And now for something (else) completely different
Trip Start
Nov 03, 2004
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52
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Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
Havana,
Cuba
Thursday, August 18, 2005
child's tantrum thunder storms; shabby, peeling colonial mansions
and white sand, glassy clear beaches; soaring colonnades and sagging
verandas; brassy trumpets and pulsing drums; gracious, classic cars,
pony traps and ancient tractors; pastel buildings and flouro
people. Cuba is a contradictory, frustrating, wonderful, vibrant,
shabby, classy place.
We came to Cuba to see communism in action, and to find out what the
Cubanos think of it all. And of course to sit in bars drinking rum
while listening to salsa and watching finned and chromed old
American cars rumble past.
The first thing most Cubanos will tell you is, "it's much, much
better than before 1959", the next thing they'll tell you is, "it's
very, very hard".
So, fact: Cubanos have their housing, food, jobs, medical and
educational services provided by the government, gratis or as near
as makes no difference.
Some other facts: housing is allocated by lot so you could as easily
end up in a beautiful, restored, 4 bedroom, high ceilinged, colonial
mansion, with crystal lighting accents as a should-be-condemned,
decor in mildew, squat. If you want or need to move you just
tell "the government" and they find you somewhere new - of course,
people don't move much because there is always the risk you'll be
trading down. Food is a basic ration basket including staples like
pasta, rice, 2.5kg sugar (they do grow the stuff), 2kg of salt (!)
and 26 other basics per person per month. Other products (including
fruit, vegetables, meat and fish) are distributed irregularly
depending on availability. Unfortunately, items like lumber,
plumbing fixtures, milk and yoghurt have to be bought on the "open"
market and here you run into to problems relating to jobs. Jobs are
provided by the government (although there seems to be no
requirement that everyone "pull their weight" and hold down a
government supplied job). There is some differentiation in wages
between, say, a dentist and a cinema usher, but people make between
USD10-20 a month. This is paid in national pesos which are
virtually valueless but can be used to supplement the monthly ration
basket. Anything desirable (alcohol, appliances, light bulbs,
restaurant meals, some entertainment) is priced in convertible
pesos, which are worth 25 of the regular ones. Everything a tourist
wants to do (except buy fruit, vegetables and street food) is done
with convertibles. So, if a Cubano wants to go out for the evening
or buy a blender or fix the roof they need to find an "unofficial"
way of raising convertibles. Unfortunately most unofficial income
earners involve some sort of illegal or dishonest activity: selling
homemade pastries without a license; siphoning gas from the school
bus you drive to sell on the black market; "psst, wanna buy a
cigar?", (source unspecified); running the taxi meter for a couple
of kms, then agreeing a price, switching off the meter and pocketing
the difference. All of these involve ripping off the government
which is seen as having unlimited resources. So are gringos and,
unfortunately, many Cubanos see padding a bar bill or short changing
as as legitimate a form of income production as selling black market
pork. Educational and health services are excellent.
Arriving at Jose Marti airport in Havana, we first notice the number
of Air France, Virgin Atlantic, and Air Canada jumbos parked up.
Cuba's economy fell apart when the Soviet Union collapsed, but for
the last five years it's been staging a recovery based on massive
tourism. Getting through immigration is almost as slow and painful
as it is in the USA. [Jose Marti, incidentally, is the archetypal
hero of the first (anti-Spanish) Cuban Revolution. Journalist,
poet, and military strategist, one of his poems form the basis for
the Cuban song 'Guantanamera', and his name and face are second only
to Che Guevara's in ubiquitousness.]
Taking a (modern Peugeot) taxi into town, we notice the green-ness.
In contrast to anywhere we've been so far, Cuba is lushly overgrown
everywhere.
And it's hot. Damned hot. Hot enough to make the Osa Peninsula in
Costa Rica seem positively pleasant. Hot enough that walking a
couple of hundred meters is enough to turn you into a foul-tempered,
exhausted, sweat-soaked mess. Hot enough that even the Cubanos are
doing nothing but sitting around on their porches drinking rum and
going "damn, it's hot". During the two and a half weeks we spent in
Cuba, the temperature never dropped below 33oC, nor the humidity
below 90%.
We stayed in Havana two nights with a lovely man, Oscar. Hotels are
all government owned and expensive but many private residences are
licensed to take paying guests. These "casas particulares" range
from fairly basic but with blessed air conditioning and private
bathroom to gorgeous, high ceilinged, colonial residences with
intricate tiled floors, airy rooms and colonnaded public spaces.
They will also provide breakfasts and dinners. Oscar was determined
to feed us until we exploded while he provided a list of "must dos"
in Havana and an equally long list of tourist traps to avoid.
We hung out in Havana's beautiful necropolis for a while, side-
stepping the dead chickens left over from Santeria (cross-over
Catholic ancestral African religion) ceremonies, having chatted to a
retired accountant selling homemade pastries and a baseball player
(baseball is the national sport) who had defected in Canada and
returned when his mother was dying. He gave us some tips on things
to see and do and walked with us to find a cab (no doubt a mate),
then hit us up for a dollar for lunch. We lurched in style into
town in a classic 1950s, shiny black, tank-sized automobile, gears
grinding, chassis shuddering, every upholstered spring discernable
and nonetheless glamorous, gorgeous and reminiscent of a different
era.
