This is a Squiz Kids podcast, your fresh take on what's happening in the world around you.
Each week we give the world globe a spin and see where we land.
Then we take the kids of Australia on an audio excursion to visit that country and its people.
I'm Amanda Bauer and today on Squiz the World we're visiting a place well known for its music, its communist revolution, its cigars and the old cars lining its streets.
Can you guess? Strap yourselves into the Squiz Kids superfast supersonic jetliner as we take off and take a squiz at Cuba.
Can you picture North and South America and the shape they make?
If you follow from north to south and then starting at the left and going around, you'll notice that they make the shape of an S, with the joined up bit happening in Central America.
I'll put a map in your episode notes so you can see what I mean.
The Republic of Cuba sits in the middle of the top half of the S, where the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico meet.
Cuba is made up of many islands, but the biggest The biggest main island is long and skinny.
It's 1 ,200km from end to end, but only 100km wide in most places.
It has a population of 11 million people and its capital and the biggest city is called Havana.
About one third of that main island is covered by mountains and hills, and the other two thirds are flat plains that are well suited to farming.
And Cuba grows a lot of sugar.
Yay! It was the world's biggest exporter of sugar in the first half of the 20th century.
They also grow a lot of tobacco in Cuba, which is used to make their world -famous cigars.
Now, personally, I find the smell of cigars completely disgusting.
And just like cigarettes, they have been proven to cause cancer.
But selling cigars to other countries makes Cuba a lot of money each year.
Now, we need to talk politics.
Cuba became independent in 1902 and from then on for quite some time it had a really messy political system.
There was lots of corruption that means politicians being dishonest and there was foreign interference and there were armies taking over the government until 1959 when a man called Fidel Castro led a group of rebels that took over the country eventually Fidel Castro established what's known as a Unitary Marxist Leninist one -party socialist republic which is a mouthful basically it means that the government owns and controls just about everything in the country there are elections but they are not democratic because only one party is allowed opposition to the ruling party is not permitted access
to information including the internet is tightly controlled by the government it is one of of the worst countries in the world for press freedom, meaning that Cuban journalists can't write what they observe if it's critical of the government.
Now, all of that means that a lot of people have left Cuba since 1969, even though most of the time the government makes it pretty hard for them to do so.
Miami in Florida is very close to Cuba and it's often called Little Havana because of all the Cubans there.
Whenever you travel, it's important to learn a few words in that country's language.
It's a great way to show respect.
So, let's... Learn the lingo.
Cuba was ruled by Spain for almost 400 years and Spanish is the official language.
But if you're a Spanish speaker from another country visiting Cuba, you might have a really hard time understanding their accent and their slang.
I am really thrilled to welcome Squizkid Yennefer to teach us some Cuban Spanish.
Remember how I said that a lot of Cubans had left the country?
Well, Yennefer's parents, Michelle and Yunya, didn't agree with what the Cuban government was doing and they protested.
Because they were protesters, they were being watched by the government and they were worried that they would soon be put in jail.
So they flew to Central America and then walked over the border to the USA, where a special law allows Cubans who escape the government to stay.
Now, Yennefer, how do you greet someone in Cuba?
Now, I speak a bit of Spanish and I can tell you that this is something you will only hear in Cuba.
Hacer is the Cuban word for friend, a bit like mate in Australia.
In regular Spanish, you would say amigo.
And qué bola means how are you?
And that's only used in Cuba, too.
In regular Spanish, you would say, cómo estás?
Yennefer, can you just say the two of them again, please?
Haceré qué bola. Amigo, cómo estás?
Yeah, they are definitely very different.
OK, haceres, remember, that means friends.
Now that we can communicate a little bit, it's time for school.
The Cuban Constitution, or their set of rules for the country, says that education and healthcare are both basic human rights, so it costs absolutely nothing to go to primary school or high school or university.
As a result, Cuba has one of the world's highest literacy rates.
Literacy meaning the ability to read and write.
School is compulsory from the age of six, and uniforms are also compulsory.
Everyone wears a white shirt but kids in kindy wear blue bottoms. Primary school kids have bottoms in burgundy red and in high school, yellow.
But here's one tricky thing.
The government only allows you to buy one uniform a year.
What? So if you fall over in the playground and get muddy or spill your lunch or grow really quickly, you're gonna have some trouble.
A lot of Cuban families living in Little Havana in America actually buy Cuban school uniforms in America and send them to their relatives still in Cuba.
OK, school is out in Havana, the capital, and it's time to walk home.
On the way, we are going to experience two really important parts of Cuban culture.
Let's get cultural.
The first thing you'll notice on the streets of Havana are the really old cars.
I'm talking 70 and 80 -year -old American cars that were brought into Cuba before the revolution.
After the Castro government came into power, it was hard to get new cars, so people became expert mechanics, keeping their big tanks running for decades.
I'll put some photos in your episode notes.
Walking down the street is like being at a classic car show.
hear that it's a famous type of music called song cubano that means cuban sound in spanish and many types of latin music forms including salsa have their roots in song having your roots in something means that's how they got started song had almost faded from cuban life until a multi -award winning album was recorded over seven days in Havana in 1996.
Called Buena Vista Social Club, it brought together musicians who were big in the 1940s and 50s before the revolution.
It was a worldwide sensation and Song Cubano was back.
There's a link in your episode notes.
Dancing and singing makes me hungry.
I think it might be dinner time.
The national dish of Cuba is called ropa vieja.
it's a slow cooked beef stew and the recipe has been around for at least 500 years now if you speak spanish you'll know that lo pavieja means old clothes which doesn't really sound all that delicious one story says that a poor man who had nothing to feed his family shredded and cooked his own clothes and then a miracle occurred and it turned into delicious meat a simpler explanation is that a man sold his old clothes for some meat for his family.
Either way, I'll put a recipe in your episode notes.
It is definitely yummier than old clothes.
Time for the quiz. This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you've been listening.
Question number one.
What does song cubano mean in English?
Well done if you got this one.
It is Cuban sound. Question number two.
What colour are the pants worn by primary school kids in Cuba?
Another curly one requiring good listening.
Yep, they're burgundy red.
And question number three.
For much of the last century, Cuba was the world's biggest exporter of what?
You got it, sugar. That's all we have time for today.
Thanks for staying curious about the world and joining me on this incredible trip to Cuba.
Now get out there and have a most excellent day.
Over and out. These episodes are edited and engineered by Carter Quinn.
