Cuba is Compelling

Would I ever return? I left Cuba with lots of unanswered questions, mostly about the people’s self-reliance and the economy and tobacco’s role and the economy and the cooperatives and the economy and household Santeria shrines and the economy and….

So I could imagine coming back some day to try for answers, and particularly to learn more about what our presence as outsiders means for local people. One story we heard after arriving suggested that tourism has deprived locals of essential nutrition, because food supplies on the island are limited by sanctions, and market incentives drive the most nourishing items to visitors.

Especially if I had more Spanish, it would be fun to again plan overnights at home-stays. Putting up tourists in local homes became legal only recently, partly because demand outpaced local hotel supply. In Trinidad, our very kind hosts told us (I think I understood correctly) that nearly all of their neighbors were trying to raise the money to renovate their houses to the standards that travelers expect. In Viñales, entire streets had already converted to offering home stays, hanging out shingles that advertised simply by the owners’ names. In one block I recorded Tito y Yanet, LaPrieta y Mario, Carlos y Mariela, Jovita y Papo, Roberto y Lola, Maria Jesus y Raul, Damian y Magdy, Santiago y Tona, Estrella y Celestino, and Drs. Rosa y Juan.

The idea of coming back to Cuba of course assumes that the government will continue to welcome my passport. For now, the spirit of the agreements signed by Obama led our guide to say of Cuban-American relations that “We are friends but not that good of friends.” Everywhere we cycled during our visit, we couldn't miss being reminded by monuments, billboards, museums, and slogans (“Hasta la victoria siempre!”) of la revolucion’s triumph over the yanqui imperialistos. Even if this trip turns out to be my only one, I can imagine taking armchair excursions via the wide variety of Cuban literature.

Cuba is Contradictory

During the early part of our Cuba visit, we heard about and noticed benefits that the Cuban government provides all its people. Cuban health care has a reputation for being both effective and low-cost. Schools we cycled past appeared to be both orderly and dynamic. And the country passes my informal “curb test”: to me, one marker of development in a country is whether or not it spends its resources to add curbs to the streets in populated areas.

Somebody looked up Cuba’s rank on the Human Development Index, which considers numbers related to longevity, health, living standards, and access to knowledge. The country falls in the top 40% (Myanmar, by contrast, has a rank almost exactly double that of Cuba, placing it in the bottom quarter of countries on this scale.) Birth rates here are lower than in most countries with similar resources, in part because people expect all of their children to live. Noticeably absent, at least compared to what I’m used to seeing in Southeast Asia, are the logos of international NGOs and the UN. Perhaps the help here is homegrown?

Yet lately we are coming to understanding that countless products and services taken for granted by much of the world aren't available here. The cars and buses we see come only from a bygone American era, or from Eastern bloc assembly lines. (This afternoon a taxi's door handle came off as I pulled on it.) Cement is scarce, leading to difficult choices about what to renovate and what to abandon. Power cuts are frequent, especially during the summer. U.S.-led sanctions likely explain a great deal of what’s missing. 

One guy in our group, unfortunately, had occasion to test out the health system. Riding his bike perhaps a bit too fast, he misjudged a rural road’s curve and went into the ditch. In the next town, which was tiny, the government clinic docs very capably cleaned up his battered face and set his broken thumb. But when they sent him on to the country’s fifth-largest city for x-rays at the regional hospital, we found that it lacked fairly basic equipment. The radiologist had to step outdoors and hold up the film toward the sun rather than use a light box to read the image. In Cuba, apparently, it’s best to be injured during daylight hours.

Occasionally we came across large crowds that we couldn't explain. Asking around, we learned that a free internet signal was nearby. The chance to access the web for free attracts big throngs, often in town plazas. Paying for internet service can cost as much in one hour as about two weeks of a typical government salary... and about three-quarters of the population works for the government.

Cuba is Quirky

Few countries come colored by more expectations than Cuba. Still, I didn’t foresee the fishnet stockings on the airport security personnel. Nor the animal carcasses in the park—allegedly part of a ritual connected to the religion known as Santeria. There’s no telling what day two will bring!

Ten of us are here for a week to cycle in a few parts of the island—Bay of Pigs, Trinidad, Santa Clara, Viñales, and places in between. None of us knows much about this country. We signed up for this tour because we enjoyed each other’s company on previous trips together, on other islands.

As visitors with a guide, we’ll likely find it easy to navigate Cuba’s crumbling streets and dodge its classic cars. We have a support vehicle full of drinking water and spare innertubes. Comprehending what we see, though, may not be quite so simple. We come from near and far – U.S., Canada, Thailand, and Myanmar. 

Already I can tell that my Myanmar-tinted glasses dictate the way I look at Cuba. Trying to instantly create coherent stories about this place, I see colonial pasts, international sanctions, and human rights issues. Both countries surely provoke outsiders into strong reactions. Yet the parallels I’m hatching probably don’t mean what my snap judgments think they mean.

For example, the more we’ll learn about the Cuban state-run economy, the less we’ll likely understand it. Stopping for a rest in a small town this morning, we peeked into a ration shop that sells goods listed on the citizen ration card. Buyers pay for these goods in Cuban pesos (CUP), the national currency for everyone except tourists. At the end of the month, if the shop still stocks the item they want, Cubans can buy extra quantities of it by paying a slightly higher price than at the beginning of the month. 

If locals happen across some convertible currency (CUC), which is the only kind of money we tourists are allowed to spend, they can purchase premium goods at a premium price in the nearby CUC shop. (These products aren’t really so special—just a small cut above the basic essentials on offer in the ration store). In a third shop, which sells only fruit, a seller who wouldn’t have had the right to be in business ten years ago accepts either kind of money.

Not that people living here have money to spare, nor that people really do much of their business in shops. We’re told that salaries don’t come close to covering expenses, so that everyone “resolves” (takes the tiny little bit extra that “falls off the truck” when it happens to fall their way). Or, they get by with remittances from Florida or New Jersey (roughly one-fifth of the planet’s Cuban live in the U.S.). This will be a thought-provoking week.

New Zealand is Domestic

In New Zealand, we learned a thing or two about raising sheep. We now know, for instance, how to tell a lamb from a hogget (a new word for us—essentially, a teenager) from a two-tooth ewe, and so on. Flocks mostly consist of the same graduating class. They stick together from birth until retirement. 

Over a lifetime, we were told, sheep will likely be sheared about every eight months, not so much for the wool, but more to prevent their becoming cast (another new word, meaning unable to get back up after tipping over because their coat becomes too heavy). In the polyester era, farmers get less for wool than it costs them to shear it.

So the money in modern sheep raising comes from the meat, the quality of which depends on the quality of the grass. Figuring in costs like preventive health care, water, and occasional feed (depending on how well the grass is managed), farmers in New Zealand net about $100 per animal.

These tidbits came to us via our South Island hosts, a family that for nearly 150 years has shepherded 5,000 souls at a time on 1,000 acres near Waikaka. Their farm has been in the family for nearly 150 years, ever since Grandpa came over from Ayrshire. Dad and firstborn son work together to make sure the grass appears in the right places at the right times. Together with two or three dogs, they move the sheep from place to place. “I feel less alone back in the gully with a couple of dogs,” Dad told us, “than I do in a big crowd.”

For breakfast there, we ate sheep liver and bacon, served on toast with gravy. Tasty! Then we drove over to Gore, the nearest town of any size. Popping in to the agricultural cooperative store, we wandered aisles that were marked as follows:

AG Chem
Wool Shed
Pet Supplies
Equestrian
Animal Health
Dairy Supplies
Electric Fencing
Fencing
Hardware
Farm Safety
Livestock
Workwear
Clothing

Today, the country’s sheep population has fallen to under ten per person, down from over twenty at the peak, about 35 years ago. Lots of former sheep land has converted to dairy. Sure enough, for dinner we were offered a delicious roast. The beef was paired with turnips that Sister had pulled up earlier in the day as we accompanied the dogs on their rounds. We had only just arrived. Already we felt right at home.