ahhh I hate it. I feel like such a fanny. You think you are partially grasping the language then someone approaches you and asks you a question and you completely freeze and blabber some incomprehensible words that are neither Spanish nor English, so no one is the wiser.
Four of us (Larissa, Ruth, John and I) have moved into a new casa particular (renting a room with a family) right on the sea front closer to Old Havana and where we will be working. The house is lovely albeit decorated with the same tacky porcelain horse figures and cheap landscape paintings that seem to adorn all houses here. We have a huge veranda that opens right out onto a sea view, easterly so morning is a joy. Included in the price is breakfast and dinner. And its very nice not to have to worry about these as previously we had been doing a round trip of an hour to collect bread butter jam and water. We are starting work a week later than expected. It seems that administration of any sort is a right fucking pain here. We discovered that our previous host only has a license to rent to 2 people. As he was renting to 6, 4 of us had to walk to some other casas and pay them some rent and have our visas photocopied so that officially we are staying with them. It’s all very strange but many families rent illegally and there are regular police checks.
Me and Bonzo took a trip to the main cemetery in Havana – Necropolis Cristobal Colon. Over 1.2 million people are buried here and now it is so full that you are only given a 2 year burial after which I think you are cremated and moved elsewhere. The Catholics must love this. We visited some stunning tombs but after a while it was quite nauseating being surrounded by hundreds of thousands of bright white marble surfaces in a vast grid that stretches as far as you can see.
Our previous host, Raoul, soon came out of his shell and quite unashamedly declared himself an alcoholic extraordinaire. The sort of mildly amusing drunkard who slowly gets worse and worse until paranoia sets in and he asks you the same question 5 times and doesn’t believe you when you say you are ‘muy bien’ (very well). He put on some jazz and didn’t believe us when we said we liked it so he changed it to Led Zeppelin which seemed to trigger a higher level of intoxication. I suppose the neat glasses of rum didn’t help. He then went a bit cold and asked us why we were leaving and said that he had a 2 week booking cancelled and we could stay longer if we wanted. Obviously the lack of funds was causing him to drink, but damn I hate guilt trips. I left and went to bed, quite content in my ear-plugged silence. (thankyou Jen)
The next day we got up bright and early to be escorted by Jorge (the main organiser of this trip, a professor and dean of architecture) to CUJAE university 45 mins bus journey out of town. You pay for public transport in Cuban pesos – 24 in every standard peso. There are 2 interchangeable currencies which is quite confusing. Anywho, the bus journey cost the equivalent to 5p. Going the same journey in a taxi you have to pay the other currency and it will cost probably £5. The university buildings themselves were fantastic. A bit dilapidated but architecturally, really stunning. A really amazing atmosphere to study in. It was interesting to see how different these students looked to the average Juan or Julietta in Centro Habana – longer hair on the males and less…..street corner chic on the ladies. The woman in the administration office turned out to be a real whore and was making the whole signing up process really hard for us. We are getting temporary Cuban ID’s which both registers us as students, allows our visas to be automatically lengthened and grants us discounts. We were kindly asked to leave the office while bitch face and Jorge argued it out. Kafuffle after kafuffle led to a 1 hour wait during which we wandered around and bought some food at the market. I drank a strange fruit shake (batido) that tasted like meat, and a ‘peso pizza’ basically the Cuban snack version of a packet of crisps. It tasted like nothing and everything. Everything manky that is. Jorge took us to the architecture department, which was refreshing and peculiar. It was strange to see the same styles of wall displays and mini-exhibitions/pin ups that we’ve been used to for the last 3 years. There’s obviously a way of thinking and style of presentation that transcends borders and oceans. We were given a short laptop presentation on what our work will constitute which was both exciting and daunting. During this something unexpected happened. I was all of a sudden gripped by a severe wave of lower bowel spasms. Highly distressed but not in a position to gasp or express my discomfort I sat there tightly gripping the chair and moving my legs, aiming to appear fascinated by slide after slide of topographical maps and transport diagrams. It was all I could do not to shit my pants right there in the meeting. Meanwhile across from me Ruth was being pummelled by stomach cramps that she sad felt like someone was ‘ grabbing her stomach and twisted it around in their fist’.
Second to the weather and food our main conversation this week has been poo. Not one of us has had it easy and there have been several embarrassing moments verging on traumatic. Spasms over, we journeyed back to bitch face and had to fill out several forms and leave our passports with them for 2 weeks whilst we waited for our Id’s. Four and a half near prolapse fuelled hours later we boarded the bus back. I ran in desperation back to our house like a crazy loon from a cheap Hollywood comedy, flailing and slipping on the wet tarmac. Made it just in time. Several boring events occurred between this and our next excursion, which was to visit some houses in town to find new rooms. It was late and we were all tired but we agreed to a temporary stay at two casas owned by ladies whose breasts dwarf every set of breasts you have ever seen. Just insane.
The chicken/rice combo has become dull quickly so ruth and I were overjoyed to find a vegetarian restaurant that has cheap peso prices – dishes for 50p. However we were grief-stricken to find it closed and a sign in the window declaring pork to be the dish of the day. Hmmm. Vegetarianism is misunderstood here. Now my Cuban history is shaky but I understand (with skilful paraphrasing) that after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, almost $5 billion vanished overnight from the Cuban balance sheet. Castro declared a 5-year periodo espacio that was aimed to repair malfunctioning bureaucracy and initiate local-level decision making. The US dollar was banned and living standards plummeted with a system of ration that “ would make the sacrifices of war-time Europe almost pale in comparison”. And so despite this period being over 10 years ago it has left scars. With the hardships of this period still fresh in most people’s memory, the Cubans will take any protein they can get, and so the mere concept of vegetarianism is almost incomprehensible. You will be looked upon with a degree of bewilderment when declaring yourself a veggie. This also leads to, I think, unnecessary inclusions of meat where you wouldn’t expect or want it. Thus, my speculation of meaty fruit shakes and chewy bits in rice are heightened.
PHOTOS
1. Statue in tomb
2. View from our new home, looking East along the Malecon
3. Waiting
