6th March 2013
You buy the beer, and we’ll
slaughter an animal from the farm for dinner. But there’s a country-wide ban on alcohol, el luto, since Chavez died yesterday. My
hosts are socialists, some are communist revolutionaries even, but even they
won’t forgo beer on this occasion. Julia, my girlfriend I guess (since I am her
“novio”), knows the attendant at the
petrol station so we smuggle a crate of beer out hidden under a towel.
It’s been another long day driving, swerving around
potholes, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages, and now I’ve met the family,
dozens of them, all lovely people. Cuba is surreal enough as it is, but being
drawn into this family community in a small town I feel like I’ve entered a
lucid dream. I have some control over my movements but my body doesn’t know
what to do with all the new stimuli.
Back home it’s do you
want pig or lamb? I’m wondering why I didn’t say I’m vegetarian (even
though I’m not, yet), I feel bad enough triggering the death of a large animal
let alone having to choose which - what next will they hand me a knife to do
the honours? And why don’t I feel so bad if the animal is already dead, chopped
up and wrapped in supermarket cling film? I mean the latent demand triggers the
death anyway. I wonder if slaughter should
be hot-blooded only, and if hunting is a hot-blooded activity.
They help me out by expanding that the lamb will take longer
to cook, and since it’s already dark and no doubt the animals are still running
about somewhere in the farm this could be a long evening. So I opt for pig. A horse and cart pulls up, ridden by an uncle and two kids.
A medium sized pig sleeps lazily on the back like a contented dog. Ignorance
truly is bliss. I’m thinking, you have got to be joking, why is it still alive I
mean it’s not like you can just pop it in a microwave and it’ll be done in 10
minutes. It’s late and I’m ready to crash out. They ask me to empty my car boot
for the pig; it's been an unusual day and even on a good day I'm gullible, so for a moment they had me. No the
pig goes on with the horse, and I pile in several family members into the car
and off we head to the finca, a small
farm where one of her uncles lives.
I would like to use names here, but everyone is called
Gonzalo or Arturo so it would be confusing, and I never understood who was who
anyway. Only Alberto, Julia’s grandfather who was 78 and I really liked I could
distinguish easily.
At the farm things don’t seem to be proceeding very quickly
- a small fire is lit, the pig snores away, and the women peel some yuka. Uncle
Gonzalo makes a suggestion which I’m very happy to accept – that we eat turkey
instead and the pig lives. Next time give
us more notice and we’ll roast a pig.
Someone appears with a flapping turkey, some feathers fly
and it’s all over, within minutes it’s de-feathered. Dogs loiter with intent. Only time now left
to kill, so the hammock goes up and I lie back trying to work out if this is in
fact a lucid dream or not.
Only days earlier I had picked up Julia as a hitchhiker during
an unusual period of heavy rain. I thought nothing of it at first since I’d
been picking up around 15 hitchhikers a day (there’s a shortage of public
transport and always people waiting for rides) She was petit and quiet, with a
pretty floral dress and no baggage, at least none physical (though familial I’m
sure). We spoke only a little – she was as quiet as me - but enough to judge
safety of character, and somewhere along the ride I invited her to come with me
to Bayamo, my next destination. I wasn’t really sure if she had accepted but
that she didn’t ask me to stop the car suggested she was in.
We found a lovely casa
particular and moved in as naturally as if we’d been together for, well,
more than an hour anyway. She had no luggage but I had plenty so it didn’t look
too odd, and anyway the family of the house were lovely. I let Julia shower
while I rested a moment, though I considered jumping straight in with her; that
shapely dress was definitely alluring. Then I showered too and suddenly we were
both resting in our cama matrimonial.
But not resting for long. She was truly a delight, tender and sweet in her
touch, and we fitted perfectly like two pieces of a jigsaw. A long time since I
felt that good in bed with a girl. She
was open to me in a way I found so sexy, open without pulling, just being there
and giving herself to me without trying to dominate, but responding with
passion. Purely alluring.
After such an afternoon it didn’t matter that the evening
was a flop - an overpriced dinner followed by a tacky disco. After the heavy
rain that day I never found out if the famed street party of Bayamo ever happened.
The following day my plans started to collapse further as there were no cash
machines in town and it was a Sunday, so attempting to reach Comandancia de La Plata just 60km away suddenly
became an impossibility as the entry fees exceeded my funds, and Julia had no
clothes except the pretty dress she wore when I picked her up.
I’ve no proof that she didn’t do this hitchhike thing for a
“living”, but my intuition told me not. A number of clues seemed to back this
too, like her membership of the youth communist organisation, a desire to do
military service, and her lack of demand for anything. Maybe just a very smart
cover, but if so I live in ignorant bliss.
Shopping in Cuba was worth every penny in the experience.
Clothes are actually quite cheap e.g, leggings 2 pounds (not for me I should
add), jeans
10 pounds, and credit cards
were accepted. It felt good buying her stuff, it cost me very little and yet it
was worth so much to her.
I guess it’s
easy to please a girl who has no money. Nevertheless she seemed forever
neutral, neither demanding of anything nor appreciative of receiving. It was
just as it was. But every now and then she lit up like a star and those were
precious moments worth waiting for.
Later we drove onto Santiago de Cuba just a couple of hours
away, took some photos so I can say I’ve been there, withdrew cash, and headed
back west along the coastal road.. if you can call it a road. In many places it
had disappeared completely, bridges had collapsed, and huge pot-holes blocked
the way. Sure it probably was “one of Cuba’s most beautiful routes” as Lonely
Planet says, but if you turn your head a moment to appreciate this you will
surely end up in a ditch, or the sea.
The new plan was to approach Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest
mountain, from the south, apparently a shorter climb, but even so it’s no walk
in the park and we were ill-equipped and tired. As it happened anyway we conveniently
missed the morning slot to reach the summit, since it had been getting dark and
the road was terrible at best, and non-existent at worst, we had stopped a
couple of hours short of La Cueva, the base of the climb. But we did manage a
shorter but nonetheless treacherous climb of a full 30 meters to reach the
summit of a small cliff – home to a cactus which Julia was adamant to add to
her collection (she was a keen collector of plants, especially cacti). A nippy
little girl she was not afraid to scramble up the loose rock that threatened to
throw us both helplessly over the cliff. And with only the occasional bicycle
passing I had imagined our skeletal bodies adding doom to the picture of collapsed
bridges and abandoned tunnels. Vultures circled as I struggled to find firm
ground to descend upon. Loose rocks bounced down the slope causing mini
avalanches. I waited for Julia to reach the bottom so as not to knock her out
with my clumsy footings onto loose rocks, and anyway she was much faster and
nimbler than me.
We drive onto the far south-western tip of Cuba, where back
in 1956 Fidel and his crew arrived from Mexico and disembarked the famous
Granma boat en route to taking over the whole country. I don’t have any
political slant, but I have to hand it to these guys - they have balls.
The roads drastically improve and I’m speeding down the
empty highway when I spot in my rear-view mirror someone frantically waving a
stop sign at me. It appears I missed the check-point into a national park, so I
do a u-ey round to greet the friendly receptionist. A small huddle of locals
sorts us out with some accommodation; it’s as basic as it gets but has its
charms. I try to get a price for the room but instead receive a hand waving
response as if this isn’t a part of their vocabulary. So I guess I’ll leave
some kind of tip, mainly for hospitality rather than facilities – there’s no
running water (it’s on only every other day due to low pressure in the area),
and some of the light switches are non-existent – it took some time to work out
how to switch off one of the lights at night, but eventually I spotted a couple
of stray wires hanging out of a wall, one with a cunning hook bent onto the
end. I was impressed by this improvisation.
But the warmth of the reception and the
lovely local children more than made up for the lack of modern comforts. So
many times I wanted to take pictures, but felt I couldn’t without destroying
the moment, so just gave up and enjoyed it as it was.
In the morning Julia greets me to explain she’s accidentally
dropped the toothpaste into the toilet bowl. It’s cloudy down there so I just
throw a bucket of water in hoping it’ll go away. It does, but then what I dropped
down after it certainly didn’t. Never mind, I offset my toilet-guilt with a
larger tip and we make a swift getaway.
Julia is a little grumpy this morning, she’s missing
home, now away for 3 days - the longest
time in her life, which at 23 might seem surprising but then people don’t
really travel here. So I do the tourist thing of visiting the Granma
disembarkation beach on my own while she waits in the car with a couple of
hitchhikers we picked up in the morning – one of them is a chef at the restaurant
we are heading to for lunch, some fantastic seafood and silly cheap prices.
We stop at a beach for a rest, I go for a swim, and we play
in the hammock and watch some locals pass by walking their pigs and dogs.
Later we arrive at Manzanillo where we learn
of the news from Venezuela that Chavez has just died. It seems he was genuinely
loved by many people in Cuba. A street vendor I get chatting to has a tear in
his eye.
A very friendly chap he invites
me to stay at his house next time - no need to pay for a
casa particular he says as he likes to host the English, and is a
keen member of the local John Lennon appreciation society where a band
regularly plays Beatle concerts. I take his address and accept his kind offer
for next time. I buy some beautiful hand-made maracas from him for a paltry
15p, and he takes special care in giving me back the correct change in local
pesos.
The casa particular we stay at is probably amongst the best
I’ve been in in Cuba; inside it wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere in
northern Europe.
It was a pleasure to
rest there, and with such wonderful company. But I was punished for my bad
behaviour in bed. I’d gone Catholic and when I desperately demanded a ceasefire
mid-charge, I got it… and for good.
Voy a
castigarte. Ready and cocked there was to be no firing my gun that night.
Maybe I should just have let it all go, so
what if I have some little Cuban babies? Nature will have its way one way or
another.
Next morning, a good breakfast and then more shopping in
search for a dress (again, not for me). Good clothes are hard to come by in Cuban
shops so the preferred method of purchase is private sale from contraband
imports. We ask around and are hushed through a large wooden door, a darkened
corridor and into a small apartment. The door is locked behind us and suddenly
we’re in a den of colourful clothes and busy women. I enjoy watching Julia
strip in the bathroom while she tries on some frilly frocks. It’s all worth it.
Talking of stripping, I’m denied access to two banks for
showing too much skin – apparently many public buildings have a no shorts
policy. But the Cadeca exchange centre is more relaxed. We pick up some more
music for the car, and stop to change and then head back towards her home.
She’s excited to be going home, and all dressed up like new. I’m also excited –
I’m curious to know what it’ll be like to meet her family and from what I’ve
seen of Cubans so far I expect them to be very hospitable. But their insistence
on slaughtering a pig or lamb did come as a surprise. Anywhere else I’d have
expected them to slaughter me for
kidnapping one of their women-folk without warning.
But the highs don’t come for free, and whilst I had a great
time with Julia, and with her family, when it came to moving on I suffered and
continue to do so, but as a kind of pool of emotional debt piled up from all
the women I have left since the one I left when I was born.
As long as I behave as a boy, the women I
meet represent my mother and so I must leave them at some point, painful as
that is, for me and for them.
But I hold
fold memories and the tear that wells is equally of happiness shared as it is
of loss.
I’m back on the road alone, and for the first time in months
I feel depressed, but it will pass, I’m determined not to be a victim…
* * *
[some names have been changed to protect privacy]