Tag Archives: cuba

August 14, 2009 · 4:49 pm

Things I Don’t Love about Cuba

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Just back from a week camping on a remote beach as part of the Cuban sea turtle monitoring project, I’ve got nothing to complain about. That’s a lie – lend me your ear and I’ll complain long and hard about the heinous mosquito and sand flea bites blanketing my body (the giant beach roach in my hair was also fodder for a gripe or three).

We saw it all on that white sand beach flanked by woods and cliffs under a fat, full moon: sharks, iguanas, deer, a croc cruising an inland lake, fat jutia perfect for the spit (see note 1), wild pigs and cows, translucent frogs, snakes, bats, and birds too numerous to mention. What we didn’t see, unfortunately, were turtles; seems this is a slow year in Guanahacabibes, the wild peninsula at Cuba’s western extreme. Instead we had to live vicariously through the project’s director and her tales of seasons past when scores of green and loggerhead turtles rumbled up on the beaches here to bury their eggs in the sand. Despite the no-shows, I relish being able to make dreams of mine like this come true here.

You may remember a while back I wrote about Things I Love about Cuba and Things I Miss about the USA. Today, as I try not to melt down in another unbearably hot summer afternoon here in Havana, I thought it time to get some stuff of my chest – things particular to this place that take some getting used to (and others that I’ll probably never quite groove to).

– Weekly public health inspections of your home, combined with obligatory in-home fumigations (see note 2)

– A daily newspaper only 6 pages long (and even fewer diverging opinions!)

– Incessant, sometimes inflammatory, gossip

– Being a big (or at least medium) fish in a small pond (see note 3)

– Really fat ladies in Lycra, rivaled by rolls of back fat

– Lack of public bathrooms at beaches leading to (you guessed it!) water-borne turds

– Good-natured shouting – anytime, anywhere

– Going regularly without toilet paper (see note 4)

– Smoking in hospitals

– Men and women of all ages speaking openly about menstrual cycles, maxi pads, Tampax, and flow

– Reggaeton and other intolerable music (see note 5)

– Amoebas in the water and the occasional bout with giardia

– Electric showers that surprise you with a nasty shock every once in a while (in other latitudes these showerhead-mounted apparatus are known as ‘widow makers’)

– THE HEAT

Notes

 1. The jutia is what can safely be called Cuba’s RUS (rodent of unusual size – these suckers can reach up to 15 pounds!). They’re cute, but make good eating; at least one upscale private restaurant in Havana serves up a nice jutia in almond sauce. 

 2. Although these can be a royal nuisance, they are largely what helps keep dengue at bay here.

 3. Being a native New Yorker, I’m infinitely more comfortable with the small fish, big pond arrangement.

 4. I’ve become quite used to this actually thanks to three experience-honed strategies: carry a few spare squares; water rinse; and snatches of above mentioned 6-page newspaper.

 5. Reggaeton – love it or hate it

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June 24, 2009 · 4:47 pm

Excerpt – Here is Havana, Chapter 2

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My friend’s grandmother Anita, a hunched woman with broad hips and hair dyed the color of bread crusts, is sweeping tiles as faded as her hummed refrain. Her left eye, clouded by cataract, betrays nothing, but her right sparkles with a distant memory that ebbs and flows with each pass of her broom. She shuffles and flicks her way to the front patio clucking disapproval as the green plastic bristles trail strands of long, raven hair.

I lift my feet, reaching carefully for the tiny teacup with the broken handle Carmen proffers on a plastic tray. I smile, sipping gingerly at the sweet liquid that catches at the back of my throat. Like the smell rippling off the Río Almendares at dusk, Cuban ration card coffee is earthy and sharp, more chaff than bean and cut liberally with sugar. Carmen shoots me a wink and confides, “Grammy doesn’t like me combing my hair in the sala. She hates sweeping it up.”

Out of earshot now, Anita works around the heavy wooden rockers the handsome compañero neighbor carefully arranged against the front wall. Strains of her melody reach the street as she tries for the upper register. The noonday sun burns high and hot beyond the Ionic columns of her stately home. It’s really too torrid to be out here, even in the patio’s deep shade, but Anita is determined to fight the dirt that blows off 23rd Street, covering her crotons and ferns with what looks like human cremains. She sweeps more urgently, wishing she were rocking in one of those chairs right this minute, sipping a lemonade swimming with mint.

“¡Oye Mima!” shouts Yanesi, her neighbor from two doors down. She’s the pretty one with the santero husband who read the divining shells for Anita after the doctor found the lump in her breast. The priest’s divination had proven spot on so she consulted him again when her daughter got in on the bombo, the lottery for a visa to emigrate to Miami. The Santería holy man had heard the orishas right: Nelly didn’t get the visa. What he failed to hear – or what the saints failed to convey – was that she would leave on a raft six months later.

“You shouldn’t be working in this heat abuelita. How are you feeling?” Yanesi asks the old lady after pecking her on the cheek and taking her hand, roughened and deeply lined on the palm side but buttery soft on top.

“Still here, thank God. I don’t like this heat, but it’s better than that horrible cold when el mono está chiflando. Last week my arthritis was…” she trails off with a whistle through false teeth.

“God was it cold! My aunt Lydia, my dad’s sister – you know the one, with the son on the volleyball team? – she has terrible asthma. How she suffers! ”

“No es fácil.”

“No it isn’t easy. Here, take some oranges,” Yanesi insists, reaching into her bag, the plastic wrinkled from being washed and line dried so many times. “They’re sweet,” she says of the greenish fruits.

“Gracias, my child,” the old lady says taking them and laying them on the windowsill. She picks up her broom and her forgotten melody, wondering why they’re called oranges when they’re green.

To read more, go to www.connergorry.com.hereishavana.html

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June 1, 2009 · 5:06 pm

Things I Love about Cuba

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I have the tendency to wallow. I know it’s counterproductive. I know it’s no fun to be around. I know it produces ulcers and zits, but all these years, try as I might, I’m still a focus-on-the-bad-shit kinda gal. So I’d like to take this opportunity to look on the bright side and be a positive force for once.

There is much to love about this island. Here are some of my favorite things.

 The way the palm trees smell after it rains

 5 cent cigars

 No McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, or Mormons

 Drinking little cups of sweet, black coffee around the kitchen table with friends

 Yucca with mojo

 The music – from Pancho Amat to Pancho Terry, Los Van Van to Los López-Nussas.1

 How anything under the sun can be fixed and rendered functional

 Young men helping little old ladies off the bus and other helpful gestures among strangers

 The Malecón (of course)

 Going to the stadium and watching the Industriales lose!2

 Summer thunderstorms

 How it can’t be considered a party unless people are singing and dancing

 Cucuruchos3

 Almost anything grows (artichokes and asparagus notwithstanding)

 Having turquoise water and white sand beaches 20 minutes away

 Free health care – what’s better than that?!

 How affectionate men are with each other

 Recycling every single thing

 Rocking chairs

 Organic veggie markets

 Telling the US to put it where the monkey put the shilling for 50 years – something no other country has had the ability (not to mention the cojones) to do.

Notes
1. Pancho Amat just sends me. A virtuoso tres player and musicologist, this guy is a must see/hear. I’d hyperlink to YouTube or something for easy listening, but my dial up can’t handle it.

Pancho Terry is formally trained as a violinst, but rose to greatness as director of the orchestra Maravilla de Florida and later as a chequere player. Recognized as the world’s best, he’s played with the inimitable Tata Güines, Changuito, and Bebo & Cigala.

Los Van Van are a super star salsa group known as the “Rolling Stones of Cuba,” they’re that great. I’ve seen tons of free concerts by these folks over the years; you might get lucky the next time you’re in town.

Los López-Nussas are an entire family of musical prodigies. Ernán López Nussa is a jazz pianist, while his brother Ruy López-Nussa is a jazz drummer. In turn, Ruy’s son Harold López-Nussa is a classical/jazz/rock pianist who won Montreaux at the absurdly young age of 22 and his brother, Ruy Adrián is a virtuoso drummer.

2. The Industriales are the NY Yankees of Cuban baseball. Either you love ’em or you love to hate ’em.

3. Cucuruchos are cones of sweetened coconut sold along the highway en route to Baracoa in Guantánamo Province.

This is dedicated to the one I love…..

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May 28, 2009 · 9:23 am

A Cuban Snapshot (or Three)…

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The Cuban psyche is shaped, some might say warped, by four fundamental factors:

1. We’re on a slab of land you can drive across in 15 hours. Water hems us in. As on every island, there’s an intrinsic self-reliance tempered by that nagging question: what’s beyond all that blue, blue sea?

2. Revolution, capital R. Almost 50 years of it. Dignity, self-esteem, solidarity with the downtrodden, and kick ass culture are part of the post-1959 Cuban DNA at this point.

3. Blockade, capital B (for Bully, Bollocks, Botched, Bogus, Besieged).

4. Sex.

Some days, like yesterday, I do think it’s twisted, this Cuban psyche. What with all the melodrama. Then there are other days when it’s refreshing (the psyche, not the drama-rama), revelatory, and yes, downright revolutionary goddamn it.

When the small island that’s hard to get off doesn’t drive you stir crazy with the eternal question: what’s beyond all the water?, it unifies. Its simple state of island-ness, combining the tenacity of the underdog with the confounding irony of needing to be, but never becoming, self-sufficient puts us all in the same boat so to speak.

From Malta to Manhattan, name an island and you’ve got a co-dependent.

Even so, exactly how can an island, any island, become self-sufficient when it’s totally blockaded (ironically, that other fundamentally unifying element)? It’s sick and expensive the lengths the USA goes to screw Cuba. I won’t go into it here; you’ve got Google. But I’m quite sure history will judge – sooner rather than later – the US embargo policy as just that: sick, expensive, and cruel. Not to mention failed.

But back to right now.

The Revolution. It’s more grayed than frayed, as some might have you believe. Still, the former can be just as dangerous. Maybe more so. Frayed can be mended; gray just withers and dies.

Then there’s Fidel.

He was so influential for so long. His mere presence inspired, as anyone who has met him will attest. He was game changer personified. I don’t think he’s much different in reclusion: whatever his state of health, he still stirs hearts, minds, (and ire), influences events, and provokes thought (and fights).

How did I get off on Fidel? See how it’s always about him? Certainly the foreign press seems to think so, if their Enquirer-esque pursuit of anyone with the Castro last name is any measure.

But I was talking about the Revolution after all and what the Revolution is, essentially, is a compact between him and the Cuban people to create a more dignified life for as many as possible. And honestly, I think when it all shakes out, Cuba has done that as well, if not better, than any other country in the world. (Don’t agree? Live here for seven years, then we’ll talk.)

Not to say mistakes weren’t made and shit didn’t happen. Mistakes are still made and the excrement still hits the cooling element: making ends meet is a nightmare for some, a pipe dream for others. And those that have ‘resolved’ their ends to meet are probably making serious sacrifices and compromises to do so. They may even have to break a few laws or bend a rule or three hundred to get the job done. But from Calle Ocho to Callejón de Hamel, when you need a job done, call a Cuban.

Then there’s Havana’s decrepit splendor or splendid decay, depending how you look at it. No matter how you look at it, though, it’s here. High above clothes drying on the line a turret crumbles, the toilet overflows at the breathtaking Gran Teatro, and another dozen families are evacuated from a seaside building threatening collapse.

But it’s improving. Slowly, very slowly, but surely, Havana’s being reinforced and restored. I can imagine a day when every grand palace and collonade is all spruced up capitalistic-Home Depot style with luxurious landscaping and hot interior design.

When that day comes, no doubt Havana will look swell. But the traffic, not to mention the nostalgia, will be hell.

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May 21, 2009 · 3:18 pm

Havana – !Vamos Pa’lla!

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Here is Havana – A blog written by the gringa next door, conspires to give you a dose of what life is really like across the Straits.

Partly out of boredom (that blue meanie for all sorts of odd motivations here), and partly because I’m fed up with all the self-serving, politically-motivated, misinformed, or just plain stupid mierda being written about Cuba, I’ve decided to start a blog. It’s a reluctant undertaking for so many reasons…

Here is Havana is navel-gazing, cathartic venting at its best and worst. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to kiss on the Malecón, go to the doctor for free, smoke tasty 5 cent cigars,  or forgoe toilet paper for months (I promised I wouldn’t reveal this well-kept secret, but we are in a very Special TP Period over here; more on toilet paper in another post), welcome to Havana.

Other passions and perturbances of life here you’ll read about include baseball, my fledgling garden, machismo, the Cuban kitchen, my favorite little old ladies (who have more spunk than your average 22-year old from Omaha), rock ‘n roll withdrawl, the “wireless network found” icon that harasses me as I’m connected via 50k dial up, and other ironies.   

On a slow day, you might even read about those old cars that make visitors wet and dewey-eyed, but for us are simply a way to get from point A to point B.

What you read here is 100% my opinion and experience after 7 years (and counting) working as an American journalist in Havana. I have no agenda. I aim to sway no one. In Cuban, this translates as ella no está en na’. A high compliment, rarely paid.

For all you rabid extremists out there who will slam what I say, no matter what or how I say it, repeat after me: ella no está en na’. And please, take a chill pill or three while you’re at it.

Here is Havana – like you never dreamed.

PS – For the meaning behind the title of this blog, plus more musings, see my work in progress, Here is Havana.

PPS – Coming to Cuba? Check out my kicking iApp to the city Havana Good Time. C’mon, you know you want it. Only $2.99!! (the cost of 3 Bucaneros!)

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