After having a late lunch with the whole group on our first day in Havana about half of us decided to take the 20 minute walk down Paseo to the Malecón, the long sea wall that separates the northern part of the city from the ocean. We watched the sun set, drank Bucanero, the darker of the two national beers, and chatted for a while. We were eventually approached by a man in his mid-40s and his silent wife, who asked Senti for a lighter and began talking up a tipsy storm. He appeared incredulous when he learned that we were from the U.S. (given the embargo) and gave us different nationalities depending on our appearance. “Esta es polaca! Tu eres de México!” I’m apparently a northern Mexican soap opera star, being all blanquita and all. Then he started getting into Cuba as a taboo fascination- “un país prohibido”- which is why it holds such enchantment for tourists. Then he started talking about the Revolution and how it hasn’t done anything for him. “Pregúntale a cualquiera en la calle ‘¿Que ha hecho la Revolución por mi?’ y le van a decir, ‘Nada.’” Apparently he fought in Angola as a seventeen year-old and had a mine knock out the front part of his teeth. He popped his dentures out to prove it. He talked about having to hustle cars and other things to make a living, and how the money had all slipped away, and how his hustling had ended him up in prison for two years. Now he and his wife were medical technicians and seemed to be doing okay. The whole time I was cursing myself for not bringing my tape recorder and was taking sloppy notes of his words in my small, flimsy notebook in the dark. At around 8, our group got up to leave, and he called, “Ciao mexicana! Hawaii! Adios, periodista!”
On our walk back home, we stopped to use the restroom at the Cohiba, the gigantic luxury hotel by the Malecón. This will be the place where we will be getting wifi from for the next 3 months, and from where I am uploading this blog post. We actually just saw the president of Brazil getting into a limo as we were arriving. I was not expecting Waldorf-Astoria décor, but this place really does intensely channel New York bourgeois- lots of mirrors and columns and gold and illuminated fountains.
After using the restroom, we kept walking, Monique and I at the front. A few blocks away from the Cohiba, where there was less lighting and less people, we turned around to hear Jo screaming, “No!” and saw a young man running down the block perpendicular to ours. Grace walked quickly up to us and said, “I almost just got my purse snatched,” and kept walking uphill. Apparently having her hand on her over-the-shoulder bag and having Jo react so loudly caused too much of a commotion for the guy to keep trying to take her purse. It was a very weird feeling watching him slow to a stop on the block behind us while we continued walking. There was nothing we could have done otherwise, honestly. He wasn’t following us, and would have been gone by the time the police showed up had we wanted to call them. I do wonder though, how often he hangs out in that exact corner waiting for foreign-looking ladies to walk past, and if we just blew up his spot by calling his game. Maybe there are other ways to walk home?
I wish I had more time for thick description so that I could share more about what this city feels like to me and what it’s like to be here. But because I’m the middle of our second day and our first real orientation, vignettes will have to do for now. I still have to work on writing about my journey getting here, which is kind of a novella in and of itself. Anyway, to sum up, a day in Havana has taught me to never, ever again leave the house without a tape recorder, and although this city is full of friendly people and by and large I feel pretty safe here, it’s important to keep up constant vigilance.
My first meeting with my tutor, Magda Gómez Grau, is tonight. Wish me luck!
