Communist Cuba

by Lucia Lam (Canada)

A leap into the unknown Canada

I don't normally like arriving at a new, unknown place after dark. Especially somewhere as mysterious as communist Cuba. But this time I felt confident, because I booked a perfectly rated "casa particular". I mean, one rated 5 out of 5 on Tripadvisor! The host mother welcomed us with a jar of boiled water, floating with mysterious white long strings. The bed sunk in the middle as if sleeping in a hole. Our next casa particular, in Las Terrazas, seemed more hospitable and not just in there for the money. (How hard is it to not succumb to that temptation? The daily rate for a casa particular is $25, while the going average monthly salary in Cuba is $15). The host mother served us fresh guava juice. The next morning, we found cockroaches in our room. She came in very calmly and lightly put her foot on it, with the kind of expertise that comes from killing cockroaches daily. Like our first casa, leaving this casa is a nightmare. The host mother wanted to know our exact destination (and approve of our going there, at that particular time, and that particular rate) before she would call a "cab", which actually turns out to be her friends' old car. Why didn't we call a cab ourselves? Unlike anywhere else on earth, in Cuba it costs $3 daily just to "rent" a sim card, on top of calling charges. Likewise, wifi costs $1 an hour anywhere, and works only with government issued wifi cards with tedious long strings of codes. Our third stop is Vinales, the famous valley in Cuba. On our last morning there we witnessed this phenomenon of people scrambling for basic food supplies that come in trucks, twice weekly. Trucks lined up on the main road by the plaza, people in long lines. One truck sells bananas, one pork, one cabbages, and one yuca. Not much variety, as in every market I'd visited in Cuba, where all one could find is bananas, rotten papayas, squash, yams, and sometimes tomatoes. Yet the prices were so tempting I almost joined the queue. A black African woman had a childlike T-shirt on and a crooked hand. Her one functional hand was trembling, yet she managed to hold onto that huge branch of bananas I had my eyes on, the only branch with some ripe little yellow bananas. "Can I buy some from you?" holding my perfectly clean paper bill. Her hand still trembling, without a thought she quickly grabbed all her yellow bananas for me. "Thanks so much," I handed her the paper bill again. "It’s a gift," she repeated confidently and calmly. She slowly walked to the line for cabbage. Earlier that morning, the hotel where we paid $150 a day, was so stingy on its breakfast. Back in Havana, going places is a challenge. The exhaust would blacken your face before you could successfully hail a cab. Well unless you're willing to pay their standard $10 asking price for your 5-10 minute journey, expect to wait at least half an hour! And the private taxis would tell you they're not allowed to take foreigners. Indeed, everything is divided between locals and foreigners in Cuba. The local tourist bus, also air conditioned, and even bigger and nicer than the foreigners' bus actually, costs $1 for the 4-hour journey from Vinales to Havana. The same journey on the foreigners-only Viazul bus costs $12. Still very cheap, till you recall the locals earn only that amount a month. On my last day in Cuba, I somehow managed to live like a local. I shopped at the local market, took the private collective taxi to old town, costing less than $0.50, ate a yummy local icecream cone costing 8 cents, and took a yellow collective van back. For dinner I ate at the local pizza outlet. My custom made pizza costs less than a dollar. I joined the locals, standing, and then sitting near the road, my last meal in Cuba. Only in Cuba would I look forward to ending my vacation early. I couldn’t wait for fresh air, for real supermarkets selling more than the few same government-determined items, if anything at all.