(las preguntas importantes)

well, here i am. back in the bustling metropolis of havana in the middle of the summer. in the middle of hurricane season. in the middle of the time of year when the temperatures don’t dip below 55 degrees and the bed bugs mate like ecstasy induced youths at a rave in a warehouse in mississauga.

why, oh why, would i return, you ask? that’s a good question. and one that i am posing to myself on a very regular basis here. as i wander the streets amongst the scantily clad, sweat covered cubans and teva wearing ‘low season’ tourists, i feel I have a responsibility to enquire more frequently about how things work here. in my previous cuban incarnation, i was a naïve, gringa blanquita in a mojito induced haze, gracefully shimmying down the sidewalks to the likes of the buena vista social club. now? a hardened, seasoned traveler who isn’t swayed by the slippery socialists on the corner whispering sweet nothings in my ear….”hey ladeee, where you fron?”, “my frieeend, my frieeend, i lub you, i lub you” etc. etc. before, when i may have wanted to befriend them, now i just want to behead them. although my international life experience is somewhat limited, i can’t ignore the fact that i have now lived for 8 months in an impoverished, communist country. because of this, i feel that i can share my ‘i really don’t actually know anything but fancy myself worldly’ opinion on some of the odd and intriguing things i see here. but in order to do that, i had to ask myself a few important questions.


HOW?

• how is it possible that people can wear jeans here when it’s LITERALLY 55 degrees with the humidex? do they feel fresh? do they have to lie down to peel them off at the end of the day? and speaking of jeans again (i am very fascinated by them here), why so much bejeweling and acid wash? the u.s. hasn’t imposed an embargo on common sense and fashion, has it? i think not.

• how is it possible for people to eat meat, bought off the street, in LITERALLY 55 degree heat with the humidex, unrefrigerated, presented by a sweat covered butcher waving the flies away with his dirty hands….and live? i ate this meat recently (unbeknownst to me) and almost died. in fact, i think i may have actually perished on a dirty bathroom floor and i truly believe it was the cockroach that shimmied across my face that brought me back to life. how can people eat this meat and not fill emergency rooms and keep gastroenterologists working around the clock? this is something that bewilders me (and makes me so, so, so, so happy that i went overweight on my luggage this time because of the 50 boxes of kraft dinner that i brought).

(and one small aside on this topic: here are couple of recent conversations i had during meal times with a cuban….)

#1.

me: “what is that black meat you are eating in those beans?”
him: “pork skin.”
me: “but it’s still covered in fur and whiskers.”
him: “yeah, but it’s only a little bit of fur and only a few whiskers.”

#2.

me: “ugh, that container of street meat smells horrific!”
him: “mmm hmmm.”
me: “no, really. you shouldn’t eat that.”
him: “oh. too late. i just did. and so did you.”

yuck.


WHO

• who here has ever had to make a #2 in someone else’s house? yes of course, we all have. and who has ever asked permission to do so? none of us, i’m sure. after a recent conversation with my cuban pals, i have learned that it is part of the etiquette here to ask the permission of your hosts if you can expel the delicious dinner they just made you, in their toilet. yes, it’s true. i was looked upon in disbelief when i expressed my horror of this tradition. they had to be kidding. it’s bad enough to break out into a sweat in a foreign country when you have only a dirty hole to poo in but to then have to ask permission to hover over said dirty hole? god help me. i am still in such shock and mortified beyond belief that i might actually have to exercise this etiquette that i am unsure i can even write about it for fear it might jinx me into saying in broken spanish while i clutch my abdomen, “excuse me, may i have diarrhea in your toilet that i am sure i will break even more than it already is and then have to interrupt dinner to ask you to come in and help me find a way to flush it down?” god no, don’t even make me think it. in the meantime i will continue to guzzle down pepto every hour and amuse myself at the thought of being at a dinner party at home with a cuban guest who says “is this a shiraz or merlot and can i shit after dessert?” oh, how much joy that would bring me.

• who would ever think that gays could be communists? i guess it’s just as weird as gay republicans but it really just baffles me. and while i try very hard not to get into politics here (not for my lack of opinion because believe me, I have many, but for my safety), i have to tell you that some things confuse me. like gay communists. and i am living with a couple of them right now. i mean, being a part of a marginalized community, like the queer community, especially here, would probably be enough oppression, no? and while i certainly don’t pass judgment on anybody’s personal or political affiliations, i can’t deny that i am weirded out by the idea of pleasuring one’s self to a picture of a certain bearded someone in a green military hat who imposes such oppression. but hey, people get off on strangling themselves in hotel rooms too, so i guess ….whatever floats your boat!
(but of course, not the kind of boat that floats north 90 miles).



WHAT?

• what is the deal with animal heads lying on the side of the road? and buckets of blood being poured into the sewers as you walk home from dinner? and the corpses of dead dogs lying under a tree on a well traveled street? here is what i do know – it’s all part of santeria. the afro-cuban religion that is practiced by many here. while i don’t know much about it, i do know that they love their saints. and they like to offer things to them. the lovely lady that i live with offers her saints things like my left over skittles or the odd pretty leaf she finds on the sidewalk. other people like to lure cocker spaniels into the dark and suffocate them. or take a bouncy, happy little baby goat and slice it’s head off while everyone eats cake. and while i am not ready to delve into my thoughts (and I have many) about religion on my blog just yet, i do know that i am not a fan of cleaning blood and entrails off my flip flops every night when i get home.

• what happens when you have no food to feed the little baby animals that you rescue from under a dumpster on a dark street in the middle of the night? there’s no commercial pet food here. there’s hardly any food for the people, let alone the animals. and where does your tiny little kitten relieve itself when there is no litter box and you certainly don’t want to let them back out in the big bad horrible world from which they came to do their business (and probably impregnate every gal in every dumpster in a 10 mile radius)? well, i recently learned that you pick a corner of your house that you aren’t that attached to, throw the remnants of your ashtray on it and they happily squat there. i suppose it shouldn’t surprise me when i have squatted in some less than favourable places myself here when in a pinch. all that said, it’s a complicated matter when you live with a cuban family struggling to fill their fridge with food and want to feed that same food to your cats. and don’t get me wrong, cubans really dig their pets and take amazing care of them but they need the food for themselves. and you feel like an asshole giving a can of expensive tuna to a cat when it can feed a family of four. so you get to a point where you feel lucky that the cockroach problem in your place has escalated and you delight in watching the kitten chase it’s dinner all over the house excitedly and sit back in relief that his belly will be full after he finishes crunching each and every tentacle (do they have tentacle’s?) on their unusually large frames.


WHEN?

• when do you really feel like you’re not lost anymore? do you feel ‘found’ or do you just feel tired of looking? i have been looking. and looking. for how long? well, a lady never reveals her age. and for what? fucked if i know. but i seem to have found something recently that is more profound than just being tired of searching for clarity. i, like many of the people I know, have spent an embarrassing amount of time and money searching for clarity. for an answer to their questions about which career to choose, whether to buy or rent, how to perfect their abs or learn to love the ones they’ve got, how to find the person who is going to come into their life and fix everything. fill every void. and the list goes on.

i lived this way until I just couldn’t take another second of it. i figured the only rational thing that could possibly assist me in my ‘what the hell am i doing with my life?’ search was to flee the country. i had exhausted every other option. so i fled. i ditched everything i had worked so hard for and opted for a life i was finally able to deem ‘bohemian’. something i had always wanted to be. bohemians always seemed so cool, so together, so free of the shackles of conventional living. you know what my bohemian life consists of? me spending all my time (but not as much money because I ditched my employment as well), asking myself the same questions i asked myself at home. except this time I am alone. and sweating. but when i feel really discouraged that my last possible option for finding myself has turned up nothing, i just look around me. i look around me at all the people who have no options. no opportunity. no freedom. and then I feel lucky. and a little embarrassed that i spend so much energy weighing all the possibilities i have and complaining about not knowing which of them i should explore first. i feel a pang of humility as i sit in a café writing this now with a 70 year old woman sitting behind me making 25 cents a day handing out toilet paper to the drunk and sweaty foreigners. that i sit contemplating my life at the kitchen table of a single mother who works 14 hours a day to come home and clean the house, open an empty refrigerator and smoke the last half of a coveted cigar she has until her next paycheque. which comes next month. for the first time in my life i feel like i have too many options. and maybe that’s our problem – too much choice breeds too much confusion. but if you ask someone who has no choice but to lead the exact life handed to them if too many opportunities would make them cry and whine? the answer is an enthusiastic….NOPE.

so in all of this, have i found myself? well, i can say, as a newly enlightened bohemian woman, with much certainty, the answer is also ‘NOPE’. and i may never. but the most important thing is i have found the clarity to know that i should shut the hell up about it.