So I am now in Mexico (arrived yesterday) but this entry will be about Cuba still since I remembered lots of things that I had wanted to say in the past but forgot.
First and most important is donations to Cuba. There´s a not-for profit organization called Not Just Tourists (www.njttoronto.ca) that collects medicine and medical supplies from companies and then packs them in suitcases for business travellers or tourists to take with them to Cuba and other developing countries. Check out the website for office locations. And if you can´t bring a suitcase, bring extra aspirine and such over the counter medicines to leave with people down there. Although healthcare is free in Cuba, medicine is often lacking. This leads me to something I found out about the "free" healthcare. Dentists are free too by the way. But, if you want any hope of passing in this lifetime at the hospital, you have to give cash "gifts" to the workers. They are called gifts because these are socialist workers so it would not do for them to be accepting money for their services. These gifts also ensure a better job for example for a filling.
Other donations that you can make to Cuba which are really appreciated are toiletries, perfumes, make-up, old clothing, shoes, etc. Basically anything we take for granted really is appreciated down there. And for those people staying in the hotels, if you do have things to give, try to leave the hotel as well and give some of the stuff to the other cubans who don´t have access to the hotels. As it is now, hotel workers usually get all the gifts as well as the tips. Let´s try to share the wealth a little. And if you´re driving down the road and have stuff to give, don´t be shy about stopping at someone´s house and giving it to the family. The family will be very happy. The thing is that there are things here but it´s usually crap and expensive for Cubans to buy. Honestly, a bar of soap lasts less than a week here because it is so crappy and soft that it dissolves almost instantly in water. Toys and children´s clothing is also in short supply. And one specific thing that I was told was lacking are light jackets for small children. In January and February it sometimes gets quite cool at night but small light jackets are apparently impossible to find.
And finally, any cyclists (competitive and pleasure cyclists alike) going to Cuba might think to bring extra bike parts and clothing to donate since Cubans who compete have to provide their own and things are expensive and hard to come by. I may have a specific address where you can donate these things at a later time but if not, in most major cities there are sports complexes (escuela de deportes) where the athletes train. You can ususally see cyclists on the road around there training so you can just give it directly to them. Don´t just give it to the school though since the trainer will often just keep the stuff and sell it. He won´t give it to the cyclists.
So, now that that´s out of the way, here are some other things I observed while in Cuba. There don´t seem to be any bald Cubans. I don´t know why. In Cuba, you are either considered fat or skinny. There is no in between. If you are not skin and bones, you are fat. Needless to say, I am considered fat (but Alexei doesn´t think I´m fat so that´s good). Although men in Cuba are macho and there are definate gender rolls, they don´t seem as bad as in the rest of Latin America. And I have seen on more than one occasion different men cooking (or helping with the cooking)! Speaking of food, back to the price of food. Again to say that it is terribly expensive. Meat (crappy pieces of pork with the bone) cost between 20-25 cuban pesos a pound. So to put it in perspective, imagine your salary is $350-500 per month and meat costs $20/pound!!!!
About my last blog entry, about the cigars, I forgot to mention that I had of course met people who were repeat buyers of these street cigars and others who were buying them. So it´s not like I just took the Cubans´ word for it. Pricing in Cuba is interesting. If something cost $1 for one buying a box of 25 will cost $25. And beers cost 1cuc in the store, at the bar, at the restaurant. I was told that this was because if there was a better price for buying things in bulk, the cashiers might pocket the money from the individual sales and say they sold the box. Pricing is also funny in taxis (for Cubans) and cars of particulars. If the taxi is going to point B 50km away and it costs 10pesos, it doesn´t matter if you´re only going 1, 5, 20km of the journey. The cost is the same. Another thing that took my a while to figure out was changing the money from convertible pesos to cuban pesos. You get 24pesos per 1cuc, at the bank or on the street. I couldn´t figure out why people on the street would sell it at the same rate as the bank, what´s in it for them? Eventually I found out that there are stores and places where you can only use convertible pesos. But when you buy them from the bank, they cost 25 pesos per 1cuc. So the people on the street are buying convertibles at 24 instead of 25 pesos. And be careful with prices. Something the price is in cuban pesos but tourists think it´s in convertible pesos and pay with them. Most cubans will not tell you that you made a mistake!
Transcard sucks! I got an amigo travel card for this trip thinking it was a better alternative to credit cards since you are charged 12% when you withdraw money with your credit card. Turns out I was charged about 12% with the Transcard too (it was supposed to be 1% plus $2.50). And then found out that not only was I charged in Cuba to withdraw, Transcard also charged me for the transactions. Plus the initial fee I had to pay to buy the card and the cashiers check I had to get to put money on the card. And, as stated before, I had trouble getting money in Havana. I wrote to Transcard about all of this and never heard back from them. And the few times that I´ve tried to call them, I always get a recording saying to leave a message. In brief, transcard isn´t worth it.
In Cuba, the good bathrooms are the ones at the gas stations!!!! Of course you have to leave a tip to the attendant (and make sure you ask for paper because they don´t always give it to you) but ladies, wouldn´t you pay $0.25 if it meant having really clean bathrooms at gas stations? I´ve also found an advantage to outhouses. When someone has been in there for a while and you want to use it after them, you never have to worry about it smelling like shit. It always smells like shit!
One time while going to the beach, Alex and I were stopped by the police. Well, I was not stopped, Alex was. As I mentioned before, Cubans can´t just be walking around with foreigners. These were cops that we´d already had a run-in with and at the time Alex had said that we were waiting for the marriage papers to come through. So now we get stopped again and of course there are no "papers" that say it´s ok for us to walk around together so there´s trouble. LOng story short, the cop tells Alex that he can´t come to the beach with me. And then turns around and tells me that this all for my safety. But of course, if I pay for some special permit or something or get married (about 700cuc) and the government gets some money, dangerous Alex becomes no longer dangerous and I´m safe. Funny that. It also means that he can go into Cuban hotels (which no Cuban can do even if they have the mmoney to pay for the room or are invited). I´ve come to realize that it´s not that the government wants to "protect" tourists from Cubans, it´s just that they are finding more and more ingenious ways of milking more money out of us.
But to end on a more positive note, Cubans are very warm generous people who will share what they have. They have an attitude of sharing what they have with others because they know that tomorrow, they might be the ones in the need. The have a great sense of community that way. They are also hardworking and would just like the chance to make something of themselves, have something. What I got from most people I spoke to was that they see no future for themselves and their children. They can´t work towards anything or for anything. And that´s what they dislike the most about Cuba and why so many of them want to leave.
So like I said, I´m in Mexico now. Don´t know how long I´ll stay though. Left my heart in Cuba again (although this time not with the country but with the Cuban). Who knows what will happen but I have to say that after Cuba, Mexico is not intimidating at all. My stay in Cuba has given me a lot more confidence in myself and since my spanish has improved a lot, it´s a lot less scary. The fact that there are stores here where I have access tgo whatever I want makes it easier. I really want to go back to Havana. I really love that city. We´ll see...
