Sunday, November 24, 2013

the road to rio

On October 17, our first full day at sea after Buenos Aires, an announcement was made requesting all the Life Long Learners to attend a meeting, dependents traveling with faculty and staff to attend another meeting, and to check email for details. I didn't catch the room numbers and wasn't sure if the dependent meeting was only for parents who were traveling with children, or if it included people like me as well, so had a look at my email, saw I had not received the email, so assumed my attendance wasn't required. Following this meeting, there was a knock at our cabin door. Two of my buddies, also spouses of faculty, had come by to tell me that Life Long Learners and dependents of faculty and staff had just learned we would not be able to get off the ship in Cuba.

To make a long story short - it turned out the reason I didn't get the email about the meeting is because I am not actually affected by this situation as I am traveling on a Canadian passport. Semester at Sea applied a long time ago for a license to include Cuba in the program for this voyage and for others before it. The license was granted through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control), a branch of the Department of the Treasury in the United States, shortly before our trip started in August. It isn't clear how many lawyers have had their hands on this license since it was issued, or whom they represent, but apparently they have determined that the license to disembark in Cuba applies, in the case of US citizens, only to degree seeking students and the faculty and staff directly involved in their programs. For me and a a handful of others with foreign passports, the license isn't necessary at all since we are not bound by the US sanctions in Cuba.

Needless to say, the shipboard community has been very disappointed by this news. Emotions have run high, meetings have been held, emails have flown. Appeals were made to OFAC by the Institute for Shipboard Education (ISE), but the final decision has been made. Not only will these groups of travelers not be allowed to disembark in Cuba, they will not be allowed to stay on the ship either, so we will be making a side trip to Freeport in the Bahamas to drop them off before going to Cuba. We will then proceed to Cuba and return to pick them up afterward. This has put a bit of a damper on the last several days. I am sad that so many of my friends won't be able to join us for this part of the journey, a place all of us had been looking forward to visiting.

The US sanctions against Cuba have been in effect since 1961, more than 50 years (http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Pages/cuba.aspx).


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