Cuba Pt II
Trippwire
Wed 14 Apr 2010 02:55
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Cuba, part II
Before we knew it, Laura and Lindsay were on their
way in. I'd been looking forward to this for a while, as it seems that I'm
a bit of a 'homey', and was missing the place (only a little mind you!).
Unfortunately Cuban bureaucracy meant that we couldn't take the girls sailing,
but we loaded them onto the boat anyway, introduced them our rather basic way of
life, and they coped well. After a few days exploring the city, we headed
to the beach. We hadn't realised that there were quite so many tourists in
Cuba (they are seem to be concentrated in the hotels on the beach), so our
confident - "don't worry, we'll organise accommodation when we get there, the
Caribbean is empty" almost ended us up back on the next bus home! After
Miles' lack of success in booking a hotel, we handed over to Lindsay, who
just happens to be fluent in Spanish. With a little help from Laura's
parents booking for us on the internet (thank you!), we found a place to stay,
and headed for the beach, and the unlimited food. This rather excited us -
in fact excited Miles and I a bit too much as we ate so much we felt sick
(and very guilty when we were back in the Havana - I'm not sure how the Cubans
that work in Varadero feel about foreigners, but I'm sure it's not
positive).
It's a tough life:
 However, the excess eventually had to end, so back
to Havana we headed for a tour of the revolution sights, a few of Ernst
Hemmingway's favourite places.
 and ok, a drink or two to let it all sink in
 and yes - it is true -there are lots of old
cars in Havana (and Lada's are really expensive!)
  and it seems perfectly normal to repair them in the
middle of the road - this one was still here the a day later:
 before finally, the chicken, rice and beans, all became too much and Miles
and I made a run for it (forgetting that Lindsay and Laura were still on the
boat!)
 Guys - thanks so so much for coming out. It was really great to
see you, and we'll see you again in a couple of months.
So all in all, Cuba is an amazing place. It has a highly educated
population and a huge potential. However, the population is very repressed,
and tourism can only serve to drive home how little families are forced to
survive on. The basic wage is less than £10 per month - and Cuba is
not a cheap place! Wages are tightly controlled by the government
- and the wage range is very small - doctor's wages are very similar
to street cleaner's wages. This results in many that can leaving, and many
people giving up professions to go in to jobs with access to tourist money -
eg taxi driving or tourism. Analdo (our guide) was actually a
computer programmer, and most taxi drivers seem to be amazingly well read
ex-teachers with multiple degrees. In fact, we ended up giving a
lot of our books away to taxi drivers, as particularly english books are very
hard to get hold of in Cuba. This huge waste of resource is hard to fathom
- for us it is hard to understand where the incentive is to work hard - and
looking around, I think the Cubans struggle too. Most time is spend trying
to supplement (without being caught) the government's meagre wages. This
includes young girl's father's in effect selling their daughters into
relationships with foreigners in exchange for financial support for the
family. There is no need for this in what has been and should still be an
affluent country.
The control is tight - Cubans girls can be arrested for even
talking to foreigners, and no Cubans are allowed onto our boat - guards closely
patrol this. Guards that we originally thought were there to
guard our boat, we quickly learned were there to guard us. ie make
sure that we were not conversing too closely with locals, and not inviting any
Cubans on to our boat - they are particularly alert when girls try to get
on to a boat. I was even quizzed a couple of times - I'm not sure they
believed it was my boat! Having accumulated a huge amount of food, we
decided to give our spare supplies to Analdo. He borrowed a car
to take the supplies away, and was stopped half way - the guards had seen
him load them into the car and wanted some too - as did the customs
men.
Whether or not people agreed with the revolution 50 years ago, people
seem to believe in Cuba, and for the most part don't seem to want to leave (at
the moment leaving means 'gifting' all of your possessions to the cuban people),
but are increasingly frustrated with the regime. However, as long as the
government controls every part of people's lives, and as long
as people are kept at subsistence levels it is difficult to see how things
will change. As tourism continues to expand, however, it is also difficult to
see how things will not change.
One thing is certain - the more you travel, the more you realise how much
more attention we should be paying to US foreign policy...
On a lighter note - can anyone tell my why this man is filling his
horse and cart up with petrol?
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