Fat Shops and Thin Rations

On my first day back I had a small attack of anxiety. It was in my local Sainsbury's. I was momentarily overwhelmed by it's size; the lights, the shelves bursting with produce; the blast of signage and the overwhelming colour. Above all I was aghast at the choice.

If you are in Trinidad and you want some fruit - which presupposes that you have some money - you let someone know, anyone will do, and before long fruit will arrive in tell-tale knobbly sacks at your garden gate. I you want soap you go to one of two shops: the local ration-book shop may have some of the yellow soap which burns your skin off ( I know, I tried some and could barely sit for two days afterwards), or if you are ready to spend half a months salary you can go to the peso shop and buy a bar of Lux. There is only Lux.

If you are Cuban you will have access to rice, eggs, beans, tobacco charcoal and sugar, when available, through your ration book or libreta. Distribution is notoriously unreliable and a womans work , for mostly a woman it is, requires balancing precarious food availability with government quotas, a feeble money supply and fluctuating energy availability. If you are a crazy traveller like me and you are not staying at one of the insanely luxurious hotels (which might as well be on the moon for all the relevance they bear to Cuban life), you might be able to buy such basic things if a) there is more than enough for the locals, or b) the shopkeeper likes the cut of your jib. Rossi queued for an hour at the bakers, only to be turned away with nothing. I stepped up with a saucy grin and lo - three loaves of bread....

The bodega shops are dark and Dickensian, with high cement counters fronting miserably populated shelves. Rice and sugar are shoveled out of sacks and measured to the metallic clunk of manually weighted scales. Dogs wander in and out of the open sides and men and women pass a leisurely time of day with each other as the shopkeeper studiusly applies the necessary tick in the appropriate box in the ration book. The shops are bleak and the customers happy. It is a great contrast with our fat confections of supermarkets bursting with produce and customers too busy to be happy.

The monthly quota of rations is not enough to feed you for 4 weeks, but it is heavily subsidised. Rationed provisions are about 20 times cheaper than can be found in what passes for the free market, which is fair enough, except that you are still without enough food to last a month without resorting to some 'exterior' means of making money. I met people who lived mainly on bread. That is - soley bread. No butter, no jam, no nothing. Just dry bread. They were good honest people afraid to move outside the 'party' line. I met people who would like to buy their child a toy... just one.

It is 50 years since that glorious revolution when equality was spread across a most unequal people. Cuba is in a position to trade it's crops of sugar and tobacco for food. The nearest neighbour is a mere 90 km across the Florida Straights. He is the richest nation in the world but he will not trade with you because he does not like the cut of your jib. Hungry? Here, choke on a plateful of ideology. It doesn't matter whose.

A rock and a hard regime

There is always enough food if you have the money, but the average wage here is 7 pounds a MONTH. If you are average you will not starve. There is bread and rice on your ration book. But you will not get enough vitamins unless you have extra money. The tourist currency is vital. Girls will sell whatever they have for 2 cuc, boys are more subtle with the women tourists, but the means and the end are identical.

If you are Cuban you will not be curious. Curiosity is discouraged from an early age. Education is all, but it is all ideology. Jose Marti from the age of five. Lenin, Marx, Guevara. There are no points for asking 'why'. You soon understand that silent shake of the head and eventually you forget to ask yourself. Follow the rules and you will be fine.

The waterfalls at El Nicho are fantastic. They drop and drop through the rocky shell of the planet as if there is no end to its depth. It is rumoured that Jurassic Park was filmed here and the notion is entirely possible, but exploration is not. I tried to persuade my friend to follow the falls but he could not. He shook his head and remained paralysed. I went alone and he sat and waited and worried. Curiosity is not profitable in a controlled society and the prisons are real. Later we climbed to the top of the high hills behind Trinidad. He was triumphant. None of his family had ever been there, nor had any of his friends. They marvelled at the photographs on my mobile. It was 1 kilometre from town.

I gave a dinner party in my Soviet built apartment in Havana. I walked 2 kilometers with 10lbs of potatoes and was triumphant. In the morning there was no water. In the afternoon there was no gas. The electricity had been off all the previous day. 'We are not the third world,' said my friend, 'We are the fourth world. We are intellectually cut off.' The gas came back at 5.00 pm

Yes, we have no tomatoes

Having returned to Trinidad, then hotfooted it to Cienfuegos for a week whilst the black market took care of the tiles being fitted in the kitchen, I was suprised to find that tiles had indeed been put on the wall in my absence, and I had nearly half a kitchen. It is not your sort of kitchen, but unlike many it is indoors. There is no particular need to have a kitchen inside, but most attempts at copying western consumerism end up as interesting at the least. In a land without anything, the man with the tools is king. He names his price and it is no good looking to B & Q to save the day.

I am now safely enconsed back in what has become my second home. Unfortunately I have to use that term loosley, because it is illegal for me to stay in my own house, and yesterday the police presence in Trinidad was stepped up quite considerably. My friend could get 5 years for holding my hand in the street if the man in uniform was having a bad day. As a consequence, and with copius use of smoke and mirrors, my suitcase is parked beside a ruffled bed in another house for a small monetary consideration. I have even been known to sleep there.

I found it ridiculously easy to extend my visa for another month. The real challenge was to get to the Immigration Office when it was open, which required nothing less than ESP. Changing my flight should have been childs play, but computers in Cuba being what they are- ie in the lap of the gods - It could be days before I recieve a new flight confirmation. Wallowing in the unknown suits me well.

Today they are digging up some cobblestones in the streets of Trinidad. It is tragic that they will dig up perfectly good cobblestones and then leave them in a heap for months. Cubano's simply are not interested in finishing anything. Their lives are bound by tradition. The women sweep the floors every morning then slop buckets of water everywhere and attempt to dry them with a rag and a piece of wood. The music rarely changes and blares from windowless rooms. The religion is the Telenovella (soap opera), mostly dubbed over the Brazilian original. One can walk up the street at the given hour and hear the same telenovella bursting from every single house. Cubans like to turn their televisions to full volume then shout at each other throughout the whole programme.

The furniture in every house is very much the same as it has been since the Spaniards planted their colonialism here in the 1500's. Even the shops sell poor reproductions of the self same wooden rocking chairs and two seaters with rushed seat and back for ridiculous money - money no Cuban can afford - without help. There is simply no variety. Ikea could make a killing.
Cubans show no curiosity; they defend this by saying that in the outer world they know there is fruit and veg available every day. Why should they want to know more about a society which only hammers home how poor they really are. Some days you get to the shops and there is nothing in them. Some days there may be a mound of papayas. When I go into the mountains I buy heaps of fruit from the farmers with no access to a market. For pennies you can fill a car. But still there are no tomatoes.

The salsa rythym pulses on, only Bob Marley has enough respect to forge an inroad into the eternal beat. The rum flows faster than water. The houses continue to crumble but something here is changing. People are wanting things more and more. Families overseas are being tapped ever more heavily because the smell of change is in the air. There is a quiet hope that one day, one day, the things they have will have a value. Fidel would be outraged. Cubans are not supposed to want anything. Cubans want shoes on the feet of their children and will go to any length to get them. As I write in this open aired internet cafe, there is a man outside with an automatic rifle slung casually across his arm. Even I am learning to stay out of trouble.

Petrol has gone up in price. Suddenly there are bicycles. True that many are ridden three up, but a rash of bicycles there is. Prices in the shops are coming down and the shelves are more laden. The imports are usually chinese, but the quality is improving and suddenly the twin tub washing machines have left the shops and are royally parked in the outhouses of family dwellings. One washing machine will serve several famies, so the communal style of dwellings has its advantages, if not much in the way of decent plumbing. In Trinidad all waste water is directed into the caves under the city. Eventually it filters into the crystal sea.

Sex. Everybody does it all of the time with everybody else as often a possible. This may appear to be free entertainment, but is giving rise to a cruel result - that of the genetically handicapped child. Evey family has at least one. The lines of familial relationship are often unknown and no doubt cousins frequently copulate. Most women have about three children, mostly by different partners. Many have eventually settled down with a fourth. Familial ties, where known, are strong, and all Trinidad seems to be one huge family. I know no-one who is not part of my own friends family. It scares me. No fresh blood, no curiosity, a blind following of tradition, a society failing.

Rossi and I travelled on to Santiago de Cuba and them back to Baracoa where hurricane Ike removed many of the sea front dwellings. Fortunately Ike had a sense of the aesthetic because he kindly removed a couple of the Soviet style blocks which heavily marred the view. Unfortunately three remain. The Baracoans are happy enough with their fate - the government has helped with wood - and they have tomatoes. In the face of hardship it must be uplifting to be given tomatoes. The tourists have not come to Baracoa this year. One night I counted as many as seven, including us. The Baracoans are stoical and with staggering patience will spend two days trying to sell you one bar of chocolate for 1 peso. Clearly this is expensive, but as there is so little trade to be had it seems churlish to haggle. A sixteen year old girl attached herself to Rossi for two nights because she needed some new trainers.

It is widely thought that all the best food has been sent to either Pinar del Rio or Baracoa because in no other place can be found tomatoes. Fortunately the hens are laying again and my essential egg for breakfast is once again achievable.

Returning to Trinidad I find that it is not possible to buy cement for love nor money, so the little house has to wait before the water tank can be installed - possibly for months. Someone came to measure up for tiles, but thoughts as to what tiles may eventually appear, or indeed if any tiles will appear, is abandoned to the great mystery which is Cuba. Even our old friend the Black Market is found wanting these days. We have been trying to buy a matress for the bed, but only cheap sponge is available for 360 cuc pesos - a joke. There are no matresses in Santiago, but in Santiago there is soap. It is both laughable and frustrating. I have found a barely adequate casa particular to rest in - if the sound of air conditioning fans, music and general Trinidadian life can be equated to rest.

Even more than the last visit, I discover the extent of the black market. Everyone is on the make. Prices are going up quite rapidly and the Government does not pay enough to live. It is essential to be doing something other than the day job. They work 2 or 3 hours for Fidel (Raul) then really get down to it. Little back yard restaurants, street vendors; intense energy employed to make a sandwhich for the tourist or to fetch a bottle of water. I have gone native on the water front and having drunk the staff of life in three cities direct from the tap, have class A intestines and no side effects. This is a great saving on effort and dinero.

At night the sky is alight with sheet lightening over the mountains. It is exhilerating. Sometimes it rains in great torrents. Then the cobblestones are almost washed away from under your feet and any decent shoes will be ruined, but the music lives on from the ever present Son, to pulsating Reggaeton and all points in between, and neither rain nor misplaced economic theory can remove the smiles from a sunny Cuban face. They wait. They hope. Any change will be better than no change.

The stifling sun of Trinidad leaves me depleted. Even the avacodo tree in my garden is in sympathy - although it is the hurricane rather than the heat which has stolen its wares. The sea is as warm, but more cloudy; eggs are in short supply in Havana as the chickens were blown away; but life saunters on in the summer humidity and the fiesta continues unabated. The little house is high and catches the breeze coming in from the sea which lies lazily in the distance through the criss crossed lines of the precious, but intermittent supply lines of electricity. Sometimes there is no power all day, sometimes the day is full of it. On these days we catch the senors with the washing machine and wash away the dust and sweat from our clothes. My friend will have none of that. He has washed his clothes by had all his life and is most uncomfortable with anyone else getting involved.

Last night we visited the discotheque in the mountains. The pulsating beat throbs from deep in the bowels of the hill as we climb the road towards the tiny light which marks the spot. The rocks tremble and we gyrate amongst the dripping stalactites in the wonderous cavern and miss the dawn.

Por que?

Is it the man, the post revolutionary culture, the food shortages. Perhaps it is boredom, prehaps it is love. It has taken me 55,ooo words to tell the tale, yet the tale is yet to be told. I will wash my clothes by hand (goodbye nails, hello Omo) and sweep my floor with a broom. Hardship and romance. From one imperfect culture to another and experiences unknown. Food shortages and hurricane damage await me where money cannot buy that which doesn't exist, where freedom is redefined, where heat saps and listening ears betray dissent. Once more into the crushing embrace of the great Orc and the wide blue sky of the Carribean.

To the East

The internet costs 6 Cuban Convertible Pesos an hour - if you can find a town, an internet access card and a computer. (A convertible peso, cuc, is roughly $1. This is for tourists, but you can imagine that the average Cuban will be very keen to collect such purchasing power where an imported Chinese bicycle cost 300cuc and the average wage is the equivalent of $12 a month. The Cubans use local currency which is 1/26th of the cuc and good for basic food and transport. ) Sometimes you find an internet cafe, but they have run out of cards, sometimes you have a card, but the PC isn't working. Mostly you are in a place where the PC is a fabled creature. European sim cards don't work in Cuba thanks to the trade embargo, and hardly anyone is on the phone. Thus Merlin and I missed each other through a mixture of techno-loss and old fashioned madness.

Pedro and I moved on. From the prosperous town of Cienfuegos where 'paseo' (or strutting your stuff) happens every night along the elegant Malecon and the Chevys are gradually being replaced by Peugeot, Mercedes and Seat but nothing replaces the countless horsedrawn carts for everyday use. It is decreed here that vehicles must use lights at night, so a tin of gasoline is stuffed with a lighted rag and slung beneath the wooden cart. You can barely see the resulting flicker, but hey, job done.

Onwards to the east of the island and the exquisite valley of Vinares where nature has eroded the limestone cliffs and left a perfect and fertile valley amongst gigantic rock formations. Cathedrals of stalactites and stalagmites in the depths of ancient caves offer cool respite from the suffocating heat but the mangoes love it. They are swollen and sweet and we eat them greedily.

In every Cuban town there is a Casa de la Musica where old and young gather to drown in music and beer and rum. In Vinares the impossible has happenned and we have to resort to Russian Vodka! There seems to be no such thing as a shot - just buy by the bottle as usual. Walking home through the moonless unlit roads in a town where it is not necessary to show lights, where silent oxen and mules are tethered at the verges for night feeding, would be unthinkable without the aid of alchohol.

Finally it is La Havana again and we are forced to act like grown ups and eat in Chinatown and walk along the vast Malecon where mangoes do not drip from the trees and the fruit we have tasted will dry in our mouths as we part.

There are places in this world where the currency is pigs and sex, and I have been to them. I have been to places where I am ceremoniously given the only knife and fork in the street, where the water is undrinkable and the town has no name.

From Trinidad to Camarguey along roads off the map where the old chevy grinds to a halt along lines of volcanic eruptions which pass as roads round here. Money does not buy you a lift, even a pig is second choice. This is not prostitution, it is currency.

My companion is a joy. So generous and thoughtful. He will give a stranger his last drop of water- or should I say beer, because it was days before I had water. The driver consumes the best part of a bottle of rum on the journey and you quickly see why no-one really cares. Here there is heat and rum and your amigos. You smoke and drink and laugh because there is nothing else. No books. No nothing. My most revered posession is a dictionary. The dictionary which represents my fantastic wealth and unfathomable freedom to traverse this planet and speak to the people in any language I choose. I am in love with Cuba, but now my eyes are opening.

They roasted coffee beans in the mountains for me, picked mangoes and swaddled me in real heartbreaking human love about which few of us know anything at all. It was the greatest priviledge.

Onwards to Santa Lucia and days on the bleached sand making love in the surf. Onwards again to Santa Clara and the mountains and waterfalls where you swim alone in the cool ponds. Mangoes and fruits I have never before seen are our food. Onwards to Cienfuegos where my amigo entered a theatre for the first time. Unless you have connections abroad you cannot even afford the measly 1 peso to just look around. China is moving in and the struggle gets harder for those who protect their principals and live according to their own values.

Cuba at last

I think we are on the slowest connection in the universe, so no chance of a picture today.

Yes, I turned up two hours before the flight at Gatwick and bought a ticket at a reduced rate (not reduced enough for my liking, but you can't have it all).

I arrived in Havana after a somewhat bumpy ride in a near empty aircraft.Coming in to land was the thought provoking sight of a half burnt commercial airliner poking into the trees beyond the airport. Obviously we are not in a hurry to clear up this misfortune. Undaunted, I randomly found somewhere to stay - after blagging it on my visa form which I miraculously had to fill out myself (!) and found a bus to Trinidad where I eventually discovered my peculiar friend in all his rastafarian glory. Trinidad feels a bit like home. Food, weather, people - all as lovely as as I remember. I am staying (somewhat unofficially) with a friend of the dreadlocked one. Unfortunately no English so I am keeping very fit with massive use of semaphore and all related sign language. 'We' are renovating Trinidad for Fidel and our tongues remain firmly in our cheek. The mountains beckon.

Call of the wild

The call is stronger now and I have to go back to Cuba. I tell myself it is choice of course, but there is no choice at all - and no excuse either. Long have I worked for money. Long have I worked my heart to believe in what I do. Long has the pull to freedom been pushed aside.
Life is a conspiracy. Like saboteurs the whispers in the back of my mind have been undermining my best intentions. It seems that my best intentions were either not good enough, or utterly misplaced because I have just cast my whole past behind me and am preparing for take off and pizza at 3 pesos a time.

And then came the monk

Did I find him, or did he find me? It does not matter because now he is family and together we work to free Tibet so that he can return in safety.
Not that you can click your fingers and free a country. But if everything you do, and every thought you have is concentrated on one thing. If every conversation includes the object or your passion, then the ripples of your thought spread far.
In November 2007 Tibet was a shuttered and oppressed country. In March 2008 it has a voice on the world stage. Thousands of people have worked in a myriad or ways to achieve this. I am proud to be one of them.

Rebiya changes my life

One day a small woman came to Cardiff. She did not speak English but that did not stop her. She does not speak German or Swedish or any language other then her own, yet she travels the world looking for help to free her people from oppression. Her country is almost unknown - East Turkisthan - and her people are almost unheard of. They are Uighurs. But they are drowning, suffocating and suffering under the heavy hand of the Chinese army.

Even now I do not know how best to help her. But I know I will try.

www.uighurs-uk.blogspot.com

The First Post

It has to start in Cuba. Many things start in Cuba. Socialismo, Cuban style, is worth a second glance if not a good hard look. Fidel is ailing and dare we think of change in a country where you will have free education all your life, free healthcare, enough food for the healthiest appetite and a wonderful sense of community. Cuba has the greatest sense of community I have come across in the world. It is honest and true and inclusive. Shall we trade all this for consumerism? It's a one way ticket. I do not want to see yet another country with yet another faceless shopping mall dominating the skyline. People working for money instead of doing something they believe in. Is there a middle way?
I will return.