Sun, 25 May 2003 13:30:33 -0700 (PDT)
Day 13 ... still seeing new things
It would seem strange for a Canadian to go to a restaurant and ask what you can order, and for them to say ¨nothing¨, but that is exactly what happened to me a few days ago here in Cuba. Turns out that some ¨peso¨ restaurants get a certian quota of food, and once it is gone, the workers just sit around and ¨work¨ for the rest of the day doing nothing except serving some drinks (drinks tend not to run out here). Then on friday I went to get some food, and every restaurant that I went to only had pork (no chicken, no beef) .. .guess the beef factory must have had some problems.
Since I have been here there have been numerous power outages, and I am in the ¨rich¨/touristic area where they supposedly divert many of their resources to. Apparently in other parts of the city, it is normal to only have power for a part of the day, and running water is not necessarily guaranteed..
Anyway, friday night we (me and some european students) went out to a club called ¨cocodrillio¨(which is spanish for crocadile). At the entrance, they had two giant stone crocadiles standing on their hind legs with huge mermaid-like breasts. We got there at about 11:30 after being told it was one of the nicer clubs in Havanna, and it turned out that it is actually a comedy club (Basically in Havana, whatever you plan is, it will get screwed up in one way or another). However, at about 12:30 it changed into a dance place, where everybody was salsa dancing. The way that people tend to order drinks here is by the bottle, and with a couple of cans of coke. We got a bottle of rum for $12, and about 6 cans of coke for $1 each.
Saturday, I went to the beach (20 minute drive outside of Havana). Myeslf, and a dutch and a swiss girl got a ride in an old beat up Lada, which cost us $10 bucks. We could have gone in a Mercedes for $15, but we didn´t want to spend too much money. About half an hour after we got there, it started pouring buckets. After sitting around for a few hours waiting for the rain to stop (which it didn´t), we finally caught a cab home. The guy wanted $15 for 3 of us, but I bargained him down to $11 which was pretty good considering we were in the middle of nowhere, and there were no other taxis around.
After coming back from the beach, myself and a Swiss girl (Anuk) went to look for a dance instructor that I had gotten the name of from a former student. On the way there, we first stopped at Anuks house, and I talked to her host-family. They showed my their Turtle that the keep in their sink . .. I asked if they were going to eat it, and the guy looked kind of surprised, and said that it is for their religion. Apparently they also have a dead turtle that they keep in their house as well. I still haven´t figured out what they are doing with the turtles. While we were at Anuks house, their neighbours would just walk in and out of their hours.
After that, we were walking along, and noticed that at every bus stop, there are two lines. Apparently there is one line if you want to sit on the bus, and another if you want to stand. If you are in the standing up line, then you can usually get onto the bus faster, but obviously will be less comfortable. The thing about the people here is that they line up in a very orderly fashion (for the bus). In other cases, there is no line up, and apparently the system here is to find the last person in the queue (because there is no line), by asking everyone ¨el ultimo¨ which means ¨the last?¨ ... Apparently if you don´t know this, you will never get served, because everyone knows exactly who is in front of them, and who is behind, even if there is no line up. It is an interesting system, and apparently it works.
We kept on walking, and we entered a sort of less affluent neighbourhood, and we heard drums coming from a house, and people dancing on the street. We went to look, and got kind of gently nudged to the front of the crowd, and into the house. Inside, there were candles, and altars, and 3 guys drumming, and a woman dancing wearing all white who appeared to be in some sort of trance. It was super hot in there, and Anuk started to feel faint so we left. We walked around the corner, and she was pretty sure that she was going to faint, so we sat on a step by the sidewalk. As we were sitting there, I heard a rooster crowing (this is in downtown Havana remember) ... I looked up, and saw a cage on the third floor balconly of an apartment building, and it had a bunch of chickens in it ... wierd! While we were sitting there, a lady offered to go to the ¨restaurant¨ at the corner to get us some water to drink. It cost us 1 peso (about 3 cents) for a glass of carbonated water, and we accepted. She was the first cuban I met, who wasn´t out to screw a forigner.
Finally, we made it to the dance instructor, and it was in a pretty slummy area (but this guy came highly recommended). We first knocked on the wrong door, and we didn´t know the name of the dance instructor. But since everyone here is a dance instructor (they all want to make money from the tourists), the lady there tried to set us up with her daughter for dance lessons. I figured out that it was wrong house, and we finally went next door to the correct place. This place was a serious dump. We had to go up two flights of broken down stairs, and we got the the apartment at the top ... It looked exactly like the drug ghettos that you see in american movies ... but to be fair, most places here in havana do look like that. It had a super high ceiling (maybe 3 normal floors), and posters of american women in bikinis on the walls. At this apartment, they had rigged up an intersting contraption to open the door without going down the stairs, by attaching a long rope to the door handle. .. Anyway, we talked to the instructor, and set up a lesson for tomorrow at 5:00, but I may end up going alone, because it turns out that Anuk is now sick ... I think she drank tap water or something at some point.
I finally made it home a bit late last night for dinner, and so I got to eat with the family. I was sitting across from Onellion (the owner), and he was of course eating without his shirt on, with his big fat belly rubbing against the table. He looked exactly like Jabba the Hut, and he would pick up his chicken with both hands, and rip of huge slabs, and then would start talking and laughing. His eyes were also particularly red for some reason, and he looked like he was a wild wolf. Him and his wife then started to make fun of the boyfriends of one of the girls who had just moved out, and then went into a racist tyrade about how all black people can´t be trusted. It was entertaining.
Today I went to a small street with Rumba-afro-Cubana music, and it was really cool. Basically, it consists of a bunch of drummers, and singers. There were probalby 200 people watching, and the place was sort of like a side street that was painted in a very african or voodoo type way, and ther were wierd sculptures and altars. Everybody in the crowd sang all the songs along with the people in the band. It was really cool, but then the rain started pouring, the electricty went out, and it was over.
Probably gonna go out tonight ... need sleep though ... not enough time...
