Notes From A Small Island

I’ve now been here in Cuba for three full weeks, and have settled into somewhat of a routine. This is both good and bad: once the orientation week was over, I became much more able to explore and do things on my own; but the structure has also quickened the days, made them almost slip away, and it makes me uncomfortable to think that there are now only ten weeks left in the program.

My classes, while ostensibly the reason that I’m here, actually occupy little of my time. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have Spanish in the morning, at the University of Havana. My teacher, Señor Rollo, is a bald, kindly man of seventy, with an easy teaching manner and hilarious mannerisms. (Once, while explaining to us the difference between the verbs ‘lanzar’ and ‘tirar’, he picked up a piece of chalk and threw it out the window.) The class is intensive, though; we’ve been covering one verb tense a day.

Actually, the best thing about having classes at the University is the food. For whatever reason, much of the best food that we’ve found in Cuba has been in or around the University. The building in which we have our Spanish class has an open plaza in the middle, and during the break in our Spanish class I almost always pay a visit to two old ladies: the first old lady, who has her table upstairs, sells delicious pastries, especially these guava-or-coconut filled dough balls, while the second sells cafecitos downstairs. And after class, we often eat our way back to the hotel, stopping first for a batido (a fruit milkshake) at the stand down the street, and then for a pastry, and then for another cafecito, and finishing with a ham sandwich or a kind of candy bar made from peanut butter and honey.

(Interestingly, the word that I had always learned was peanut – cacahuate – isn’t used in Cuba, and saying it earned me a few giggles. The term instead is maní, a word I’d never heard before.)

On Monday afternoons, the other two musically-inclined Directed Research students and I meet with Señor and Señora Faya. They’re a husband-wife team of musicologists, which is a little more academic and a little less awesome than it sounds. They’re interesting, though, and I enjoy our meetings; we talk about music from a sociological perspective, and a lot of it is stuff I’ve never heard before. In personality, they’re quite opposite – he’s outgoing and jovial, while she’s quiet and a little standoffish – and their dynamic is funny. She also does most of the talking, while he does most of the translating; I know enough Spanish, though, to know that he takes more than a few liberties.

My other two classes – Art and Culture of Cuba, and Documentary Film in Cuba – are both interesting, but they’re little more than lectures. The best thing I’ve seen in either was a short film that we watched in DFiC called ‘Por Primera Vez’. It was about these two men who, in 1967, took a 16mm projector up into the Sierra Maestra Mountains (in Oriente, the eastern half of the island) and filmed the reaction the villagers had upon watching their first motion picture. It was a simple but beautiful film.

Most of the rest of my time is just spent exploring Havana, both with other people and on my own. Vedado, the neighborhood where we live, is in walking distance to a lot of stuff, and so I’ve been all around in Centro Habana, Habana Vieja, and Miramar. I’ve been to the Playas del Este, the calm, beautiful beaches right outside the city, and to the Casa de las Americas, a cultural center where Silvio Rodriguez is said to have gotten his start.

In the beginning, it was difficult for me to do anything or go anywhere in Havana without feeling overwhelmingly guilty. Cuba has traded an economically gradated society for one in which nearly everyone is poor, and while conditions here never approach the truly vile – there’s nowhere in Cuba comparable to the slums of Johannesburg, for example – they are uniformly bad. Worse, though, is the segregation that exists between native Cubans and tourists. Because tourism is the tent pole that supports Cuba’s economy, foreigners are relegated to a special class, and have access to all sorts of things not usually available. Tourists shop in stores Cubans are not allowed to shop at; they go to clubs Cubans aren’t allowed to dance at; they stay at hotels Cubans aren’t allowed to stay at. (We have a classroom here at the hotel, and the professors have to obtain permission and an ID badge before they’re allowed inside.)

The tourist trade has also contributed to the proliferation of jineteros, both inside and outside of Havana. A jinetero is essentially a hustler, willing to find you anything from a taxi to a fine restaurant to a girl to spend the night with – for a fee, of course. The sex trade in particular is difficult to get away from; it was one of the first things outlawed after the Revolution, but with the return of tourist dollars to the island, the number of prostitutes has skyrocketed. The sex trade in Cuba is unique, though, in that it offers not only outright sex but also companionship; it’s very common for foreign men (and, less commonly, women) to end up taking their hired partner not only to bed but also to dinner, the theater, and the shopping district for a new pair of shoes. And since marrying a foreigner is the best method to get off the island, many of the solicitors actually find the relationship moving faster than they would like.

All of this means that it’s difficult to walk down the street and not get pestered, especially on the Malecón. It helps, though, that Cubans are a gregarious and curious people, and many of them are genuinely interested in learning more about the outside world. It’s basically impossible to not meet people, from all walks of life, anytime you go anywhere. Many of them also display a startling knowledge of the United States, especially here in Havana. One man that I met knew the complete geography of the New York area, including that the Yankees played in the Bronx and that Manhattan was cut off by the Hudson River (or ‘el Rio Udso’, as he called it). Another had a complete and sophisticated understanding of American electoral politics, and of how the large number of Cuban-Americans in Miami played a large role in Florida’s position as a swing state.

Although I’ve met and talked to many Cubans, it’s been difficult to get an idea whether or not most of them actually support the Communist government; most Cubans discuss politics obliquely, or not at all. A few people, though, were willing to talk to me, and it was in these discussions that I realized that it’s impossible to lump Cubans into People Who Support The Communist Government and People Who Don’t. Some support the idea of an independent Cuba, but not the Communist government; some support the Revolution wholeheartedly; some want nothing more than to move to the United States; some blame the blockade for the condition of Cuba. It’s a complex issue, and one that even the Cubans don’t appear to agree on.

One thing that is obvious is the sorry state to which US – Cuba relations have sunk to, and the degree to which this is based on little more than emotion. This is best exemplified by the American Special Interests Building, which is just off the Malecón, a mile or so away from the hotel. Not quite an embassy, but still sitting on American soil, the Special Interests building houses a few ambassadors and provides aide to American citizens who find themselves in dire straits. A few years ago, Fidel took a dislike to the Special Interests building and built, across the street, the Anti-Imperialist Amphitheatre – a huge, modern-looking band shell with a statue of Jose Marti at the end of it. On the side of the stage was painted ‘Patria o Muerte’, the slogan of the Communist party, and many rallies were held there. (Weirdly enough, Audioslave also played there in 2002; they were the first American band to play in Cuba since the Revolution.)

In response to the Anti-Imperialist Amphitheater, the Americans in the SIB put up a jumbo-tron television on the side of their building, in clear view of everyone in the audience. On the television, they played FOX News twenty-four hours a day, and put up a ticker that gave Cuba-related news stories (some real, some fabricated) with an anti-Communist slant.

Furious, Fidel authorized the erection of fifty flagpoles directly between the amphitheater and the television. On these were hung fifty black flags, each with the white Communist star directly in the center, each kept in constant motion by the wind, which comes unobstructed from the sea. The gesture worked: the Americans, somewhat defeated, took down the television, although the ticker – and the flags – remain.

So this is what US – Cuba relations have sunk to: two children, making faces at one another across the street, pressing their noses against their windows but never actually speaking.

Luckily, the animosity that exists between the respective governments doesn’t usually strain relationships between their citizens, and I haven’t been involved in any arguments or disagreements over politics. In fact, most Cubans, revolutionaries or not, regard the US with a sort of awe, and can’t understand why I would want to come to Cuba to study. ‘You study cinema in Cuba?’ they say. ‘Why would you? You have Hollywood!’ I suppose that people tend to take the culture of their homeland for granted; I can imagine having a similar reaction to a Cuban coming to Healdsburg to study, say, cooking.

It’s worth noting that, until recently, I had spent all my time in Havana, and where I’ve been writing ‘Cubans’ what I should be writing is ‘People from Havana’: the city is much different from the rest of the country. This was driven home to me this weekend, when I traveled outside the city for the first time, to the westward province of Piñar del Rio.

Five of us went: Bruno, Harrison, Ivaylo, Sam, and I. The all-male makeup of the trip unfortunately led to it being dubbed the ‘Bro’d Trip’, and this in turn led to all sorts of other, even more regrettable puns (“Let’s get broin’!”, “Let’s bro this popsicle stand”, etc.). We set off on Friday, the five of us on three mopeds, with little in the way of luggage and even less of an idea of how to get where we were going.

As soon as we got out of the city, the change was immediate. The air smelled cleaner; the countryside unfolded; the road got worse. The autopistas in Cuba are a different animal than those in the United States; they’re not divided into clear lanes, and all forms of transportation use them – car, moped, horse. There are also an unbelievable number of hitchhikers. During the Special Period, the government experienced severe interruptions in the public transportation systems, and to compensate it became mandatory for any car on the road to pick up any hitchhiker it could. The law no longer exists, but the precedent was set, and hitchhiking is one of the more popular methods of moving around Cuba.

A few kilometers outside Havana, we pulled off the road when we saw a field of sugar cane. The community we stopped in – town would be too strong a word – was poor in a much different way than people in the city were poor. The houses were run-down, and while I’m unsure if they had electricity they almost certainly had no phones. We pulled over at a farmhouse and asked a few shy children if we could buy some sugar cane. The eldest nodded, entered the house, and came out a few moments later with a large knife. He proceeded to cut us each two-foot long strips of sugar cane and we stood for a few moments by the side of the road, chewing the sugar cane and watching the tractors go by. Eventually we cleaned our hands and faces as best we could and hit the road again. An hour later we were in Las Terrazas.

Until 1994, Las Terrazas was a poor farming community, nestled in the valleys of Piñar del Rio. Then, the government decided to make it the site of an experiment in ecologically friendly farming. They consolidated the villagers, implemented renewable energy and waste-removal systems, and put in a few hiking trails and a hotel. Today, the community is thriving, and the natural beauty of the area has made it a popular tourist destination.

We weren’t staying in the town, though; we were going a short distance away, in some cabins on the banks of el Rio de San Juan. Here, the river – a rather small and trifling thing – is dammed by rocks, and forms deep pools perfect for swimming. It’s unusual in that it caters not only to foreigners but also to Cubans: its proximity to Havana makes it a popular day-trip for Cubans lucky enough to have a car. Set back from the pools, though, are five or six rustic cabins, up on stilts. They’re little more than the tree house I played in as a kid – we even used the same public bathrooms the day-trippers did – but they had mattresses in them, and we couldn’t have asked for more.

The first thing we did, other than set down our backpacks, was jump in the river, and it was wonderful. After nearly a month of swimming either in the ocean or the Riviera’s salt-water pool, the mossy but clean river water was a welcome change, and the temperature was perfect.

Back at the cabins, we met a Canadian woman named Jessica, and she accompanied us back to the community. Las Terrazas is based around a lake, and in the middle of the lake there were, improbably and incredibly, an island full of monkeys. We watched the monkeys for awhile, then went up the hill and proceeded to have one of the most delicious meals of my entire life.

The El Romero restaurant is an extension of the philosophy behind the whole community: it’s experimental Cuban cuisine, mostly vegetarian, very organic. It was, without a doubt, some of the best food I have ever eaten. The black bean soup, the vegetable tempura, the vegetable pie – I have to stop, because if I think about it for too long every meal I have tomorrow will seem tasteless by comparison.

Eventually, we stopped shoveling food in our mouths, and rode our mopeds back out to the river. Bruno pulled out his guitar, and we made enough noise that the night watchman and a couple other Cubans wandered over, and we had a sing-along underneath the cabins. (Although the only song the Cubans knew and requested was the Backstreet Boys’s ‘Larger Than Life’, so I think we played that twice.) When we ran out of songs one of the Cubans went over and grabbed a radio, and after a great deal of searching managed to find a scratchy salsa station. Eventually the night wore on and the get-together drifted away, and we retired to our two cabins, where we spent the night getting jumped on by a number of large frogs, who for reasons unknown were always hopping from one side of the cabin to the other.

The next day we woke up late, breakfasted and went for a swim. Then we decided to climb to the top of the nearest mountain, and started confidently up a nearby trail. As we went on, though, the trail grew thinner, and then disappeared altogether. At the same time the mountainside was growing steeper, until eventually we were crawling awkwardly up the rocky embankment. When the going became too rough, we decided that climbing most of the way to the top was good enough, and slid down the hill for an hour before making it back to the cabins and going for another swim.

Until 11:30pm on Saturday night, the trip had gone off without a single hitch, but that changed when we decided to take the mopeds on a late-night drive up a steep hill. Having had unpleasant experiences with mopeds in the past, I had been regarding them with vague suspicion since the trip started. The trip up was fine, and we found exactly what we were looking for at the top of the hill – a beautiful, panoramic view of the valley, a radio tower, and a guard with a large gun – but it was on the way down that the crash happened.

Bruno and I were on the lead moped. We rounded a corner and there, in the middle of the road, was a thin strip of leaves, gravel, and other debris. We hit it and the moped just slid out from under us. Because I was in the back, and the scooter was pointed downhill, I came up off the back seat and landed mostly on top of Bruno; because of this, I would walk away from the crash with a few bruises but no marks whatsoever. Bruno, though, landed hard.

We lay for a moment underneath the moped, the wheels still spinning, and then Bruno said, loudly: “Kyle, I am SO SORRY.”

“Are you okay?” I said.

“I am SO SORRY,” he said.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“SO SORRY,” he said.

“I accept your apology,” I said. “Now: are you okay?”

It turned out that he was, in fact, okay: dazed and scraped up, but essentially fine. The moped was all right too, although half the gas drained out while it was lying on its side. We mounted up again and – slowly, carefully – made our way back to the cabins.

The next day we woke with the roosters, before the sun was up, and packed up our stuff. We set off in the cool predawn air, and went about a half-mile down the road when Harrison slowed and stopped.

“Something feels weird with the back tire,” he said, and just as he climbed off his back wheel fell off the spindle and the moped dropped with a loud thunk. We looked at it and sighed.

Sam and I were dispatched to a nearby gas station, where we waited for two hours for a mechanic who was always said to be on his way. Meanwhile, Harry, Bruno, and Ivaylo were sitting by the side of the road when Antonio, our night watchman friend, came upon them and immediately enlisted several friends. They went to a nearby house, found a wrench and a nut, and fixed the wheel. But the tire was still flat, so Harry, Bruno, and Ivaylo came to the gas station, arriving – luckily – at almost the exact same time as the mechanic.

As it turned out, the tire was not only flat, but punctured as well. We did not receive this news well: we were fifty-five kilometers outside Havana, with little money and no other way to get home. We asked the mechanic if he could patch it, and he shook his head, but then he held up a finger, smiled, and walked into the gas station.

He emerged a moment later with a sharp tool and went to the tire. He stuck the tool into the hole, wiggled it around, and took it out. Our faces fell: the hole was now much bigger, perhaps half the size of a penny. Then, another man came out of the gas station, carrying, somewhat unexpectedly, a condom on a screwdriver. He handed the mechanic the condom and the mechanic stuffed it in the hole. He took out the screwdriver, stood up, and smiled.

We looked at the tire. The elastic ring of the condom was sticking out, but the leaking had stopped. We looked back at the mechanic, who was very pleased with himself.

Makeshift as the fix was, it held up, and we were soon on the road back to Havana. It was a chilly morning, and we eyed the clouds ahead uneasily. Ten kilometers outside of Havana, it started raining. It kept up as we entered the city; it kept up as we got lost trying to find the moped rental place; and it kept up as we walked the twenty blocks back to the hotel from the moped rental place. At noon or so on Sunday, almost exactly forty-eight hours after we left, we got back to the hotel – smelly, soaking wet, and very tired, but not unhappy in the slightest.

I think that pretty much brings us up to date. I know its been a bit of a long read, but I hope you enjoyed it, and I’ll try not to go so long between posts from now on!