Hello everyone, I am alive and ok. No one kidnapped or robbed me. Well, not unless you count the time when the woman, who rented me the room, stole half a bottle of my family size Target body wash while cleaning the bathroom. Besides that, all is well.
It’s a short 35 minutes flight from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau, Bahama. At the Bahama airport, I expected crowds, just like in the US, after all it’s a tourist destination. But I found none; closest thing was a 3 men band playing easy listening music. Onward to Cuba.
Flying into Cuba reminded me of movies about Vietnam War I had seen over the years. The runway was between plots of tree not too far away; I could have just as well been landing in an empty field and probably couldn’t tell the difference. The neatly painted lines and flashing lights were inconspicuously missing from this airport. Alas, I am here.
My ride from the airport to the center of Havana felt like I was in a rural version of NYC. On the one hand, there’s the seemingly orderly chaos that comes with unpainted two lane roads filled with two taxis and one slow tractor riding side by side. On the other hand, just like in NYC, if there were any traffic rules regulating taxis and other cards alike, I didn’t notice them. On several occassions, we drove by large posters of drawings of Bush and beneath it the words “Terrorismo”. I really had no idea how fast we were going because the speedometer pointed to zero no matter how fast we went.
Cuba has two money systems, the CUP (cuban peco) and the CUC (peso convertibles, pronounced “cook”, 24 CUP = 1 CUC). Foreigners exchange their currency into CUC, whereas Cubans use a combination of CUP and CUC. At government stores such as food distribution stores or pizza stores in citizens’ homes, people can pay with CUP. However at tourist places and street venders in Havana, CUC is used. Cuban government pays in CUP to its citizens, albeit not very much. One man working at a bar told me he is paid 250 CUP a month, which translates to a measely $6 US Dollars a month. Food is provided for via food cards, but they only get the bare minimum, rice, beans, candy and some chicken. In the few days since arriving in Cuba, I have yet to see any green leafy vegetables anywhere, probably only in fancy hotels.
Many Cubans are eager to strike up a conversation with a tourist since and hope maybe the tourist would buy them a Bocanero, a local beer that has 5.4% alcohol content costing 1 CUC. For them one CUC is extra spending money most don’t have. Some also offer to sell you cigars or find you a chica. Usually I could tell pretty quickly what they wanted. In a society where no one has very much of anything except the tourists, Cubans didn’t seem resentful. Perhaps because no other Cubans have very much, there are no classism problems. Tourists are opportunities for them to earn money, rather than people they have to compete with.
Walking around Havana at night, I felt very safe, not because of the few police standing in street corners or few dimly lit street lamps, but because I felt the people here are passive. Even late at night, there are people sitting outside in the dark on their doorsteps talking. People usually leave their doors open; I could see the small living room where an entire family of 4 or 5 sit together and watched TV. Some bars are open 24 hours, but the bar is empty of all types of alcohol except a few bottles of Rum. The bartender is half asleep when I arrived; he was working a 24 hour shift today. He puts on some salsa music by “Compay Segunda”. With the help from my translator, we talked about his job and Cuban people. Coming from La Casa de la Musica, a salsa dance hall, some seemingly sober young Cubano and Cubanas trickle by. I suspect they didn’t have enough money to buy drinks. There was no last call at this 24 hour bar. I gave the bartendar the last copy of Maxim I had brought to Cuba, putting a spark in his dreary eyes. In the empty dull room that is the bar, the only color was the faded painting of a waitress on the wall. The bartendar eyes were glued to the capitalists pictures in Maxim, now the most colorful thing in the room. At least for a while, he didn’t have to think about how to earn more CUC from the tourists.
Since arriving in Cuba, as I went around sight seeing, I have been bringing some clothes from my big luggage of giveaways and giving them away to Cubanos. They felt good about receiving new clothes and I felt good for giving them away. Yesterday, one of the Cubanos asked if he could see what I had to give away, so I thought “sure, why not?” As he was going through the luggage of my stuff in my room, I started to feel uneasy about it. It no longer felt like I was giving things away. It felt more like I was getting robbed. As he left with two full plastic bags of goods, I began thinking about why I was feeling that way. Isn’t this why I brought the clothes that I no longer wear to Cuba, so I can give them away? Does it make a difference really if I feel good about giving them away or letting him pick through my things, and instead of getting just two shirts, he got 2 full bags of clothes, pens, and some tools? Here is a Cubano who works a government job during the day and makes next to nothing, and at night, he goes out to meet tourists and try to make something extra off them to help his family. One new shirt in a Cuban store costs about what typical Cubanos make in a month. Imagine that, working for a whole month and making just enough to buy one shirt. The equivalent analogy in the US would translate to say 30 USD for a shirt and one works 200 hours a month for it — meaning one makes $0.15 an hour. Putting things in perspective, do I want to feel good about giving away my things? Yes, but do I really need to feel good about it? What difference does it make to me if in the end, getting those two bags of goods means so much more to him than me losing them? I am beginging to see why Cubans don’t resent tourists because even though tourists have so much and Cubans have nothing, earning from tourists is the only way for them to live beyond poverty.
Many Cubans here want to learn English. I met a Cuban at a local softball game who enthusiastically practiced his English with me. He spoke Spanish to me and I spoke English back to him. For both of us, listening was the harder part of the language than speaking. Cubans speak a fast version of Spanish and often don’t pronounce the S, L and R in the word. I would have understood “Te ` baseball?”, but instead, I heard “te uta babe.” Right now I understand maybe only about 5 percent of what people are saying. Fortunately, at least they understand 80 percent of what I say in Spanish.
One thing Cuba has in common with NYC is the many 24 hour stores that are open. Most stores sell the same things, rum, candy, Bocanero, cola and some snacks. Rum is everywhere in Cuba, famous for its Havana Rum; it even comes in a milk carton for the go. All along the Malecon, a stretch of sea wall on the northern part of Havana, Cubans sit out there and drink their bottle of Rum and bottle of coke. Other types of stores that are open are little windows to people’s homes. They usually sell pizza, juice, sandwich and sometimes rice and beans. These are not fancy pizza or sandwich. For example, one item would be sandwich with mayonnaise, which is literally two pieces of bread with mayonnaise spread. That’s it! Pizzas cost 7 to 12 CUP or about $0.50, same goes for the sandwich. My two favorite drinks in Cuba so far are the fresh sugar cane juice “guayapos” and mamey, a fruit that tastes similar to papaya, shakes. Many Cubans stop at the guayapo shop for a refreshment while on their way about the city. For only 1 CUP per cold glass, or $0.05, no wonder there was a huge line out the door.
Contrary to popular belief, there is not salsa music and cigars everywhere in Cuba. I expected to hear salsa music everywhere I go and to see people dancing, but my guess is that most people don’t have stereos to play salsa music. Havana is quite dormant for the entire week until Friday and Saturday. Other than salsa, kids play baseball in the street with makeshift ball that is a bottle cap and a bat that is a wooden stick. Many Cubans also play chess and domino on doorsteps or at the government chess hall that provide tables and chess sets. I also haven’t seen people smoking cigars as I walked around the city. The only mention of cigars or “bodegas” is from people selling them on the street. Few people do activities or have material things that other people don’t have. In a Communist country, this should come as a no surprise.
Since the existence of the US embargo, China is playing an increasingly dominant role as a trading partner with Cuba. Just like in the US, most goods are made in China, except in Cuba, people can’t afford those goods since they are sold mostly in CUC. The tourist buses I see in the streets have Chinese producer names written on the back of them. I even stumbled upon a China town in Centra Havana last night, complete with the symbolic Chinatown gate. Walking further into the one street Chinatown, I came to a house where an old Chinese man was selling sweets like sugar crackers, ice cream and cookies. As a fifteen year old boy, he came to Cuba in 1949 to escape the Mao Communists revolution in China. Years later, he is still here, but with much resentment. He invited me into his house and spoke hand-wavingly and passionately about life in Cuba. “Work for 3 days for only 1 dollar, only one dollar!” he said in Spanish. Between his sighs, he showed me the sign language of Cuba. He stroked his chin as if he had a beard, “el Jefe”, or the beard, and then he gestured as if to wipe dusts off his pretend military uniform. I understood he was talking about Fidel without saying it. Only in the privacy of their homes can they talk about things like this. As much as Cuba has barred information from its citizens, the American TV series “Lost” was playing on his TV accompanied by Spanish subtitles. I felt a certain connection to this old man, not just because he is Chinese, but also because we share similar experiences. I came to a foreign country, the US, when I was about 12 and have had to assimilate to the culture and people there. I am certain he went through a similar process. How lucky was I to get to the US instead of a closed society where people labor three days for one dollar. It was past midnight when I arrived and he was still toiling away. Today, I will be bringing him the rest of my two luggages of goods and buy some ice cream from him.
I don’t usually smoke anything, but while in Cuba, I had to try the cigars here. When I walked around Havana, especially the tourist areas, I was constantly asked if I wanted to buy cigars. Finally I met an old man who has been working in the cigar factories for 30 years and thought who better to share cigar than the man who rolls it. We smoked Marebas, small cigars by Cuban standards, but plenty for me. I would later try bigger and fancier versions with two Norwegians I met at Hotel Florida, who have been traveling in their sailboat for almost a year. (www.royalwings.no) I got the hang of puffing it pretty quickly and began to taste something, but it was hard to describe the taste. It’s more of a smoky feeling in my mouth. People say you will probably need to smoke 10 cigars before you can really start to enjoy it, but I would say I enjoyed that one cigar pretty good.
I had been looking for a good salsa dancing spot, but really haven’t seen great dancing until last night. The usual places in guidebooks like Casa de la Musica were full of tourists rather than Cubanos. A Cubana told me about the bar at Hotel Florida, which had actually closed its doors because the bar was full. Usually there are many Cubanos outside bars and discos who try to tag along with tourists to go into these places and hope to have tourists pay for them. A few of them struck up conversations with the two Norwegian girls I met a day earlier. One of the Taxi drivers told me that he knows of cases where Cuban men have met foreign tourist women who help them leave Cuba. Mail-ordered brides are not just for men any more. Lonely ladies out there, if you have some money, you too can find yourself a Cubano. Most people in Cuban unsurprisingly dance Casino style Rueda salsa. I was hoping to find someone who might know Mambo, so I was ecstatic when a Cubana said she knew it. Once we started dancing, I realized pretty quickly that Mambo in Cuba is different from Mambo in the US. There is no concept of dancing “on 1″ or “on 2″; they always dance on 1. Mambo here is essentially “shines,” footwork and body movements that each dancer express without the partner, in American Salsa/Mambo. In each Salsa disco I have been to in Cuba, I usually found two or three dancers lined up side by side doing shines together; that’s something you don’t see very much in the US. I will bring that bit of salsa dancing back to the US, or for all my salseros in Florida, you can start doing it!
Wrapping up my first week here in Cuba, I am heading out today to Vinales, a photogenic outdoor spot west of Havana. I can finally breathe some fresh air rather than the smog coming from 1960′s puffing Chevys and Eggs-on-wheels taxis. Goodbye Havana.