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...the road was long, dusty, and filled with a unique smell of sweat, 1950\'s Chevrolet fumes, and dog shit. the air was thick and the buildings many times more dilapatated than restored. grandiose columns and baroque style architecture, gazebos, ballrooms, arched gateways and ceilings... twice or three times the height I imagined in the castles of my fairytale kingdoms. The paint peels off the walls in 5 or 6 layers of colors...pastels pinks over blues, and ocean green, brown, what was once white, and a soft yellow-before you ever reach the original cement base...and the slim remains of the old chandeliers sway eerily from their once lively electric cords... . How I was enchanted to walk the streets and gaze up up up into the balconies and parlors of the empty villas. Nothing inside but people. Sometimes a bed or mats on the floor, a few pots for the kitchen. Cigars and rum. A set of dominos. A poster of Che framed crookedly but with love, in one of those thin black plastic k-mart poster frames that you see with winning race car drivers,or britney spears tugging at her jeans. A stack of three or four books...most of them collections of cuban poetry (certainly Jos?Marti)...might sit on the floor...or on a table covered with a white lace cloth to cover up the nicks in the wood- that I find much nicer to look at than the white lace anyway. A rusty old trumpet belting out salsa from the 3rd floor. Piano stumbling through an out of tune masterpiece. Maybe a woman practicing opera or a group choreographing a salsa routine out in the patio. Little boys playing baseball in the streets with a stick and a rock and the pink, odd shaped 16 wheeler truck-hauled public buses (referred to a camellos) were packed in so tight, people often opted to exit through the windows instead of the doors-Or you could request to be "pulled" through-but that is a last resort. Computers in homes are illegal. And so is video rental, cuban peso taxis, apartment rental, private spanish lessons, inter-racial dinner parties, or restaurants with more than 15 seats. There is a guard on every corner to check your I.D. THere is a space capsule icecream store called Copellia. It is the highlight of many peoples long weeks... You must wait in a 2 hour line to enter. Then wait another 30 min. to order, and another 15 before you see the icecream. No one seems to mind. My favorite flavor was guayaba, a light pink icecream with ribbons of purple/maroon ffffruit pulp running through the scoop. Two worlds live not soo happily side by side. THe world of the American dollar spending people (which was introduced in 1994 as an attempt to bump up the economy which suffered after the fall in the soviet Union and more so again with the tightening of the U.S blockade). THe dollar did bump up the economy but in doing do tore a gaping whole into the level of equality of the people. A nation that was for so long a nation of impoverished but equal has now become a nation of jealousy because a taxi driver who may earn 500 pesos an hour transporting tourists from the airport to their exclusive hotels (20 dollars) is a hard comparison to a doctor who might earn 50 pesos a day (maybe). the difference is hard to fathom, hard to handle, and equally so, hard to change. But people are very dedicated to their government and it intensely different way of doing so, and I was impressed to learn that the teachers and the doctors wait patiently to get there due rewards. And often they are simply fine reaping the benefits of service work ,even though that means that they will not be able to but toothpaste each month, let alone a soda. but no matter... Art too, and dancing. Really they are an unbelievably well educated people. THat is free too. THe ENTIRE (through graduate and doctorate programs) educational system is free and very intensive. THey put out some fantastic artists. I met one of them. His name was Antonio. He was a painter and a sculpture but worked mostly with a kind of printmaking that I had never seen before. he studied folkloric dance, wrote independent articles for the weekly paper reviewing local cultural events, and taught me how to smoke a fine cigar. We played hopscotch every night at 8 and had an ongoing thumbwars competition...but mostly time was spent on political debates and brainstorming about critical art being used as a tool for education and change. You cant really experience anything real there without a cuban on your arm and a bottle of 1.50 rum to take to the Malecon. (the long strip of outdoors wall brigading the ocean from the streets of habana-which by the way is spelled with b). This was most certainly the best place to see real dancing, hear live music, meet people, and spend any night from Sat. on. I couldn\'t leave... until now...to return again with new clarity and more discovery at the tip of my tongue... |
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