The only way to settle a debate on life in Cuba is
I don’t know about other people but, when I travel I seem to carry my impressions with me. What I mean is that for the first few days in a new place I’m not really “all there”. For instance, when I leave the Midwest, for a week or so I avoid making any eye contact with the inhabitants because this is seen as “impolite” where I live. Many of these traits, put together, usually start annoying me after a short while since they isolate me from what is “really”, probably, going on.
This happened again, in Havana. While I was merrily enjoying Chinese restaurants, hot-rods from the 50’s, and street music, stories from the people I was meeting began to filter down through my tourist perceptions. This didn’t happen all at once; I STILL thought Carlos was a tad crazy. In fact, three days after I arrived, while watching “Carnival” from a balcony next to the “Inglaterra” hotel, I was having so much fun that I decided then and there to return to Honduras after this trip ONLY so I could tell my Cuban ex-pat friend HOW wrong he was, and that things must have changed…
Carnival is a spectacle like which I’d never experienced. It reminded me of movies of the one in Rio de Janeiro but this was live and exceptionally powerful. Each Barrio had put together its own team of drummers and dancers, the mothers of the performers obviously devoting many days to making up unique and extravagant costumes for them. Flaming purples and sizzling pinks and shocking blues leapt and strutted before our eyes, throughout the night. I was exhausted just watching, and excused myself after only 5 hours of it, and went home to bed. I guess that must have been the last time I really thought I was in a perfect paradise…
It wasn’t that the people of Havana were telling me everything was fine and dandy; the miserable truth was, that after speaking Spanish for some 15 years, though badly, and priding myself on being able to always communicate with the locals, after several days here I still hardly understood a word anyone was saying. Certainly I wasn’t letting it ruin my vacation; I was having a fine time. But, after a 5-day period, and “letting go” to the rhythms and flow of the Cuban language, I finally realized that folks were actually speaking Spanish, after all. I also reminded myself of having the same problem years ago, in Jamaica, when I discovered that the people were speaking English!
So, to my surprise, I began hearing how the locals really felt about things. The story was literally the same everywhere I would go: “…we’re barely making it, and it’s getting much worse.” was what I was now hearing. I thought mainly about my new friends Aida and Raul. They were both teachers, she at a primary school not too far from their home, he a College chemistry professor, worked at a campus so far away that he had to rise at 4 every morning just to be able to arrive at 9am at class!
Kirk pretending to ride the
infamous “Camel”
This alone seemed unpleasant, and then REALLY made its impact when I saw the “camels”. Maybe you know, but gas and vehicles have been so scarce that the government has had to put into service a number of semi-tractor truck cabs, who pull around the city all day a series of mammoth trailers packed to the brim with city-dwellers, who seem like sardines when seen passing by, but who definitely rouse sympathy when seen standing, seemingly for hours, waiting for their color of “bus”.
Raul made the equivalent of $18 a month, Aida $16. It seems the “camel” drivers and the butcher and the bakers fell into this similar pay spectrum. Everybody, apparently, outside of the new tourism-sector, made about the same $15-$20. When things were going well, people scraped by without getting sick, on their basic rations. When, as happened regularly, the Nation was out of something (eggs disappeared for several months last year) people hurt, and most everybody shared the experience.
I don’t think I spoke with anyone for quite awhile, including my friends, who hadn’t already quit their jobs, or who were seriously thinking of it… to what(?). To just walking around… finding something to sell on the black market… or just hoping to meet a tourist and guide him somewheres, or other…
Read all six parts of Iowa Yankee in King Castro’s Court
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six