December 11, 2011

Las chicas habaneras


I was prepared for jet-lag, mosquito bites, sunstroke, food poisoning and my intuition told me it would probably not be easy to adapt to a culture so different from my own. But I only came to understand the true dimension of this encounter by the end of the first week, when I was finally forced to exit my comfort zone.
During my first days in Havana I'd wander aimlessly, trying to absorb the city with all my senses, to bring it closer, to uncover its layers and see just how much of it would willingly unveil. It was obvious from the first hours this would be a place where any attempt at acting like a local would be futile. And then, by the end of the second week, there came the surprise. Coming back from one of the interviews for my research, I found Karolina waiting with E.L. and B. on the stairs in front of our house and it was then they told us we started looking Cuban. I took it rather as an unintended compliment to my fashion sense and its adaptability - I think it was the only thing that managed to adapt and only partly cover everything that was touristic about me. That was where the line was drawn, almost by itself – visually, I was beginning to adapt. Any other kind of alteration was off limits.  There was no way to forget, not even for a second, that we were tourists, paying the price of witnessing the daily realities of a country bearing little or no comparison to any other. We spent most of our time walking in neighborhoods tourists are advised to stay away from, we got the chance to glance behind the curtain and tried to deal with the reality of daily life the way it really happens, with all its ups and downs. Seen from the backseat of an old Caddy, Cuba is splendid, happy and idyllic - the daily life of most Cubans is nothing more but local color to spice up a trip sprinkled with Mojitos, accessorized with  Che t-shirts and salsa rhythms. Seen from behind closed doors of houses not meant for tourists, it loses its vintage-commy glam and everything worth knowing has a price and leaves traces.
But we were to discover that only later, because the first week in Havana was more of a crash course in a new reality. Slowly, we got used to:

  • a very specific type of interaction happening in the streets, which was funny for about three days, then became slightly annoying and by the end of our first stay in Havana it was simply tiresome (needless to say, after a week away from Havana we missed it and couldn’t wait to get back): Psssst. Taxi lady? Beautiful! I love you! Where are you from? Naming a country – any country – would inevitably trigger the following conversation: Oh (insert name of country) really?! I have a friend who has a friend who lives there / My brother lives there with his wife / I was there in the ’80s. Are you interested in buying a CD with Cuban music? Do you know Buena Vista? Cigars? Do you dance salsa? I’m a teacher. The funniest part was having the Linda! I love you. Un chico para bailar salsa? routine played on us by men who weren't even looking our way – they do it as naturally as they breathe. A guy walking and writing a message on his phone is likely to compliment your smile without even taking his eyes off the screen, even when you're not smiling.
  • being stopped by the police at night because we were walking with Cubans and having to explain in my far from perfect Spanish that we had no problem with it and that we actually wanted to be with them
  • kids in the streets asking for sweets, money, pens, my watch, jewelry for their mom
  • daily life unfolding in front of us in the streets – the Cuban concept of privacy is so different from the European one that at some point I was actually wondering if there was one at all. Most of the houses in Havana had their doors wide open, exposing everything that was inside, a living and breathing museum of the quotidian, leaving little to the imagination and in many cases making poverty almost tangible 


  • telling little white lies, like on the night when we had to cover for the taxi driver who was doing illegal business and told the police we were friends, not clients, coming back from a salsa party. It didn't take me long to learn this art which I still like to think of in terms of practicing a new type of discourse rather than lying and Karolina said I’d be leaving Cuba with very specific new skills
  • the washed up colors of the city, like a carousel that had once seen happier and brighter days. Seen from above, everything colorful is probably something tourist-oriented (casas particulares, hotels, museums, galleries). The rest is Havana.  

  • prices changing over night – the same coffee in our favorite coffee-shop in Obispo had at least three different prices in just one week
  • verbal bills – this is something that happens quite often in restaurants, most of the times they’ll charge 10 pesos for anything, even for rice so salty and stale it’s inedible
  • singing and dancing out of the blue – when doing house chores, when walking, when having dinner - this is not a myth, it really happens and it's amazing and contagious. They really do live their music, and most children seem to learn how to dance as soon as they start walking. What I do think is a myth is that of the carefree and happy people - the music is always there, but it's not always a celebration, it can go hand in hand with the shadow of nostalgia, sadness, anger of frustration. Even at the library, I got used to doing my reading with music, soundtrack provided by a very nice lady who was all the time either chatting with her fellow workers or on the phone, yet my books were never late, not to mention I got some very good suggestions to enrich my bibliography. This was another thing I absolutely loved about Cuba - the time people have on their hands and the really really cheap phone calls. During our first week in Havana, our landlord told me I could use their phone to call everyone. Call all the places where they play rumba and ask about schedules, call all your contacts, call anybody you want. Just don't call your boyfriend, because then you won't see anything in Havana, you'll just spend hours on the phone.




And then there was that particularly ordinary Sunday afternoon in Centro Habana, on the sidewalk, waiting for the first interview for my research, watching the dogs sleeping in the sun and the kids playing, people walking with colorful birthday cakes and listening to the blend of salsa, bachata and reggaeton flowing out into the streets from open windows, cars and the phones of a few guys playing dominoes in front of a house that used to be blue in its better days. If our trip to Cuba had a better scriptwriter, this would have been the perfect moment for an illumination, for butterflies, for serenity. But there was nothing, not even the slightest inner twinge. It was rather static, more like a picture. It was simply being there, a feeling so new it was almost unsettling. 



4 comments:

Biluś said...

Read this on the train today, on my phone, and couldn't believe how long a post it was, it seemed to go on forever, but it was brilliant, your writing is just fecund, amazing - I compel you to give up the day-job and become a freelance travel writer and slowly add all the countries of the world that I never knew I needed to go visit. Oh, and the photo of the two of you in the shop window with the graffiti and pram-man is just sublime...

Ruxandra said...

Wow! It's readers like you who make me want to keep writing. There's so much more to say about Cuba... I'm afraid you'll have to get used to unbelievably long posts :)Thank you for knowing what to say and when to say it!

vderevlean said...

tu chiar te plimbi pe acolo?

Ruxandra said...

Acum nu, dar m-am plimbat toata luna noiembrie. Chiar atita fictiune nu fac pe blog, sa-mi inventez o excursie in Cuba :)