Cuban Confusion

                                                                                                                                                               

• Places in transition are always appealing. You just never know what is going to happen or how your plans will become irrelevant and rearranged.  Impose prejudice at your peril.

I arrived in Cuba a few weeks ago and like so many others I was there to see what all the talk of transition was about.  It is a hard country to get to know.  I read as much as I could,  "Cuba, a New History" by Richard Gott,  "History of Cuba" by Jose Canton Navarro and the ever delightful Dervla Murphy writing "The Island That Dared".  It's good to do your homework.  There is also a great canon of literature on Cuba but I didn't find much of this really helpful on the ground.  

 I wanted to see the eastern states and get off the very well defined Havana,Trinidad, Santiago trail. This proved to be somewhat interesting. The Cuban Government has made it easier to get around as an independent tourist but you are never able to forget that you are a tourist.

Back street in Trinidad

I arrived in Varadero, the very heart of packaged Cuban tourism. A long stretch of white sand devoured  by a long string of all inclusive hotels.  The local Cubans I met called it a tourist ghetto. I arrived here as it is the cheapest point of entry from Canada. I left immediately but found that the tourist ghetto travelled with me.  Via Azul is a very efficient bus line that is exclusively for tourists. So in my attempt to get out of tourist centre Varadero I was on a bus full of camera clicking Europeans.  This was not what I was looking for.  I tried the next day to board a long hall bus from Holguin to Santiago that was not the tourist bus. I was quickly informed that foreigners were not permitted to ride the subsidized Cuban buses. While this makes sense as there is no reason for the Cubans to subsidize tourist travel I really did not want to get back on the bus that carried exclusively my own likeness.  So stubbornly I contracted a driver at hefty expense and continued.  This was a good choice as I got a little more insight into the daily life in Cuba. The driver was overeducated and as I was to discover over and over again as he, like most Cubans I met was very proud of Cuba and while he wished for more opportunity he fully supported Fidel and Raul Castro.  This is the thing.  People feel they have done their bit.  They are very proud of their grand experiment but now they want to see some variety in their lives. I met no one who claimed they would change socialism for a x box and flatscreen TV, but they are yearning for a little more.  This is interesting as unlike many other places Cuba is not confronted by fellow citizens doing much better than they.  They see Fidel Castro and his cohorts living modestly and there is a general sentiment that for better or worse "we are in this together:.

I decided on a night out at a local "Casa de Trova" in Santiago.  It was all it was supposed to be but the night before I was lucky enough to have been a guest at a similar venue in Holguin that was far more interesting. I was the only Gringo in the Holguin music and rum grotto.  The music in both places was as enthusiastically played as it was received. Dance and drink are the main entertainment everywhere in Cuba.  My luck in Holguin was the result of the usual misadventure.  I arrived well after sunset in the pouring rain and was without prearranged accommodation.  A middle aged woman returning from work noticed the dull gaze of the clearly lost and escorted me to a Casa Particular owned by one of her friends.  The small home was all I could have asked for.  Quiet and clean.  I later met the same woman in the town plaza.  At this point I should explain the "jinetera/jinetero issue in Cuba.  Jinatera means jockey as in those who ride the tourists.  It can be a problem but sometimes it is just as simple as a desire to get into a tourist coffee shop or exchange conversation and local knowledge for ice cream or a beer.  If this issue appalls you Cuba will be a challenge.  She informed me that she was a singer. I soon realized that she was somewhat famous as people kept stopping by to chat.  It was she who invited me to the tiny Holguin club. I was introduced to the band and some local writers. This was to be one of the few times in Cuba that I felt I was seeing the way Cubans live.

I travelled around the south eastern part of the island for a couple more weeks and I have to say I never did get close to understanding Cuba. Obviously on a month long trip you are foolish to think you can find the heart of a place.
Outside of the serious tourist areas you become somewhat invisible. Locals in very recent times were not to speak to foreigners. There is a nasty version of neighbourhood watch that still exists in Cuba.

The embargo is rightfully blamed for many of Cubas problems but along with the recent overtures to "market forces" there likely will arrive a corresponding change in attitudes to the big world we all now live in.

I think Cubas brave face will prevail. The new market forces will be governed by Cubans but some element of internationalism is clearly arriving. You see it in the dress of the young and salsa competes with hip hop at many a street corner rum shop.

The one thing I did learn in Cuba is that no island is an island.

• 
  

VAGABOND PICNIC: Border crossing

VAGABOND PICNIC: Border crossing

Border crossing

I was reminded of all the border crossings I have known as I made the Peace Arch border from the US to Canada and back on foot.  This is clearly a car centric culture. A pedestrian at this border is a suspect. The circumstance of my ambulatory arrival at this clumsy frontier was simple. I had purchased a car in the US and it had to clear customs. The border says the car stays for three days to clear customs. I have to leave the car in the US for three days to examine criminal history of said conveyance.  So I, shanks mare proceed  to the country of my origin. Passport in hand I cannot be denied entry to my own country.  Entering Canada on foot I  look around at a bleak fog and serious highway and realize I am not going to meet the hoped for horde of Taxi drivers who frequent all the other border crossings I know. I ask a customs agent how I might find public transit. Laughter is followed by a a helpful call to a criminal taxi. My situation seems so unusual that there must be a financial penalty. The taxi fare is the fine for the strange act of arriving at a border on foot.  My crime is not only pedestrian it is that I am a pedestrian.  Three days on I am back at the border and shanks mare again I now have to enter the new USA.
 I have my documents for the vehicle and after a half hour of polite interrogation I am left to find my way through bleak frontier to bleak town.  The scarified stretch you see on pedestrian examination is clear. This is the border.  Ford provides the shelter for the border guards who nap on side streets.
 This crossing complicated by cars made me think of all the border crossings.

Costa Rica to Panama on the east coast was memorable. It was the rainy season and I was wandering. At this border the car did not prevail. In fact it was a border a car could not transit. The Dole company provides an abandoned railway bridge which serves as this border crossing.  The history of this bridge is the history of capitalist empire. The history of the Dole company is a worthy read.  On my rain soaked crossing I met a poor German whose papers were not in order. For him this crossing would be a 3 day ordeal as he ignored my gesture to throw a few pesos into his passport. Perhaps he desired that adventure. I walked the rain soaked trestle into Panama.

Flying into Delhi India with an undocumented film crew was curious. The crew was not at all a love fest. I was trying to figure out who was who and early on discovered our prima dona camera guy would be a problem. He was not fit for the task at hand. We were going into refugee camps on the India Pakistan border.  It was not to be a four seasons trip. We arrived with way too much gear and the customs agent wanted it all documented. After an 18 hour day in the air I wanted us hoteled quickly.  By good fortune the flight behind us was from Sweden and as the Indian officials turned their attention to blonde travel we walked through forgotten.  A crossing unnoticed. The best kind.

Pina Palmera

I am suspicious of all do gooding.  I find that it is often the case the person who rounds up the needy to represent them gains much more than the needy themselves.  I see United Way executives spending more time at conferences in Europe than they do building programs to help others.
 So when I was invited to Pina Palmera to see their operation in the Mexican town of Zipolite (where I was staying) I had some reservations.  Was there a religious component? The answer was no. OK good. Did they have a traveling executive board? No again. Were they familiar with the Paris Four Seasons Hotel?  No. OK good.  Pina Palmera acts as an advocacy and education group for the handicapped in Mexico.  As I have said before, Mexico is in many ways similar to Canada in the 60s.  It is common for families to hide away a handicapped child and keep them outside of the social realm for their entire lives.  The folks at the Pina Palmera centre work to integrate the handicapped into the general population by giving them skills and a sense of genuine worth.

During my visit I saw people performing all of lifes normal tasks, cleaning,cooking, making objects to sell and generally working.  The centre sends people to other communities to teach inclusion and acceptance for the handicapped. They also provide physical rehab and volunteer doctors visit to do what volunteer doctors do.

My visit to the Pina Palmera Centre was short and I don't pretend to know more than one can from a short visit but I was impressed. The thing I liked most was that I have known about this place for years and yet I didn't. That is because they go about their work quietly and patiently and they do not seek any merit points or accolades.  I am impressed.
They as always are broke and here is the bite. You can donate at HSBC, Plaza Potchutla. Oaxaca,Sucursal: 0842.  Account # 4032851404 key 630040328514043.

OK enough of my do gooding.  I will return to my regular musings next week.

Comedy in Mexico

I was having a sentimental moment in a cafe I enjoy. The waiter is deaf and the floor is a shade of cement that could use paint. Mama sits at a table and does business while the kids play with their toys. Their toys are bottle caps and two spent disposable lighters.

The scene was pleasant and comfortable. Then two guys put a table in the sand and a stool on the table. It looked like a comedy sketch in the works. They began to remove palm fronds from a large coconut tree.

Now we had a table in the sand and a stool on a table and a machete. All the elements for  a good comedy sketch. I thought about the options. Stool falls, table breaks, machete causes the comedy to become more serious.
But life does not adhere to the lines written by comic actors staging plays in their heads.
I lean back in my chair to await the hilarious conclusion of the efforts of these hapless working guys. Then my chair crumbles into dust and I hit the floor.  The guy with the machete laughs at the stupid gringo as  machete hits a branch. The branch unleashed 6 very large bats that flew into the  the face of  the guy on the stool. Women with brooms start to ineffectually swat at bats the size of wombats with wings. The guy on the stool is now on the ground and the machete flies slow motion into the bedlam.
We all dust ourselves off. Dignity disintegrated but humour clearly in good shape as the deaf waiter walks over to me and in perfect english says, "will that be all sir?." I had never heard him speak english before.

Thankfully for me there are no pictures today.

VAGABOND PICNIC: drug war

VAGABOND PICNIC: drug war

Oaxaca

At the entrance to Potchutla you pass under a dangling streetlight. I suspect that long ago an over height truck considered this street light to be an unneccesary obstacle to the proper flow of traffic. It's component parts hang from frayed wires waiting for the opportune moment to submit to the laws of rust and gravity.
Potchutla is a classic supply town. A place where you go to buy 2 miles of barbed wire, 300 kilos of rice, get your tooth pulled and try to get the hell out before the christian evangelists get you. It is a place that I suspect only exists during business hours. I would not be surprised to know that the town vanished at sunset. I am here looking for a car part. No luck with the part but lucky to get out of town early. They can't all be picture perfect mountain towns with atmospheric zocalo and trees filled with phosphorescent butterflies. No there must be the towns for utility as well. Potchutla is such a town.
I am back in Mexico.  It is a country with well known problems. I drove through Taumalipas.  The locals have taken to stopping long haul buses, removing the occupants and killing them after what I assume was an ordeal. I stopped in a town where the bodies of 177 bus passengers were found on a farm. It seemed a normal place. My next stop was Veracruz. I arrived the day the entire police force was fired. When you fire a Mexican policeman his government cheque stops but it is unlikely his gun and uniform are returned to the state.
  Even with my jaundiced eye I continue to encounter a wonderful people here. There is a saying that the mafia use to gain cooperation. "Quiere plata o quiere plomo." Would you like silver or lead. Earlier I wrote an article called "drug war" on this blog. It stands. The people who live and work endure through this difficult time. They welcome me into their homes and we fight and argue. As ever the Christian evangelists are preying on the disorder they find so convenient.
Mexican History Lesson. After the earthquake of 1968 in Mexico city many of the churches were destroyed. In the rubble it was found that the slaves the priests used to build their monuments to imperialism had stashed Mayan and Aztec icons. The natives were standing in front of the statue of the Virgin and paying homage to the Mayan god. No god is good but it is interesting that they endure.

VAGABOND PICNIC: VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

VAGABOND PICNIC: VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

VAGABOND PICNIC: Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House

 Paris, Living in a Dead Mans House.
No that is not metaphor, I am in Paris, living in a dead mans house. I fold out the fold out couch and sleep amongst the dusty detritus of another mans recently abandoned life. Boxes containing the gathered personal history of a holocaust survivor attempt to interrupt my sleep.  Today I took a moving mans load across Paris on the metro. I felt a bit like one of the men in Polanskis first film, "Two Men and a Wardrobe".  Hobbled by goods too large for public transit in a city too large to care as we cajoled our goods via our only possible conveyance.

I came here to visit a friend convalescing. Glad to report he is doing well enough to challenge me to the daily duel that is cycling the streets of Paris. We get the "Velolib" bikes, available throughout Paris. We ride to galleries and cafes and places I am lucky to see through the eyes of my good friend who has lived here for many years. The streets are a constant movement. The streets live and breath as some being made of  all the attempts, successes and failures that surround us.
Still I am not convinced.  I love the history, the Paris Commune, the very birth of a socialist notion. The French Revolution and the very clear fact that none of that history is forgotten on the streets of this city. People may try to hide it but like the bad behavior of a tiresome brother whose thoughts provoke and annoy, it is never forgotten.
Oh ya, there are buildings jammed with art. But you knew that.

I have insinuated myself into the Pere Lachaise  neighborhood through my friend. As in every city every barrio is a small town. Small gestures. I saw an old man having difficulty with groceries. I helped as anyone would. Gesture noticed and now I am a neighbour in a city I do not pretend to know, but a barrio I recognize as the barrio I always know.

Paris has a special place in collective memory, well deserved. Still as I dig into it's history I wonder if all here know that streets have names changed  from " Scratch ass street, or, pull the sausage street to ""Rue St. Martin Rue saint no look away nothing here to see street".  We once had a more colourful language.

Paris does not fit my usual travel routine. I was asked to come here.  Still every obligation is an opportunity. Paris to me is the Paris Commune and the birth of socialism. A hard task that.

There also exists a weird tourist Paris but I need not see it. I went to the wall in La Pere Lachaise Cemetery where the brave and betrayed remnants of the Paris Commune were executed. I regretted that I had not written a poem to pin to the wall three blocks and three days away. I promise to write it and tuck it in the crack that is the Paris I have come to know.