Defying Physics

A friend of mine once showed me a coffee table book that was a series of photographs of people carrying various items on their bicycles. These pictures were taken around the world and portrayed cyclists carrying everything from stacked boxes filled with chickens, to computers heaped together. I often think of that book while walking around this town, observing the types of things my Cuban Compañeros carry. I’ve noticed that there are two items that Cubans often haul around. It doesn’t seem to matter if they live in a city or in the country, it’s as though these two things unite us all. If you had to guess, what would you think? Think of the climate, the lack of access to materials, the culture… My first guess would be far from correct.
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Item #1: Fans! Totally makes sense with the heat here. People carry around all shapes, sizes and colours of fans. I could write a book on the different fans that people have and somehow relate them to their personality. Or I could make a quiz; “What kind of fan are you? What your fan says about your inner self.”
Question number 1
Do you prefer fans with
a)    Two blades
b)    Three blades
c)    Four blades

Item #2: Pigs! It’s the type of meat they eat the most. Again, all shapes, sizes and colours. People are also very creative in how they carry their pigs. Over the shoulder in a fireman’s hold, around the neck like a scarf, around the waist like a belt, in their arms like a baby, in a bag, in a carriage, by the foot, by the ear… Maybe the way they carry their pig says something about their love-making style. Again, another idea for a quiz
Question number 1
Do you prefer to hold your pig:
a)    By the ear
b)    By the tail
c)    By the foot
d)    I’m a vegetarian

I might have too much time to think here…

I held my first workshop in Spanish on Saturday. I had prepared flipcharts with my main points and a few drawings. I guess this is what people did before PowerPoint…

One of the team members, A, is the connection between us, the farmers and the communities. She wanted us to hold the workshop in the community of Paraguay, which is the furthest one from Gtmo and the closest one to the military base. She recommended that we bring something to provide to the farmers to eat. P and E’s landlord makes beautiful cakes so we ordered one from her and it was ready just in time (7:30am). Cakes are the third most common item that I see people carrying around.

Getting there in the morning was quite the adventure. The workshop had been called for 8am but of course it didn’t start until much later. I was going to bike there and E and P would catch up with the Cake. One block past their house, I saw them walking with the Cake. Actually, I noticed IT before I saw them. I decided to leave my bike at their place and go with E, P and the Cake. During the adventure of getting there, the Cake took on its own personality, becoming more than just a pastry. It’s difficult to explain how these things happen. Maybe it’s like in Castaway with the volleyball. The Cake was our Wilson. I became very emotionally to this dessert in our short time together. Not that my emotional attachment stopped me from eating it. It just made it taste bittersweet.  

Anyway, to get to Paraguay, we walked to the bridge and hopped on a horse-drawn carriage. The carriage brought us to a roundabout, where we walked over to the designated hitchhiking-waiting spot. In Cuba, there are specific areas where people can go wait and have someone hail trucks for them. The state employs these people to try to manage this type of transport. They wear yellow jumpsuits and for some reason, remind me of the yellow pages come to life. These waiting points are official unofficial hitchhiking locations. We went. We waited. We waited… We waited some more. We moved back and forth between waiting with everyone and trying to hail a car on our own. To picture the situation, you need to picture the three of us, the only non-locals, holding a huge cake, with our backpacks, holding a wad of cash out to try and get a car to stop for us, trying not to stress about being late. I know I’ve been in Cuba for a long time since I wasn’t anxious about being late.

Finally, a truck pulled over in front of the yellow jumpsuit man and dozens of people ran towards it. People were crawling up the sides of the big truck, like ants climbing a rock. Everyone was scaling the tires and climbing over the rails to get onto the flatbed. We joined the crowd. I handed my backpack up to someone who had already successfully climbed and proceeded to scale the massive camioneta. I got a foothold on a ridge of the tire, sprang up, grasped the metal railing, hauled myself up, ducked under the metal bar and threaded by body through the gap.

P handed the cake up to me from the ground so that he could then climb up, unencumbered by IT. Our Cake was grabbed out of my hands and passed over the crowd’s heads as if it were bodysurfing. It floated towards the front of the truck and was placed on top of the cab, along with three other cakes. E commented that cakes are like kids here, everyone looks out for them. The truck pulled away once everyone had settled in as comfortably as sardines. I was worried that our lovely dessert would go flying off of the truck at every turn, would bounce off at every bump or lurch forward at the slightest brake. IT barely moved during the entire ride and after the first few minutes, I stopped worrying; this was a magical pastry. The Cake seemed to defy the laws of physics and barely moved for the entire ride… unlike us. With nothing to hold onto other than the outside rails, we were like leaves in the wind, at the whim of the driver and the road. With the morning sun warming us up, the wind cooling us down and the landscape rolling around us, we couldn’t stop smiling.

As the truck drove by the farms, we saw a few of the farmers waiting by the side of the road for transport. They squeezed onto the truck and we greeted each other through the sea of people and sped along the country road towards the community of Paraguay. Pulling up, we saw that there must be some kind of party going on, based on the amount of people with bottles of rum and cakes. That, or just a normal Saturday in Cuba.

We found A waiting by the Sala Comunale with a few other ladies, including the head of the Water Resources for the area who was there to also speak at my workshop. We coordinated what we would say and waited for the rest of the farmers to show up.

The workshop went really well! Other than a few technical issues with my flipchart, it went off without a hitch. I didn’t have too much trouble with my Spanish and there was a decent amount of participation from the 20-odd people that attended. I talked about water quality, source protection, point of use treatment, chemical, physical and biological water purification and initiated a discussion about water management. I forgot how much I enjoy public speaking.

I received great feedback about the presentation. On a few of the flipchart sheets, I wrote down questions and hid the answers behind a taped piece of paper. I would ask the question, wait for the answer and then tear off the paper, revealing the answer. This especially seemed to go over well! I also drew pictures of the “enemy”; micro-organisms present in contaminated water. P was the one who got me thinking about how to present my topic. He mentioned something about demystifying the science behind it all and this was my inspiration. 

When it was done, we ate the Cake, drank some juice, coffee and tea and then left all together. Our transport back to Gtmo was an old soviet prisoner transport truck. By far, the most interesting vehicle I’ve ever been in. Every part of it, save the tires, was made out of slightly rusted metal. We entered through a small door at the back passenger side corner. The inside was big enough to hold 3 dozen passengers/inmates.

That same day, we bumped into the dancers who had just received their results from their most recent evaluation. Every two years, ballerinas are evaluated by an official comity and the results of this determine their level (1-4) and their yearly salary. P, M and I sat in on the evaluation on Thursday. When we saw them on Saturday, they were starting to celebrate and invited us to join. Three of our dancer friends are now Nivel 1 ballerinas. First class dancers! Not that I’m surprised. These people are incredibly talented and work incredibly hard every day. It’s always amazing to me that someone can devote themselves so entirely to one thing. The passion that goes into their dancing is so inspiring to me and makes me want to work harder in what I do. Maybe I’ll start tomorrow… or the next day…

On the subject of work, when we dropped off our weekly workplan this morning at the office, we were informed that the trench-digging machine would be arriving to the farms today! Now all that’s missing is petrol, someone to operate the machine properly, cement and a workforce.

For all of its difficulties, Cuba does seem to do at least one thing very well: the medical system. I am proud to say that I have contracted my first tropical skin thingy. Apparently it’s very common and is caused by sun, heat and humidity. I have a few little white spots on my back that are supposedly some kind of mushroom. I went to the clinic to see a dermatologist today and within ten minutes, I had the prescription I needed. The pharmacy also only took a few minutes and cost me less than 5 cents for two 25g tubes of cream. As usual, I’m very sceptical of doctors so I intend to look up the drug he prescribed to me. I’m amazed that prescription drugs are so inexpensive and easily accessible here. I was under the impression that because of the blockade, Cuba was lacking in the drug department. Not so! There are drugs galore and even more interesting, they promote alternative natural medicine for the same ailments. This would be an interesting place to do research for GIFTSofhealth. That is going down on my project idea list. That list is growing more each day. This environment has been bringing out my creative side. It’s a wonderful feeling. I’ve been drawing, writing, attending art shows and dance shows as well as coming with project ideas.

Every day, it hits me that I live in Cuba! Life is pretty wonderful.