However, I have had a few experiences over the past few days that make me feel like I have adapted to this lovely, fascinating and contradictory country.
First, I drank the tap water last week. I did it so unconsciously that afterward I felt like I might as well have a few more glasses. I walked in to my cool apartment from the sweltering heat, dying for a glass of water. There I went, straight to the sink, grabbed a glass, turned on the tap, filled my glass and gulped. As I drank down my last swallow, I realized what I had done. Up until then, I hadn’t been very careful with, but at least I hadn’t imbibed a full glass of unfiltered water in one standing. I stood at the counter for a few seconds, staring at my empty glass… “oh well”, I thought as I refilled my glass and drank it. In for a drop, in for a gallon. I felt like Alice, drinking the bottle on the counter, waiting to see what would happen to her. I stood in the kitchen at the island, with my hands on the counter, trying to establish how my body was feeling. Would I shrink? Would I grow? I tried to communicate with my stomach to see where it stood on the whole “tap water situation” and ascertain whether or not there would soon be a gastrointestinal revolt and an impending dash to the baño… Turned out I avoided la turista. I guess I’m not a tourist after all!
Tap water. Check.
Second, I finally rode the wawa. The wawa is what the city bus is called here. This may not sound like a big deal, but I get extra claustrophobic when it’s hot. The first time I rode it was on the way back from a salsa club at the other end of the city. It was quite empty that time, being that it was approaching 2am. Most of the times I have ridden the bus, it has been lovely and partly filled with hilariously drunk Cubans at all hours of the day. One morning though, I made my way downtown with my Cubana friend W, and we managed to get a spot on the bus during rush hour. Yay… sense the sarcasm. We were packed on the bus like sardines and then we started to fry. The heat of the day hadn’t quite broken yet, so on the plus side, the ride wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was a brand new challenge and I survived!
Wawa. Check.
Third, The aforementioned experience with Cuban “law”.
Police encounter. Check.
Fourth, I ate in a woman’s kitchen for lunch today. Not a restaurant, not a cafeteria… a kitchen. E was introduced to the place by a friend and had been talking about it for a few days, saying that it was the best food she had eaten in Havana. M and I were working in the “office” when E walked in just as our stomachs were grumbling. She brought us around the block from the hotel to a little pedestrian street. We passed by a few street vendors and then walked through a doorway that had an iron gate hanging partly off of its hinges. This did not look like the entrance of a house. A crack den maybe… Through the rabbit hole we went. The dark passageway was crumbling concrete with cigarette butts and other garbage on the ground. At the end of a 3 metre long grey, disintegrating passage there was a staircase that looked like it was in the same shape as the rest of Havana. We climbed up to the second floor and came out on colourful, open landing with two doors on the far right, a spiral staircase up to another floor in the middle and an open wall overlooking a courtyard on the left. E led us straight to door number two and we strolled in to what looked to be a mix of a hair salon and someone’s living room. The walls were plastered with hair product ads of half naked men with funky haircuts. There was a middle-aged man sleeping on a couch with a fan oscillating back and forth across the room and a tv in the upper corner of the room, playing a telenovela. Through a door that only a hobbit could fit through standing straight, was the kitchen. E crouched down and peeked through the “doorway” into the kitchen to ask if we could eat. A rotund woman with dyed blond hair peered through and told us to have a seat. We sat, took in our surroundings and watched some telenovela while we waited for food to be ready. Within a very short time, we smelled delicious criollo food wafting out of the kitchen through the hobbit hole. Not even ten minutes later, she called us into her clean, pink tiled kitchen and sat us at her little wooden table. The kitchen opens up onto a balcony that overlooks the street and a few other roofs. I’m constantly surprised by how run down this city is and how hard everyone struggles against it. The sounds of renovations can be heard at all hours of everyday, as people fight against the natural order of things, trying to keep their crumbling city from falling apart. Every roof shows evidence of repairs that remind me of little band-aids plastered hither and thither on a broken body.
The woman placed three huge plates of lovely looking food on the table and said buen provecho! The food was the best I’ve had so far: delicious rice and beans, banana, avocado and a pork-chop that tasted like bacon. All of this wonderful food and the experience of eating in this woman’s kitchen for $1.
Best cheap eating spot in town. Check.
It normally doesn’t take me this long to jump into the culture of wherever I’m traveling. The difference this time being that I’ve felt like I’m limbo here. Not quite tourist anymore, not quite living here yet. It’s a weird feeling. Adaptation is in process.
The most recent news is that our papers might be ready next week! Our local coordinator called this morning to say that the papers that had been wrongly assembled were being corrected and that we needed to call this week to follow up.
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