MAR-B-2
ALL PACKED UP
AND NO PLACE TO GO:
MARAZUL TRAVEL
AGENCY’S INCOMPETENCE COST ME MY TRIP TO HAVANA
FOR THE IHMEC CONFERENCE
March
10, 2002
About my trip to Cuba---I’m
not there. Despite the long and very
careful arrangements for the “just-in-time” delivery of my tickets and visa,
especially in view of the absences I would have, the Marazul agency failed
completely, and I have neither tickets nor visas, nor all of the travel
licenses required. There are two ways
of looking at this I suppose. One is
that I have missed my chance to see and learn about Cuba under still-living
Fidel Castro, our hemisphere’s only practicing communist these days.
Second, their incompetence cost me
my non-refundable conference fee which was prepaid, but saves me over $2500 in
monopoly travel tickets and hotel stays.
This amount could be better invested in another African trip for
two. And, I can now take on all the
re-entry tasks from the last two trips to Mind-02 and to Mala-02, and even pick
up a couple of extra items which I had foregone for my being gone—such as the
NFID Awards Banquet, which you may be seeing in the subsequent emails, as I rub
elbows with the rich and (mostly presently retired) famous.
Stay tuned, since I seem to have
been liberated from Cuba Libre’!