Let me begin with a discussion of the worst possible subject, politics. Maybe because everyone here is acutely aware of it. Maybe it's because we discussed it at dinner with our new German and Swiss friends, or maybe it's because I had a pot of Cuban coffee before dinner, but whatever.
So in the 50's, this place was happening and was the playground of the rich and famous. The very wealthy ran the government, millionaires by then standards, and they controlled all of the big businesses and hotels. Sound familiar? They decided to cut social programs, cut government sponsored pensions (social security), and government sponsored medical care. They cut wages to the point people couldn't survive on them. All just so they could put more money into their own pockets. Sound familiar yet? Finally, in 1959, Castro started with two dozen people and began a protest that spread across the country, which eventually led to an overthrow of the government. They took all the wealth and spread it out amongst the people. They've pretty much been living on it ever since.
Just saying.
So now there is going to be a time shift, because I didn't write anything else last night. Probably for the best. I'm going to finish last night tonight; I'll explain later.
We got up, did the usual breakfast thing up on the terrace, and went out in search of a bank. The money issue is still a cloud hanging over us, cause we don't want to sit around and do nothing but we also don't want to run out of money. But so far no luck, and yesterday was no different. All the banks were closed because it was a holiday.
After lunch we took off to Cienfuegos in a small Russian car that we shared with another couple. And no air conditioning for the three hour drive. The good news is that it was a six-lane highway, which I found odd because there's only about five hundred cars in this whole country. Though there were a few cars, we shared it mostly with horse-drawn carriages, cows, bicycles, and the occasional pedestrian. I actually saw a guy with a horse-drawn carriage on the side of the road that had it jacked up and was changing the tire. I also found it profoundly odd, I don't know why, but among other things I didn't know they even had a trunk. Anyway, after a long, hot, cramped, sweaty ride, we arrived in Cienfuegos around dinner time. We had a reservation for the previous night, but we didn't make it because it as a holiday and we couldn't find a driver. The lady said she was full that night (turns out she had a person that got sick and couldn't leave) but she would take us to her cousin's.
Most of the time when you read about those stories online, it never turns out well. But a few minutes later her cousin showed up, a stocky little Cuban named Camillo who was the spitting image of a friend of ours in California (Chito). He carried most of our bags like 3 blocks to his house - I think he was slowly dying inside - and the house turned out to be really tiny. Tiny as in there was a propane tank they were using as a table in the dining room that provided the gas for the stove in the kitchen. Tiny as in the shower was pretty much over the stool in the bathroom. The good news is I trimmed 10 minutes off my getting-ready time this morning. Think about it a sec. ;) Anyway, it was clean and they were really nice, so we decided early on that's all we needed. They offered for us to eat dinner with them, for gawd's sake.
The town is old, but really cute. Much cleaner, quieter, and much more space than Habana. It was basically a seaside fishing village that they are kinda trying to convert to tourism. It is fairly well restored and painted in the pastel colors of Cuba. They at least have some normal stores in the center of town, about evenly split between national stores (them) and cuc stores (us). We had kind of the usual dinner of chicken and rice and Cuba Libres with our new German and Swiss friends, which took forever as usual, and some crazy-good ice cream from a local place. We were back at the house by 10 and I started to write out on the balcony some nonsense about politics. Now we're caught up.
So to make a long story short, Camillo came out and sat down with me, and three hours later I went to bed. Now he will tell you he speaks English, but I will also tell you I speak Chinese. I wish I had a recording; sometimes I'm speaking in Spanish and he's speaking English; sometimes he's speaking in Spanish and I'm speaking in English; sometimes both Spanish; sometimes both English. It was pretty funny in retrospect, but we talked for a solid three hours. A quick summary-
He was an accountant until a few months ago and made $1 a day. Allot of people make half that, but he was a professional. He quit to start this business. He charges $20 a night.
I asked him why people sit at a table in the doorway of government buildings all day and night, and he said "it's probably cheaper than buying a door."
He hated his job, because most of the accountants aren't reliable. "And if it's not reliable, it's not accounting. It's just numbers on a piece of paper."
He thinks the country is ass backward and would leave in a second if he could.
No one can fish here because everyone used to go out and then they'd never come back. So now it's prohibited. He is really pissed about that, he has never has a piece of fresh tuna.
Milk is very expensive, because although the government will give you a cow, the milk is still theirs. Steak, too. If you kill your government cow, you could go to jail.
All they eat is chicken, because that's the only thing the US will send them. It's all American chicken. He said "if you really want to punish Cuba, cut off our chicken."
I could go on and on, but I will just say it was both funny, sad, and enlightening. The whole everything is perspective thing I wrote about in a previous post. But at the end of the night, we were still just two guys sitting on a porch.
No comments:
Post a Comment