoming challenges and triumphing against odds whether that's illness immigration escaping war sexuality careers and you can easily if you think that this may be up your alley that you would like me to interview you and you could contribute your story feel free to reach out to me via my website or social media handles it is most by far my most challenging book but I think it's going to be my best as well well thank you again for coming today and to our viewers you receive the call to action reach out to Heidi and also I think it's worth to learn more about Cuba and to travel to Cuba and figure out how to cubanize it that's pretty special until next time a we hope thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo