Wednesday 20 July 2011

Shop ´till you drop...

Blame it on unreliability of resources, price of imported goods, occasional indifference shown by staff to customer service, (variable to poor) quality of goods and the necessity to queue for everything: Cuba is not a consumerist society. Where we either revel in it or begrudge the time lost in the detour to the high street or supermarket, for Cubans it is one of the most trying of daily tasks that has to be met with an unbelievable amount of patience and flexibility but almost never excitement or joy.

Before I come back to the reasons it’s worth noting that things have not always been as bad as they are now. Of course they have been worse – most notably in the early to mid 1990’s – but they’ve also been much better. Isis talks wistfully of the days before the ‘special period’ when there was unlimited petroleum, tinned peaches and condensed milk. Then she talks of those born in the 1990’s and pities their not knowing the good days. Cubans of a certain age have lived through an awful lot of hardship and change and so far there is not much hope of a swift return to the times of plenty. Though the provision of government rations (including limited food and clothing) and its housing plan means that virtually no one is actually starving these days in Cuba, things are not easy – and nowhere is this more evident than in the daily necessity of buying stuff. A few observations on what makes shopping such a chore follow.

·         The unreliability of resources
Things may have improved since the ‘90s but since Cuba remains under the US embargo or ‘bloqueo’, still faces a massive and crippling debt, is still a ‘developing’ country and is still an island – thus it’s sometimes a miracle that anything gets through the borders at all! Tinned fruit, tinned tomatoes, Levis, Adidas, fruit juice etc can be discovered at a push (if you’re able or prepared to pay for them) but the list of what cannot be found is far longer and security of supply is virtually non-existent.  

As a result of such insecurities, Cuba has learnt to produce a lot itself – sugar, rice, fruit and vegetables for example, but the list is by no means exhaustive and even those goods it includes cannot be produced to the quantity required to satisfy the population.  Furthermore it does not extend to non-food goods. Thus the result is simple: many products cannot and do not get into the country or the towns and certainly not to little villages. I had to search a full week before I could find any coffee in Alamar and it was not until I went into Havana that I managed to track some down. Of course food security is not so insecure on the tourist trail. Flock to visitor enclaves such as Varadero on the Atlantic coast and Trinidad on the Caribbean and bare shelves seem to be heavily policed against – almost as if the government were putting on a façade for their international visitors. Hard to believe? Sadly not.

Our experience has so far taught us that when you see something you want: buy it! Dawdling here simply ends in tears. We’d been hunting for an umbrella for days in both Havana and the prime beach resort Varadero to no avail. When we found some shops that looked like umbrellas might be amongst the items normally stocked we were either told with a kind smile: ‘if only’, or just given a look as if to say ‘you’ve so much to learn!’ 

In addition to the unreliability of resources is the fact that you just don’t have a hope in hell of finding some things. Take for example the daily newspaper, Granma. If you’re a tourist wanting to read the (heavily biased) noticias you need to get ‘lucky’ and stumble across someone sat on the corner of a street selling it. If they see you first, you’ll end up paying at least 20 times more than its worth because you have the words foreigner/CUC written across your forehead. That and the fact that newsagents simply do not exist, and the government retains tight controls on what can and cannot be read. Unless you’re staying in an upscale hotel the only option if you’ve run out of reading material is to try and learn Spanish by reading Love in the time of cholera or to go pick some texts glorifying the socialist revolution. Staring out of the window and watch the world go by is often easier.

·         Choice
This has to be one of the very few remaining places where McDonalds has yet to arrive and where Coca Cola is less popular and scarcer than the national tu kola drink. It surely won’t last for ever but for now what Cubans eat, drink and consume is strictly guarded by the government and therefore resists American influence as much as it can. Window shopping is educational rather than entertaining, and often for want of a better word, depressing.

One of the most interesting areas for me is the Cuban supermarkets. So far we’ve only found one which could reasonably be called a supermarket: a large-ish white space with isles and shelves with a limited range of goods from long life milk to juice to coffee and vegetable oil. There is one or at the most two brands for each and no fresh food to speak of. That’s OK because there are farmers markets (if you can find them) in every town as well as butchers (or stalls with piles of meat), fishmongers (if you’re lucky) and here one minute gone the next outlets that sell goats’ milk and fast food, but the purest ‘supermarket’ of course comes nowhere near to resembling what we in the ‘developed’ world would think of a supermarket, metro or corner shop. Roadside ‘Panamerican’ stalls stock similar goods (one of everything – from biscuits and fizzy drinks to deodorant) for sale in CUC which help make life tolerable for the unaccustomed visitor, but they’re not much fun for locals: soap, nestle ice cream and a bottle of rum become real luxuries when they’re sold in divisa (CUC) by the corner shops.

·         The price of goods
This brings us onto the cost of the shop, though I’ve written a fair amount on this so won’t dwell. Basically, imported goods including toiletries, decent alcohol, tinned and cupboard staple foodstuffs, clothes, shoes, electronics etc are all sold in CUC, making them comparatively expensive for the foreigner and positively off-limits for the average Cuban – if there is such a thing?! If you want to buy a pair of trainers and you earn $18CUC per month, you’ve got to save a fair old while to afford the $50CUC price tag. If you want to buy a computer, TV or hair dryer – you’re going to need to get creative. Prices are vastly inflated and thus completely unrealistic. Somehow people do get there – whether it’s because of loans from the government, remittances from family in the USA, second hand trade, black market acquisition etc – but it’s not easy. 

As a foreigner however if you’re carrying moneda nacional you can get some bargains. Mini food stops spring up outside people’s houses selling everything from ham sandwiches to fruit milkshakes and pina coladas. Helen and I walked down the main street to the beach at lunch time one day in the mood to give everything a try and managed to acquire two fresh pina coladas, 2 little paper cones of peanuts, strange but tasty corn fritters, a bag of popcorn, soya yoghurt, what we think is a slab of peanut butter (saved for emergencies) and a handful of a yummy fruit whose name I forget and I don’t think we have in the UK -  all for under a pound. Now we’re on the tourist trail however such feasting in national pesos is a rarity and you have to be quick on your toes – buying food straight after locals is a good trick, so you can see how much they pay before they add a few zeroes onto the price.

·         The indifference of staff
For a country wishing to entice more foreign visitors and indeed hoping to grow its economy it’s a wonder they’re by and large yet to invent the concept of customer service. Seriously, the number of times we’ve tried to buy anything from a bottle of water to a dinner or even a night in a hotel and been met with a look of scorn has meant that when we find someone helpful and sympathetic, we find ourselves jumping for joy. Fortunately this doesn’t include everything, with the notable exception being the casas particulares (essentially B&B’s) we’ve been staying with on the island which have, almost without exception, been run by wonderfully friendly people.

Once we turned up at a hotel though – the only night we’ve not stayed in a Casa - only to find the booking had been confused and we’d asked for the night before instead. When we apologised to the particularly unhappy receptionist we then rather predictably tried to ask – still wearing rucksacks and after a long and delayed journey - whether she would have a room for tonight instead. She simply looked at us as if to say ‘do I look like I’m running a hotel!?’ It was then a fair wait before she begrudgingly suggested there was one room we could share, but it would definitely not be available the next night. Needless to say we went back to staying in the casas the next day!

·         The quality of goods
When it comes to quality you have to qualify what you’re talking about. If it’s apples, don’t get your hopes up, whereas if you’re looking for a tasty selection of root veg or some arts and crafts to take home you should have more luck. Cuba has gone from producing almost nothing for the tourist market to a burgeoning street stall artisan sector which sells everything from wooden afro-Caribbean carvings to kitchy paintings and silver plated jewellery. I’m still not convinced there is anything I like enough so far to carry around Costa Rica for 2 weeks in order to get it home, but inevitably this sector takes some people’s fancy. When it comes to food though quality cannot be taken for granted. Any space I have left is going to be reserved for Cigars – for which Cuba has earned a spot as number one in the world - so get your orders in!

·         The queue
Understanding the queue in Cuba is a rite of passage. To the untrained eye, the crowd milling around at the bus stop, the group waving fans whilst waiting at the bank, or even the frustrated masses sat down on the floor at immigration look like an unorganised gaggle of nationals. Believe it or not however they’re almost without exception organised into a rigid albeit fluid queue. One look to the past helps explain how the phenomenon of the queue has become a daily occupation for most Cubans.

This paragraph is an extract from an account of ‘A Visit to Cuba’ written by a Jesuit priest in 1971. It’s a fantastically vivid and well written account of a trip made and has been fascinating to read given the many changes and consistencies between today and 40 years ago. These few lines on the queue are worth sharing (specific details of where the extract is taken from to follow in future blog post):
“The most remarkable queues I encountered were those outside the few restaurants that remain open to the public in Havana. To get a meal, one has to start queuing the day before. A ticket is then issued entitling one to return on the morrow to eat but, since the quantity of tickets issued usually exceeds the amount of food, it is advisable to return early the following day - hence a second queue. If the supply holds good when one's turn comes, one eats or puts the meal into a bag to carry home. “
This was written in 1971 and though the situation is not so extreme in 2011 you can still cannot avoid the queue and have to learn to understand it if you want to get anything done. And so how do you do it and make it look so painless? Well, you just rock up to the crowd and ask who is ‘El ultimo?’- the last person. Sometimes you need to ask a few times before anyone takes any notice of you but when you do get a response you need to clock who it was or in my case stick to them like a stamp. If you’re extra sharp, you’ll double your back by asking who comes before them. Sometimes I’ve been in a queue and taken my finger off the pulse only to look up and have lost the person I was behind – either because they’ve given up or because they’ve already been seen. You can avoid being once again in the no-man’s-land by checking down the chain.
Despite these reasons and many more that make shopping such a difficult and unrewarding experience most Cubans accept this reality with admirable cheer. Again quoting from the account above, “In spite of the inconveniences, however, queues are happy places where one can still savour the humour for which Cubans are famous. I often stood in one to chat with the people. One joke doing the rounds went as follows: It is the year 2000. A Cuban boy is reading a history book on the heroic days of the revolution and comes up against the word ‘queue’. He asks: ‘Daddy, what is a ‘queue’?’ ‘Ah, my son, those were things we used to do in the early days when there were many shortages. If we wanted a pair of shoes, for example, we would form a queue. When you got to the top of the line and if there were any shoes left, you were then entitled to buy a pair.’ ‘Daddy’ ‘Yes, my son.’ ‘What are shoes?’”
Thankfully the sight of a man or woman without shoes is a rareity...but the queue lives on! 

Monday 18 July 2011

The government’s finest accomplishment: Coppelia ice-cream parlour?

Cubans country over love ice cream. I can’t reliably suggest they enjoy it more than the Brits, Italians or Argentines, but they sure do get through it, often preferring a tub of ice cream, or a ‘salad’ of 5 large balls instead of a simple ’99 for example. Why have just one ball when you can have 5?! Why indeed, especially when it’s hot year round and is generally a cheap snack. I seemed to go a month without having any of the stuff but somehow since Helen’s arrival we seem to have made ice cream tasting an integral part of our country tour. I’m not complaining though – in addition to being an enjoyable experience, the pastime of going for an ice cream provides another fascinating point of departure into Cuban life, and in some cases is where the contrast between Cubans and tourists is most notable. This was especially the case in Parque Coppelia, which we felt compelled to visit twice: once as tourists and once masquerading as locals with some Cuban friends.  If such a case study sounds too good to be true, that’s probably because it is. But it does make for good content if we’re still interested in the difference between locals and tourists in the capital.

Coppelia is the number one brand of ice cream in Cuba. Perhaps Nestle pips it to the post in terms of sales, since it seems to have a complete monopoly over corner shop ice cream freezers, but Coppelia beats it hands down in the flavour stakes and the fact that it’s about 101% more Cuban than its competitor. In addition to a presence in most major towns, Coppelia’s number one destination in Cuba is within Parque Coppelia nestled within Havana’s Vedado district.

This parlour, built in 1966 by the government (perhaps one of their best pieces of work?!) and sprung to superstardom after key product placement in Tomás Guitierrrez Alea’s classic movie, Fresa y Chocolate, Coppelia is the biggest ice-creamery in the world: serving around 300 000 a day who flock to the parque to form snake like queues around and around the park fences.

I’ll come back to the Cuban ability to make a queue out of anything at another time (sounds boring but it really does warrant some description and explanation) but for now it will suffice to say that Coppelia is the epicentre of the queue: with no less than two on each corner of the square winding their way around the park with its length seemingly proportional to the strength of the sun. We couldn’t quite work out how you decided which queue to join but it must have something to do with where you wish to sit, given that the park was divided into zones.  

The first time we visited it was with Koral and Cassim- and it became evident from the beginning that we were going to get the Cuban experience. We arrived at around 7pm: still hot enough to enjoy but thankfully after the rush hour, and apparently we were lucky only to queue for around a half hour before being let into the park and directed to a busy seating area full of Cuban families tucking into bowls and bowls of what looked like vanilla ice cream with biscuity sprinkles on top.

We sat down and read the choice of flavours: vanilla and vanilla with chocolate swirls. It wasn’t clear whether choice was limited to these flavours usually, or whether we’d just chosen a day when they’d run out. (It’s not hard to believe that a wider choice is a luxury, though.) Once we’d sat down it quickly became apparent that the done thing seemed to be to ask for an ‘ensalada’ – 5 balls, together with some portions of ‘dulces’ (sweet cakes) - anything less “wouldn’t have been worth it!”  We waited only 5 minutes (in which time I nipped to the loo where the Cuban experience continued – no cubicle doors, water, paper or soap) for our large bowls of ice cream to arrive, and were suitably impressed by the quality. It was yum! By the time Helen and I had finished taking a couple of photos to record the experience and exchanged the verdict on the flavours however, we looked up to see both Koral and Cassim finishing off the dulces and ice cream. This explains why most people order in double quantities – perhaps like the sun the time you have to queue is proportional to the amount of balls you deserve!

After reassuring Koral we’d had a great time, and that we were more than happy to treat them (all in all our ice cream experience cost around $20 pesos moneda nacional, or less than $1 CUC –less than £1) we agreed it would be ridiculous to come here as a ‘tourist’ and pay in CUC for the same experience. Despite this we remained curious: could this really be up to 20 times more expensive for tourists, and if so what frills and extras would be available? We simply had to find out – though of course without confiding this with them.
 
So, we returned the next day, and from the moment of our arrival things were completely different. For one, we did not queue. Instead we were allowed to stream past yards of Cubans waiting patiently and find a seat in a separate part of the park, where there was a handful of tourists and a rather mediocre atmosphere. Secondly, there were suddenly five flavours to choose from. For the sake of the experiment we ordered the same thing: an ensalada of 5 balls, which this time came not with crushed biscuits but biscotti, chocolate swirls, honey and instead of a plastic bowl it came in a glass sundae bowl.

And the verdict: looks can be deceiving - being a tourist was nowhere near as much fun! For starters it felt like daylight robbery. Remembering that 5 large bowls of ice cream and side plates of cake had cost us around $1CUC the day before we begrudgingly handed over $5CUC a piece for an inferior experience. The loo may have had a door this time, but the honey and chocolate was unnecessary, the company was nowhere near as much fun and it did not taste that much better to justify the vastly inflated price. The queue in the sun, asking for a mountain of ice cream and savouring it as a family or with a group of friends seemed to be part and parcel of life for the habanero and it felt like a shame to be excluding ourselves from it - if even to do a trial. As I’ve already said I expect to pay more as a tourist but such blatant profiteering felt wrong given how superior an experience we’d had the day before sat together both foreigners and Cubans enjoying an ice cream in the sun.

Friday 15 July 2011

"Why didn't you both take the bus?"

When faced with a broken down electric train in the middle of a sugar cane field (somewhere between Havana and Matanzas) during a thunder storm and surrounded by working class Cubans who’d had no choice but to take the train, in answer to the question: “why aren’t you on the bus?” it’s no use suggesting we climbed aboard looking for an adventure. “To soak in the ‘mesmerising’ scenery, to get an authentic Cuban experience (we were the only tourists on the train, and judging from peoples interactions they don’t often come), to get some material for the blog?” There did come a point though two and a half hours in when we asked each other a similar question: when the bus was inexpensive, took half the time, was around 100% more comfortable, and could drop us directly at our destination, (the Cuban beach resort of Varadero), why did we think this was such a good plan again? I think we probably need to blame the guide books – because there sure as hell wasn’t one single Cuban that recommended this journey to us!

For one thing, we’ve taken the ViaZul bus option enough times - (once) - to know that it would have been soulless and mundane and could not compare at all to the scenic meandering 135km journey through the old sugar plantations. “Rail journeys hold a particular magic”, we had read, “none more so in Cuba than the Hershey Train”, which travels three times a day year round (weather and electricity permitting is what they don’t say) from Casablanca (a small town across the bay from La Habana) to Matanzas. The journey through 69 square miles of lush cane fields runs along a railway built by Milton Hershey in 1916 designed to transport workers and goods using steam locomotives, which were later replaced by 60-ton electric locomotives, and then in 1998 by antique Spanish cars which currently serve the route. This is the only electric train route left in Cuba and to ride it, we were told, is to experience “Cuban public transport at its most idiosyncratic.” We can now confirm this.

The journey started well. Sort of.

We’d attempted to buy the ticket the day before travelling, anticipating problems had we not checked thoroughly for any Cuban style snags to the plan – for example, ‘the timetable is as shown except every third Thursday when it leaves 3 minutes earlier’. That kind of thing. But when we turned up at the station the lady sat outside the little ticket office assured us we would be able to buy it on the day of travel. Indeed that was the only option. “And it doesn’t get full up?” I asked. She laughed. So did we when we looked down at the overgrown railway lines and learnt that should it rain, the train being electric has to stop. Despite the drought, praying for it not to rain has become a new daily routine for us! And we were determined to give it a go, aiming for the 12.27 departure (the earlier one had left at 6am, and I’m travelling with Helen. Enough said!) leaving plenty of time to get from Alamar to Havana, and from Havana across the bay to Casablanca on the little ferry that goes back and forth. Apart from the usual hold up in flagging down a car from Alamar (future blog post to come on transport issues), we hadn’t anticipated a problem going across the water, until we remembered that on this route thorough bag searches are compulsory of course. And though this can be a pain with a couple of shopping bags, it is a bit of a nightmare with two large rucksacks packed tightly and according to the logic that items in the bottom of the middle section cannot and will not be used. Cursing ourselves for having forgotten this we headed straight in and started taking stuff out of our bags. It was all going well until my guard found my laptop. When I took it out of the case she gave me a funny look and asked what it was. “A lap top” I suggested. “Nope, you cannot come aboard with that. Bus or taxi. Bus or taxi.” We knew security can be tight in this country but not being allowed to board a 10 minute crossing with a lap top seems excessive, right?

Interestingly the paranoia is routed in previous attempts to sequester the boat and steer it not to the other side of the shore but to Miami, both 140km and a million miles away from Cuba. A few years ago a couple took a cake and birthday celebrations onto the launch only to reveal guns and explosives ready to use should the captain not take the boat ashore in the USA. This may explain the security but I’m still a bit confused about what my little acer could do. Still, we caught a cab and were taken to the port via the windy inland roads before being dropped in front of the station, giving us our first glimpse of the train. We were thinking rustic but hadn’t quite prepared ourselves for the incredibly basic collection of rusty carriages that met us. But at least it was there, and I could feel a certain amount of excitement for the journey ahead. Whatever happened it would hold more adventure than a tourist bus straight to the beach. This was true.

In fact before we even left we felt our anxiety levels fluctuate – we’d arrived early so the train lady suggested we leave our bags and go for a coffee before the train left. “And the train definitely leaves at 12.27 so will still be there when we come back?” I double checked. She laughed again but nodded confidently. Needless to say we came out of the coffee shop to find it gone! Thankfully the passengers were still sat waiting and it did come back, and it did leave on time. Almost – 2 minutes late because it was waiting for Helen and I to go to the loo: we’d realised at 12.25 that there was not one aboard, so had rushed off to empty our bladders. And this was a good idea, for apart from the 20 or so regular stops to drop off and pick up people en route (in what were some the most isolated train ‘stations’ I’d come across), the train did not make a courtesy stop until it reached the small now run down town of Hershey just over half way through. But for $2.80CUC we were not complaining; we took our tickets with small holes punched in to indicate the station where we’d got on and were going to get off, and smiled rather uncertainly about our decision to spend such an indulgent amount of time on this journey.

But it was everything we’d hoped for, and more. The scenery was indeed fascinating: the train chugged, bumped and tooted its way through miles and miles of old sugar cane fields in the Yumuri Valley, in amongst palm studded hills where cattle and goats crazed and occasionally past small hamlets and villages. Sometimes it would come upon a road and wait to cross it, other times a man would be waiting with one green and one red flag to wave us on. And occasionally the horn would be used liberally to shoo animals off the track. I spent almost three hours just leaning out of the window, transfixed by the countryside and almost getting to feel the breeze as we picked up a little more speed (we went around 40km/hour) and headed along the coast within sight of the Atlantic.

In fact, everything was magical until we heard a bang, saw lots of smoke and saw one of the conductors run towards us to the back of the next carriage and detach the electric cables of the train from the overhead cable. Despite being girls and knowing nothing about trains, we didn’t think this could have been a good sign, and were promptly told the equipment had broken and someone was calling Hershey to find out what they could do. Given Helen and my record on long distance public transport we had been thinking it was all going just a bit too well! Once we were making a 20 hour trip from Argentina down into Chilean Patagonia on a tight schedule and the bus broke down, twice. The first time we sorted it, the second time they had to send a new bus from the nearest point – 10 hours away. At least this time we were neither so remote nor so desperate to get to our destination, but it was nonetheless a little frustrating. What saved the day was the decision to join the other passengers climbing off and sitting in the shade to eat mangos and natter away whilst we waited a couple of hours for a new train to be sent from Hershey.

It could definitely have been worse: within two hours we were back on the road and just willing to reach Matanzas before the rain fell. Apparently this happened the other day and people were stuck here for 24 hours. Furthermore it was during the night. When the other train came it was able to push us along to a point where the track widened into two and we were able to change carriages and start again on the new train, which left immediately for Matanzas chugging off through the valleys. The final leg of the journey, a 37 km journey from Matanzas to Varadero, we achieved in a local bus for $2 Cuban pesos each, and finally arrived in this resort as the sun was setting rather smelly and weighed down - not at all like the usual Cuban and international clientele that flock to Varadero! Thankfully it didn’t matter; we’d reached the beach just in time to jump into the water and cool off.

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Cuban bureaucracy; keep calm and carry on

The last few days, sparked by the safe arrival of Helen, have marked a change of pace on this enigmatic island; the end of my ‘work’ on the organopónico and life as I’d known it with Isis and her family in sleepy Alamar, and the beginning of our journeys further into the heart of the country. This also coincided with a temporary move to the capital, my 25th birthday and some particularly trying efforts to renew my tourist visa. Since this blog would be both too long to bore you with birthday shenanigans and too short to translate the wonders and enigmas of Havana, I’ll not set my sights too high. Instead, I’ll attempt just to paint a picture of where these activities overlapped and leave it to Helen to eloquently translate the rest!

First and foremost, just to clarify, you really can believe everything you hear on the streets about this capital: Havana definitely has “a flavour all of its own”. Every other car really is a 1950s Chevrolet, the central buildings really are crumbling colonial mansions painted in sun faded pastel shades, and you really do turn the corner to find couples dancing salsa and sipping mojitos as the sun goes down. It’s beautiful as well as neglected and dirty, bright as well as smoggy and smelly, navigable at the same time as vast and expansive, loud and energetic whilst being welcoming and friendly. And like all cities this scale it takes time and patience to get to know. We didn’t have an awful lot of the former but we sure were ready to soak in the sights, smells and sensations.  

Our guide book suggests to allow at least a week for Havana, and to start off by getting one’s bearings through a city bus tour. We were trying to outsmart it with some alternatives. Firstly, despite not being particularly blessed with a sense of direction, living nearby had given me the chance to get my head around the key sights before Helen’s arrival. Secondly, we had some kind helpers: one day we were joined in town by Koral (from the organopónico) and her hyperactive but delightful son who acted as wonderful guides in exchange for copious amounts of ice-cream, and another evening a friend of Isis was under instruction to keep us company after dark. And finally, for better or worse, we spent two mornings racing up and down the length of Havana to sort out my visa, and in the process got to see some of the less noted everyday sights of the city.  

It also helped that we’d decided - partly out of necessity (I need a fixed address to give to immigration in order to renew my visa) and partly out of curiosity - to spend a few nights in the capital itself, and more specifically perhaps the most touristy but definitely the oldest and most enchanting heart: la Habana Vieja. The chance to experience the pace and wake up to a view of inner city roof tops, with their washing lines and sleeping dogs (note not too many green roofs in this part of town!) was – even in the two mornings of pouring rain – a real feast for the senses.  

And so it was when we woke up on the 7th - rain sheeting in from all angles (strangely reminiscent of summer holidays in Wales) rather dampened plans of a birthday soaking in the sun whilst sipping mojitos on a rooftop bar. In addition I had the rather pressing issue of my visa to attend to, and unfortunately our plan to get up early, secure the stamp and be back carefree by lunchtime didn’t quite work out. Helen and I had both experienced Visa bureaucracy abroad to believe this wasn’t going to be easy, but we still had some hopes that this could be the exception. In fact, this could still go down as the worst yet.

Our first try failed outright. We’d been directed to the immigration office about 20 minutes’ walk from our casa particular. Not ideal in the weather but blessed with the impenetrable waterproof ponchos Helen’s mum had sent we set off in the right direction, only to be told upon arrival that immigration had moved: somehow it had been too good to be true! Instead of being in the centre of town it was now in the outskirts, around a 30 minute drive, and instead of having a system of one immigration centre per neighbourhood, it was now just one facility for Havana’s 2.2mn strong population.

So, with the knowledge of which local collectivo (a kind of local taxi that runs a certain route and is shared with other people) to get we set off again, headed up to the end of the route and walked the half hour to the centre - only to find it and be told that on a Thursday immigration closes at 12pm. Just Thursdays and Saturdays does it operate a half day, and not for love nor money - I did think now was the time for checking the corruption stakes but with no avail - arriving at 12.01 could get you in. Birthday luck hadn’t quite kicked in!

In the end we realised I couldn’t’ have done it then anyway. We knew there was a $25CUC price-tag on the visa but didn’t realise you couldn’t pay it up there in the middle of nowhere. Nope, it had to be done beforehand through a bank in town who’d take the money and exchange it for stamps. Yep, stamps just like those you put on letters. So, off we went to join the last person in the queue  (Cubans are even better at queuing than the English) for an hour or so, and then some, in order to wait whilst they looked for more $5CUC stamps. No bother, we’d done enough to get to do it tomorrow – or so we’d thought.

The second attempt didn’t end so happily either. In fact, when we arrived at immigration the next day they asked for something new: my medical insurance. They didn’t care for evidence of what date I was leaving and they weren’t even as interested as I’d imagined in where I’d been staying this last month, but they sure as hell were not going to let me through without evidence that I wasn’t going to drain them of medical expenses and not be able to cough up afterwards. The only problem: I didn’t have it printed out, and if you think immigration has a computer to hand, let alone a printer, think again! This was a job for the city centre - so back we went!  Fortunately we were travelling Cuban style so each journey cost less than one CUC rather than 8 to 10. Still, the price of connecting and printing soon took care of that!

On the third attempt it was all worth it though. Stamps, check. Passport, check. Insurance, check. Bringing Helen as proof that I was just a ‘normal’ tourist, and taking evidence of my return flight was not in the end necessary. All they did was stick the stamps onto a piece of paper, staple that together with the receipt from the casa particular and hand me back my visa with another stamp on it. No electricity involved, if you ignore the poorly connected air con. (NB if you’re a passport stamp collector you’ll be disappointed with Cuba. It chooses to stamp your visa not your passport so as to reduce conflict with passengers to and from the USA). Despite the stories I’d quickly dreamt up of where I’d been and what I had and had not been doing (i.e. not working, nor attending conferences, nor living with unregistered Cubans) we got off lightly – an unwelcome delay to our city adventure it was but after a drink or two it we agreed merrily that this was a fair price to pay for an extra two weeks exploring the island.

PS: An interesting addition to the last post on the internet: it seems that neither for love nor money can one find you an internet connection in the capital of Cuba after 6pm on a weekday evening even in the most expensive of tourist hotels. When we tried to find a means to buy some last minute scuba diving insurance we came up with blank walls on all accounts. Either: “there should be connection, there just isn’t now and who knows when it will be back”, OR, “Nope. Its 7pm now, the internet finished at 6pm – you can come back at 9am though”, OR  “all the internet cards have been used. You can connect by wifi though.” Unfortunately we weren’t in the habit of carrying a laptop around here on the off chance wifi will suddenly appear.  We gave up in the end but with a distinct feeling that such infrastructure could neither be efficient nor sustainable in the long run.

Saturday 9 July 2011

Hopscotch, marbles and dominos – the world before it become one wide web

Walking down the street here and you have to dodge kids playing marbles on the pavement and chalking the hopscotch grid road. Join your family or extended family on a Sunday afternoon and expect to spend a good chunk of time playing dominos. Whatever the pastime one thing is noticeably absent from the scene - for me at least – and that is the internet.

Of course for the majority it is not noticeably absent; the internet genie hasn’t been let out of its bottle yet and whilst it stays in there no one particularly misses it. Microsoft Encarta still rules the waves and emails are made possible through the use of a programme akin to Microsoft Outlook – which enables those lucky enough to own a computer to send their emails whilst preventing them from roaming the internet freely.  Furthermore, connecting times are limited – between the hours of 3 and 8 the airwaves are reserved for professional use only. If Isis wants to send an email it has to be after 8pm.

In the UK I’d dare to say a majority of professional work relies upon an accessible WWW; be it research, a functional internet… you name it we’ve built a world around the web. For this reason some professions in Cuba are permitted an almost free use of the internet -  I believe this includes politicians, doctors and some university professors. As a university student you can also connect. However, the days of whiling away hours surfing the net are a way away.  

This can of course be viewed as both a good and a bad thing.

Let’s lead with the good. Firstly, returning to the beginning of the blog, the absence of the internet can be seen as a small contributing factor to the continuing importance of time spent within the family unit.  If you can’t spend the evening on iplayer or chatting on facebook, you spend it someway else: Drinking a beer with friends, playing dominos, or sitting down as a family and watching a telenovella. I don’t want to take this whole ‘internet has ruined our ability to socialise and play family games theory’ too far, especially as there are obviously so many other factors involved, but it’s worth mentioning at least as an observation.

Secondly, together with the lack of advertising (there really isn’t any here unless its talking about socialism and year 53 of the revolution!), the lack of pornography in society is another interesting factor, and one which I think could have something to do with the noticeable absence of concern or preoccupation over one’s looks. Sure, there are magazines and images if you look hard for them, but what there is not is an idealist female or male image which penetrates deeply into society. It’ true that so far  I’ve not spent a huge amount of time with girls my age, and of course western films still depict a certain stereotype size zero’ belleza’ who we’re meant to try and aspire to become, but this is notably a society without pornography. It’s not that young people don’t care, but they’re not apparently being destroyed by a desire to seek perfection in their looks and relationships. Again, I’m only speculating but given the current interest in the effect of a proliferation of porn in western society, Cuba seems like an interesting point of discussion.

I’m sure there are more good things but I want to mention the bad before I lose you. The first is obviously the absence of the possibility to access the internet – free information does not exist. We raise up our arms in disgust when China censors Google, but this is a censorship of the world wide web for a whole society.  Cuban’s a curious people, I was told before I came and they themselves have repeatedly told me since, and who can blame them? Apart from what the government chooses to let onto the TV stations there is no chance for people to learn for themselves and get closer to other cultures and experiences through the internet. How can it be fair that I can sit down in the telephone centre and surf away, whilst others can only look on in curiosity?

Then there is the utility factor. The organoponoico has no web page because it cannot access the internet, but imagine how rich a resource it could be if it could develop one. An online bus timetable, the ability to make appointments online, to skype friends and family abroad, to see pictures and read tales…I could go on and on. There are no apps here – people survive of course, but they could do with for starters a happy medium between the level to which the WWW has penetrated our societies and the level at which they’re running at the moment, which is close to zero.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just frustrated because accessing the internet is such an expensive, slow and unreliable pain in the bum. It also just doesn’t seem to exist on Sunday’s. But at least I can do it I guess. This paranoid censorship may fit in with the rest of Cuban life but that doesn’t make it right.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

What you can do with two currencies that you can´t do with one...

Take tourists for one hell of a ride, that’s what. Create two parallel worlds which overlap in the most curious and confusing ways, and make some money out of it.

I’ve just written about tourism so don’t want to overdo it. Permit me a quick deviation though to try and describe some insights I’ve recently gained on the price of being a tourist in Cuba.

Firstly, take a look at these few examples of the difference in cost for products and services:

Product/ service
Price for Cubans (MN)
In CUC/US$
Price for tourists (CUC/$USD)
Taxi Alamar to Habana
$20
$1
$5
Traditional Cuban lunch: rice, beans and chicken
$20
$1
$6-10
Museum entry
$10
$.50
$8
Ice cream
$.60
$0.0 something
$2
Beer
$7
$.30
$1
Bottle of rum
$48
$2
$4.50
Ballet performance
$10
$.50
$25
3 cigars of the best quality
$264
$11
$25


Before we go on I’m anxious to clarify that I’m not complaining about the necessity / morality of charging tourists more: when the average local salary here comes in at about 50 cents a day there is no way locals should be expected to pay more and every reason for tourists to contribute to the economy. Nope, the problem is often the situation and substance of the transaction. In other words, it just feels like one massive scam. Quite often you’re enjoying (or not depending on the quality and service) a coffee, show, bus journey or meal sat either across from or next door to a bunch of locals, but for 24 times the price. If the quality, service and experience were 24 times better, I’d cough up with pleasure. The problem is that is often is not, and what’s more, if you take your holiday in the world of in divisa currency (CUC) it feels like you’re losing the experience of being in Cuba.

It’s for this reason (and of course to try and save money when possible) that I’ve attempted so far to go native wherever possible – always carrying a wad of national currency around with me at least so that I have the option of what food, drink, transport and ultimately experience I want.  Having said that it’s not always that easy – most notably when the tourist prices are set in law, which basically means you have to be able to prove you’re a resident in order to pay in moneda nacionale, and otherwise the tourist way or the highway.  I might be learning to speak ‘Cuban’ (which essentially means I gesticulate wildly, no longer say the ‘s’ at the end of the sentence, and say ‘no, no, no, no, no’ when I mean “well, yes”), but with pale skin and light eyes, in the word’s of Salcines, “you’re not fooling anyone, kiddo”. I found this out the hard way.  

Having kept my eyes and ears open for any sign of ballet in Havana, (it’s not the season but I was keen to see one if I could find something) I stumbled across a matinee featuring young performers and decided to go along. Things got a bit complicated when I tried to buy a ticket though.

I approached a lady sat down in the foyer of Havana’s principal theatre and explained I wanted to see the show. She proceeded to look me up and down before confirming that I was not a resident in Cuba. At that she fetched a man to ‘explain the situation’. The situation, it transpired, is that tickets cost $25CUC, and I’d have to come back in one hour to buy them. This was curious – to me it seemed costly but with that kind of a price tag what national was going to be able to go and see the ballet? They couldn’t surely rely on a hoard of Canadian sight-seers to stumble upon a matinee performance?

Fairly determined I asked them to reserve me a place and went off for a coffee where I ran into Evelid, a local show organiser who asked me for a lighter. We got chatting – he was delighted to find a foreigner in one of the few local café’s in La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) and reiterated very emphatically the importance of paying for everything in moneda nacionale. He’d had a fair amount of travel experience and didn’t like it when people made a fool of tourists. When I explained I couldn’t have a beer because I was off to the ballet, he wasn’t impressed that I was about to pay $25CUC (“my monthly salary”) to see a performance that costs less than one CUC for a local. He was determined to help out and accompanied me to the box office to buy a ticket in MN – for which I gave him $2CUC and offered my sincere thanks. The only problem is, it didn’t work.

The moment I walked into the entrance to get my ticket torn off I was asked for my proof of residence. That’s how they make sure then I thought as I was rather aggressively told I couldn’t enter on this. Fair enough in a way – again, I earn more than them and can afford to pay more. But so much more seems wrong. Pretty annoyed I went outside and was approached by the man who’d told me to come back later. “We’ve been waiting with your ticket, do you still want it?” I explained my annoyance and he dropped the price to $15CUC, just like that. Again, curious. Even more curious was the way he took me into the theatre - I was told to wait, and then run when given the sign. That I did and we ran through the back door, through the dressing rooms and into the theatre. And once I’d got a seat he asked me for the money. Definitely not kosher.

I did get to see the ballet though, and I think I was the only foreigner in a crowd full of excited young Cubans sitting on their parent’s knee and enjoying the short matinee. International standard ballet this was not but it did teach me a lesson. There is talk of uniting the two currencies in the coming couple of years, but it remains difficult to see how they’d solve the tourist v local pricing issue, or indeed how a different currency would stand up to the test against any international market where at the moment neither currency means a thing.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Out in the fields and into the kitchen

Last week saw the rotation continue. I was lucky enough to coincide with a 3 day course given by the organopónico trying to teach 20 Mexican agriculturalists the merits of going organic (many left convinced of both the need and the possibilities, if unconvinced Mexico that was ready for it) and I also spent some time with ornamental plants team, discovering amongst other things the joys of the ins and outs of the plants-as-a-luxury part of the business. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain some more about both in time, but right now though to the two most memorable days.

Firstly, to the men’s work - at least it is men’s work here: working in the fields. On Friday morning we spent 4 hours pulling up peanuts in 30-35 degree heat. It was hard work but I loved it. That might have been in part because of the company: I was joined by 2 Mexican lads who were here for the course and had stayed on in Cuba and fancied getting their hands dirty. This livened things up but it was also very satisfying work: peanuts grow from the root of the plant and can be pulled up quite easily out of the damp red earth before being laid out in the sun to dry out. After a few days drying out they’ll be sent to the agro-production area for roasting and shelling. It being an organic plantation we also found all sorts of wildlife, including thousands of woodlice skulking amidst the humidity and darkness of the peanut roots. Being stung continuously by ants wasn’t so pleasant (there are small red ants here that secrete a painful solution when they walk you’re your skin which hurts for about 20 mins before going away), but if I was in any pain I wasn’t going to let on – I felt like I needed to prove that girls can do some hunting and gathering too.

Up till now it’s been no use explaining that despite being no super woman I have spent a fair amount of my (short) working life doing physical work – mostly shovelling shit on various different farms in the UK and abroad. “In Cuba it’s different though”, they say: “we look after our women”. By this they don’t really mean we don’t in the UK – indeed many people have no way of knowing the actual state of sexual equality or inequality in many other countries - instead, I think it has more to do with the immense heat and the nature of manual labour here. With very little heavy machinery or mechanical aid of any sort it really is a case of elbow grease and sweat, and many women either cannot or do not want to do it. Up to this point I’d been limited to the female tasks or to watching the men work, and had been reprimanded three times for carrying too heavy a load, because  “even if it I can manage now my arms will ache in the morning”.

Despite being fairly stubborn and taking enjoyment out of such physical work, I have to conclude that this attitude toward the division of labour isn’t a wholly bad thing. I have no first had experience of the situation in other ‘developing’ countries but we know that women are often relied upon greatly to do a vast range of manual chores that cannot be belittled. In Africa for example between 70 and 90 per cent of the work of transporting crops is done by women and children, who also do almost all of the carrying of water and firewood. Cuban women, by developing world standards, are highly liberated; they have access to the training and education they desire as well as the access to a wealth of jobs; such that now Cuban women make up 66% of the workforce. But as well as not making it to the fields they don’t reach hard politics either. Meanwhile they remain completely indispensible in the home, where life is reminiscent of the experience of many women worldwide juggling a career and a family.

This glimpse of the hard hard work (preparing the land, working the oxen, planting out, weeding, harvesting etc) was very brief, for the next day I was out of the sun and into the kitchen: where breakfast, lunch and visitor’s meals all come together. Fortunately I’d picked a good day to join the team: 2 groups of North Americans were arriving for a tour, making 65 in total. Add those to the 100 odd workers that need to be fed as well and you’ve got a mini operation. Again, just like wanting to work out the fields the team thought I was pretty crazy, but I was delighted to be able to help.

I’ve seen a few tours come and go here – in any one week there can be anywhere between 3 and 7 visits, many from North American’s coming to Cuba on an organised visit, some also coming as a bunch from further afield, and some individuals who’ve contacted Salcines independently. They have one thing in common though – they all say the meal they eat at the organopónico is the best they’ve had during their stay in the country. This has a large amount to do with the ingredients which, bar the rice and meat, are pretty much 100% organic and have travelled at most over 6 hectares to the kitchen. For $10CUC, most enjoy a buffet of the following:

Pork steaks / fish fillets (shallow fried in soya oil, which is how most meat comes)
Green bean salad (cooked  French beans are eaten a lot here)
Beetroot (by itself)
Avocado (we’re just coming into the season, hence it being on the menu. Eating here continues to be almost 100% seasonal)
Tomato, cucumber and lettuce salad (all from the organopónico)
Black beans (either served by themselves or with rice to make the traditional dish Congri)
Cassava (cooked until tender and then finished off with a tasty garlicky sauce)
Fried plantain (self-explanatory)
Vegetable soup (with squash, sweet potato, carrots, onions etc, and despite often being prepared for vegetarian groups, it is always made with a meat stock. Needless to say vegetarianism in Cuba isn’t yet much understood or possible to accomplish!)
Yellow, white or black and white rice (the yellow variety is cooked with vegetables and I suspect a lot of meat stock and fat, the white plain and the black and white is the congri)
A variety of fruit to be eaten with the savoury main meal, including mango, papaya, guava, pineapple
Mango juice (freshly pressed mango, sometimes with extra sugar for good measure)

It really is a feast, and I’m still not quite sure how they pull it off – both with the difficulty in finding those things they can’t grow here and the simplicity of the kitchen. For example, although the organopónico does rear cattle it can only do so from their manure since they’re on loan from the government who takes them back after a certain number of months to slaughter. (Incidentally, not only is it illegal to slaughter cattle but it carries a sentence 6 times lengthier than that of killing a fellow human being. Crazy.)

Indispensible to the operation though are the people. There is one male chef who deals with the ginormous pots of soup and beans, and behind him a team of not two but five fat and cheery (but somewhat formidable) ladies who charge themselves with the meat cooking, preparation and waiter service. The washing up duty is shared evenly and the female workers wash up on a rota the lunch plates.

Despite the challenge the feeding of the 66 everything was accomplished surprisingly smoothly. I played a small part as lettuce washer, potato peeler and mango chopper, as well as having some fun as bilingual waiter and washer-upper. Having experienced the kitchen on one of its busiest days I’d have to conclude it was just as hard work as working in the fields, except you get far more compensated for your work – in my case with lots of mango off-cuts! This may explain the correlation of skinny male farm workers and rather plump female cooks. I had fun but given the chance I’d be outside and back into the field like a shot!