Hello from Havana everyone. If you haven’t heard the news of Cuba going dark and then getting Oscarized, cue my envy: what we are living here is duro, and more difficult still due to the world’s longest, strongest sanctions (a friend calls it ‘the slow Gaza’), decimated support systems (no one is immune to emigration and loss), and the hate emanating from here, there and everywhere zooming around the Internet.
Anyone who is not on the ground cannot know what we are going through, so here’s a quick summary, followed by ideas of what you can do to help during different stages of the recovery process.
Why the italics? For you newbies, I’ve lived and worked in Havana for 22 years as a journalist and volunteered in the Cuban campo in August 1993: I tasted the ‘special’ in Special Period. I’ve reported through many hurricanes here, and accompanied Cuba’s Henry Reeve medical team in post-earthquake Pakistan (2005) and Haiti (2010). I lived through 9-11 in my hometown. I know what disaster looks, feels and smells like. When the national electrical grid crashed last Friday morning, and several times again after that, we were plunged into disaster.
The first 72 hours of any disaster are critical. It depends on the type and scale obviously, but some disasters give you warning – like hurricanes. Others – earthquakes for instance – hit suddenly and hard, like an anarchist’s brick through a Starbucks window. This was the latter. There’s little anyone outside can do to help in these first days, especially on an island – unless you’re like, Joe Biden. Oh wait! [Duuuuuuude. Where is your humanity?]
We’ve been having scheduled (and not) blackouts for a couple of years now. The city is divided into sections called bloques; the electric company publicizes the weekly schedule widely. Before Friday, Havana was typically without lights 5 hours a day, a couple, three times a week. We managed and adjusted our washing, charging, cooking, reading, whatever-takes-electricity schedules and maintained families, businesses, sanity (or tried to).
This was different. This was the entire island for days. Some longer, some shorter (and as I write this, some places are still without). Every single electronic apparatus ground to a halt, lost its charge or waited for a generator to kick in. For days in Havana, no water was being pumped and there was no refrigeration – in a tropical metropolis with a violent trash collection (and creation) problem. As food rotted beyond redemption, it was thrown out. And it kept piling on and piling on. We have a friend who was horribly sick with dengue when the country shut down. She lives on the 10th floor. She had no water except what we hauled up those 10 flights. I wondered aloud how many people had been stuck in elevators when the grid collapsed? Cuban friends shared Special Period horror stories.
We switched into disaster response mode: the able-bodied hauled buckets of water from cisterns, others collected rain to bathe and flush. We treated drinking water and brought it to friends, whether we had to bike or walk or hoof up 10 flights of stairs. With our cell phones dead and no connection, we relied on landlines. Remember those? Handy during the attack on the Twin Towers, handy this past weekend. We kept fridges shut, cooking furiously when the food was just about to go bad and only opening big freezers to safeguard neighbors’ meat. Assuring water and food and attending the most vulnerable: this is what the first hours of a disaster are about.
After 72 hours, the situation looks different. Generators have run out of gas, perishable food is toast, nerves are frayed and frustration high. And that’s when Hurricane Oscar hit the eastern part of the country. Disaster heaped upon disaster.
As a starting point for this ‘what can I do?’ conversation, I ask you to consider the following. Can you send your family or friends a generator, food, or phone chargers? Yes. How about solar panels and glucometers? Those too. This will help your immediate circle and those they choose to help (if they choose to help). But what about everyone else? To paraphrase the Cuban Ambassador to the US: most Cuban families don’t have this option. What about them? Thinking about the whole, together with your personal loved ones, is critical right now – Cuba, and Havana especially, are experiencing rapacious individualism of unprecedented proportions.
Vamos al grano: here is how you can help in the next weeks/months both in the macro and the micro:
MACRO
– What’s the best nation? DO-nation: You can’t save the electrical grid, collect the garbage or rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Guantanamo. Contact your nearest Cuban embassy or consulate to make monetary donations to the emergency fund or to organize large donations and shipments.
– Leave it to the pros: Many organizations, foundations and projects have been supporting Cuba for years, in good times and bad. They already have the necessary paperwork, connections, shipping partners, experience and, in the case of USA-based entities, legal ability to make large donations, now. This includes Let Cuba Live, which launched an emergency fundraising campaign this week, Global Links, MEDICC, and Global Health Partners in the health sector, and Hope for Cuba in the education sector and for general humanitarian aid.
– Take to the streets/Internet to change inhumane US Policy: US sanctions are killing Cubans, encouraging people to emigrate, destroying families, and causing trauma. Plus, they’ve shown they don’t work. Biden has 90 days to make good on his campaign promises (grrrr) to revert to Obama-era policies – he can achieve this with the stroke of a pen.
- Contact the White House to demand Biden do the right thing
- Write to your Congressperson imploring them to lift sanctions against Cuba
- Sign the petition to get Cuba removed from the SSOT list (already halfway to goal of 1 million signatures)
- Rally for the US to lift sanctions ahead of the annual UN vote to lift the blockade (all times local):
MICRO
The mental health toll is real: Call or write your loved ones to let them know you care. Don’t ask what they need, offer to fix what you can’t or expect a rapid response – this is all a burden in a traumatic, post-disaster situation. Just call and listen. Accompany.
Send supplies: Every family can use something and donation packages can be purchased via any online retailer and sent via Crowley shipping direct to recipient’s door. They have different options, but donations cost $1.99/lb, plus a small handling charge and a minimum customs charge in pesos cubanos, paid by the recipient. There are a minimum of 4 sailings a month. This is an efficient, professional service with over 20 years’ experience. Tip: don’t ship what you think your friends or family need, ask first. They know best. For instance, a generator is typically less useful than an inverter (one takes gasoline, the other runs off a moto/car/truck battery).
Bring supplies: Individual travelers can bring items for their friends and family, as long as they do not run afoul of Cuban customs regulations. All customs duties are waived for people coming in with food and medicine until the end of the year.
Cuba Libro has been administering targeted donation programs since 2014. We maintain a list of the most-needed ‘regular’ crisis items, updated regularly with our community and counterparts, on our website. With the grid failure and hurricane double whammy, we’ve also created an Amazon list for those items most needed during this super crisis.
Send food, medicines and more to individuals: Since pandemic lockdowns, several reliable e-tailers deliver food, medicines and more direct to homes across the country. These are the ones we have used:
Travel to Cuba: You’ve been here or you’ve dreamt of coming. Now is the time. We will mutually lift each other’s spirits. Laugh and joke (one going around right now is ‘at least in the Special Period we had milordo. Now we’re without sugar AND water!’) and connect as humans. Don’t believe what you read on the Internet, experience it in the flesh, while helping a person, a family, a barrio, a country, to feel more whole.
Compost: This is for everyone reading this on the ground and for those visiting who can convince their friends what a big, immediate impact this can have for us here. A typical Cuban home generates about 75% organic waste, 100% of which goes into dumpsters, improvised garbage piles and landfill. It is heavy and creates methane. It overflows our bins and creates rivers of garbage and more work for the already over-worked. If even a fraction of households and restaurants started composting, we could reduce waste, improve health and hygiene, and create super enriched soil at the same time. It isn’t a resource barrier that keeps people from composting, it’s cultural. Here are over a dozen different DIY compost bins, some of which are perfect for our context.
Will write more soon.
Sending everyone much love from Havana where the lights are on (fingers crossed), garbage is being bulldozed into open trucks and taken away, and we’ve finally been able to shower. Basically, we are doing whatever we can to return to some sort of normalcy (and not go mad trying).
[Disclosure: I’ve received no compensation whatsoever for products recommended in the links here]
Here is Havana 