An invisible thread called friendship

By: Marcos Antonio Almarales

There are bridges that do not appear on maps. They are not made of steel, concrete or any of those materials that engineers measure in metres and tons. They are made of something much lighter and yet infinitely stronger: of the decision not to look away.

A few days ago, without fate giving me an explanation, I crossed such a bridge. On the other side, a certainty awaited me that has not let me go since. I ended up at the Amistad con Cuba Foundation, thanks to Daylen, a young woman who makes love her most beautiful work of art. Like Gerard, the founder of this beautiful initiative, she understood earlier than many that tenderness is also a way of building.

The Stichting Amistad con Cuba – or to be precise, Fundación Amistad con Cuba – doesn't exist because someone came up with a good slogan. It exists because someone named Gerard, at a certain point, stopped asking themselves who should do something, and instead asked: what can *I* do? And that, in a world full of noise and grand pronouncements that are forgotten before the week is out, is in itself an act of beautiful rebellion.

Cuba is not an abstract idea. It is not a banner at a demonstration or a distant newspaper headline. Cuba is a mother who walks miles to find milk for her child and give him the best she has. It is an older man who rations his medicine because he doesn't know when the next box will arrive. It is a family lighting candles on a warm evening, not out of romance, but because the power is out. And precisely in these difficult times that our country is going through, solidarity has not been lacking either, from people who know how to love even from a distance.

Stichting Amistad con Cuba has understood something that many people take a lifetime to learn: solidarity does not need grand speeches. Solidarity needs shoes to walk through the mud of reality. It needs ears to listen to those who experience that reality every morning. And it needs hands that, instead of applauding from a distance, are willing to get a little dirty by helping.

And so this foundation came into being. Without fanfare. With no flag other than that of the meeting of people. With a simple but profound idea: friendship – that word we sometimes use carelessly – changes lives when it is real. That is its motto. And at the same time its essence.

The foundation works in three areas which, for anyone who knows Cuba, are as indispensable as bread. In the area of health, it supports Cuban professionals who give their all. Because a doctor without medicine remains a doctor, but even they cannot perform miracles every day.

In education, because ignorance is neither a punishment nor a destiny. It is a battle won with books, pencils and the conviction that a child who learns becomes an adult who can choose.

And in terms of direct humanitarian aid, by providing food, medicine, hygiene products and other basic necessities – things that many of us take for granted, but which have become true treasures there.

This all happens transparently, without filters, with the honesty of people who know that every donation is sacred, because there is always someone behind it who has chosen to bestow their trust.

A sentence has stuck with me these past few days after I became acquainted with their work. Someone once wrote:

“Not to a map. Not to a country. But to people.”

Because this foundation doesn't help an abstract cause. It helps people of flesh and blood. And that distinction is, in a time of division and anger, revolutionary in the purest sense of the word.

The people involved in this project know that real help needs no spotlights or applause. It requires perseverance. It demands people who get up every morning with the thought that, thousands of miles away, there is someone who depends on that invisible thread not breaking.

That is why I am writing this. Not to portray the volunteer work of others in a more favourable light or to hitch a ride on a good cause. I am writing this because I find it unfair that there are so many helping hands that exist in silence and so few people willing to talk about them.

I also write it for everyone who has ever thought that distance is an excuse for indifference. Distance justifies nothing. Distance is merely an obstacle that the heart, when it truly wants to, learns to leap over.

If these words have brought you even one moment closer to something that previously seemed distant, then this might be a good time to get in touch. To send an email. To ask how you can help. To share these words with someone else.

You don't have to change the world. You only have to change one person's world. And sometimes that fits into a gesture as small as not looking away.

For yes: friendship changes lives when it is real.

And whoever says lifes, ultimately also says yours.