Prologue
New and old readers alike, please remember that blopgspot.com has changed the structure of its blogsites. As of this year, in order to view the images at full size you must right click on them and select "Open in a ne window".
People who have looked at the blog I created for last year's trip to Cuba with the Canadian group known as the Che Guevara Volunteer Work Brigade will know that 2012 is the 20th anniversary of the Che Brigade. Two decades of Canadians agoing to Cuba to learn about the country, and donate some voluntary effort to farms or construction sites. Last year was a gas, and I blogged about it in Basstravaganza2011. We spent a week in the international camp outside of Caimito, near Havana. And we spent a second week in a waterfront hotel in Cienfuegos, before returning to Veradero to hop the plane back to Canada. This year the brigade will be going to eastern Cuba for the first time. Almost three weeks in Holguin, with side trips to a number of other places including 2 nites in Santiago. Like last year, I am bringing and inflatable kayak and some inexpensive fishing gear.
April 27
My tickets to Cuba, arranged by our brigade travel agent in Toronto, are set for a flight from Victoria to Toronto. I will meet up with the rest of the brigade at Toronto airport, and then we will all fly together from Toronto to Holguin. I should have changed my tickets to fly from Nanaimo airport (I only live about 5 miles away) to Vancouver, and then on to Toronto. Instead I take the bus to Victoria, and stay overnite with my friend and ex-professor MC and his wife B.
April 28
Must get to the airport by 4:30 PM. Not normally a problem for M, who is a fellow bass fisherman and used to getting up for the dawn bite. But it turns out to be a great inconvenience, cuz his only daughter is due to have twins that very morn. Great thanks for this favor. And I can’t wait to see which will be biggest when he sends me pics – the bass he will catch while I am gone or the twins. Soon I am flying east.
But when I get to Toronto airport there is no one there to meet me. Not a soul there from the Che brigade. What is going on? What to do? Well, desperate men do desperate things.
I pack my stuff down to the waterfront, blow up the kayak, load all my luggage on it and start paddling. Down Lake Ontairo and the St Lawrence, around New Brunswick (some big waves off Nova Scotia!), and down the E coast of USA, across the Florida Straits and along the S coast of Cuba. Then up the Rio Cauto and its feeder creeks into Holguin. Helluva paddle! I don't get into Holguin until after 8 PM. Don't even know what hotel we are booked into, cuz I thought I would be meeting people in Toronto. Must remember to read the instructions next time. Nobody knows anything about the Che Brigade arriving. Panic level 2. There are buses outside, so I pack my luggage to the door, looking for a bus flying our brigade banner. But there are none. Suddenly at the door I see a guy with a string around his neck and a cardboard sign that says "ICAP".
Saved! ICAP (Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples) is the organization that helps plan and direct the brigade activities, along with similar programs for countries around the world. Surely they can help me. Well, I guess. Under the ICAP lettering are 2 more words: "Richard Best".
Turns out I did not read my emails carefully enough. The rest of the brigade arrives tomorrow nite. But ICAP has sent people here to meet me, and they will take me to Hotel Pernik and see that I get settled in tonite. Gracias!
April 29
The main body of the brigade will not arrive until 1 AM tomorrow, so I have the whole day to myself. I expected Holguin's population to be 50-75,000 people, but I learn from ICAP that it is over 300,000. Hard to tell from Google Earth. Cuban cities have many more persons per household than Canada.
Our hotel is located just to the right of the letter "n" in Holguin in the image above.
Holguin is situated in a big flat plane between rolling hills, surrounded by higher ground in all directions. We are on the northern edge of the Rio Cauto watershed here, and the streams in the city flow S and W towards the Cauto, Cuba's largest river. The Cauto flows SW and enters the Caribbean Sea SW of Las Tunas. The hills to the N of town flow N and NE into the Atlantic or into Bahia Nipe, largest bay in Cuba, on the N coast of the island. To the north is the Atlantic Ocean coast, and the towns of Gibara and Guardalavaca.
Hotel Pernik is a 5 story building on the E end of the city. Pretty swank compared to the Caimito Camp where we began our trip last year. Huge lobby, 2 restaurants, big swimming pool with a bar, open from 10 AM till midnite, flush toilets, color TV, solar hot water (when the sun is shining), and - glory be to god - air conditoning.
Hot water for showers is heated in solar cells that sit on the roof.
In the distance you can see a high rise apartment, tallest building in town, and a valauble landmark for intoxicated brigadistas to focus on when trying to find their way back to Hotel Pernik. Downtown Holguin is to the left at this building, about 2-3 km away.
I get up late, cash in some Canadian $ for Cuban CUCs, and take a stroll around town. This is way too hot for me. Need to stop at the first bench under the first shady tree, and sweat buckets. I cannot even step into the sun, yet I see old men in front of me wheeling huge tanks of water up the hill.
This is probably drinking/cooking water. There is indoor plumbing all over Holguin, but the pipes are old and cracked. And as anyone with experience in water systems knows, if clean water can leak out water from contaminated soil can leak in whenever the pressure drops. So it is better not to drink the city water here.
Old cars roll by, spewing enormous clouds of crud from their exhaust.
The playoffs for the Serie National are underway, but Holguin is not involved, because their team sucks. The hotel is only a few blocks from the baseball stadium, empty now since the Holguin team this year was almost as bad as the Cubs. So I will not be able to attend a game here this year. However, around the stadium parking lot there are a number of trailers - both truck and horse drawn - with portable pizza shops and portable banos (toilets). Why is this? I will soon learn.
Past the beisbol stadium is the bus depot, and a big string of food vendors. Lots of good looking stuff here, but I am too cheap to try anything when I will be getting free meals at the hotel from now on. Every few blocks around town there are big beautiful veggie gardens for local consumption. No GMO corn shipped in from distant roundup-ready mega farms here. It is cloudy, and very humid, and cool for this locale at this time of year. But way too hot for someone coming out of the frigid Van Isle spring I just left behind. By the time I stumble back to the hotel, after a couple hours of hiking around town, I am bordering on sunstroke, pouring sweat, and I can barely drag myself up the stairs. Must sit right in front of the air conditioner for a half hour just to get back to equilibrium.
By evening time all I have had to eat in over 2 days is the 6 choco chip cookies I brought along on the plane, plus 1 beer and 1 mojito by the pool. Can't wait for that restaurant to open for dinner at 7 PM. Who do I meet there but my last year's brigadista roomate Mike from Nova Scotia! He has been in Cuba since January, a new Cuban girlfriend, and is now headed over to Holguin to join the brigade. And thinking about moving to Cuba for good.
The rest of the brigade arrives after 2 AM, and I meet my new roomie Jeff at 3:30.
April 30
We are finally all here. There is a big park behind the hotel, dedicated to Calixto Garcia, one of many heroes in the long history of Cuban revolution. Born in 1839, his grandfather was jailed for opposing slavery and trying to hang a priest. Calixto was born in Holguin. Leader of 3 major revolts against Spanish overloards, spent 5 years fighting in the first major revolution against Spain - the 10 Years War. At age 23 he was surrounded, and his men were getting wiped out all around him. Would not give the Spaniards the satisfaction of capturing him, so he pulled out his 45 pistol and shot himself under the chin. But the bullet went up behind his eyes and came out his forehead, and did not kill him. Left a huge scar and crater in his forehead evermore, and as Wikipedia says, left him with huge headaches for the rest of his life. Well, I guess.
So he was captured anyway. After imprisonment and exile, he returned to fight in two more revolts. The last was the one called 1895 War for Independence. This war succeeded in kicking out the Spanish, but lead to the US intervention referred to as the "Spanish-American War" in the US. Calixto was then the general who controlled all of inland Oreinte Province, and worked to help organize and support landings of US troops to fight against the Spanish. These US troops were immortalized in the US asTeddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. The revolution/US intervention finally beat Spain when the US got control of the biggest southern city Santiago. But after the US got control Calixto was denied entrance to the town he had fought so hard to liberate. Meet the new boss, somewhat similar to the old boss. He died of pneumonia in 1898, and he is a great national hero.
There were old stories in my family that my Grandpa Best, my father’s father, may have fought with Teddy Roosevelt in this war. Could it be that he may have crossed paths with Calixto?
Immediately behind the hotel is the big park dedicated to Calixto Garcia. The brigade meets there for welcome ceremonies, meeting with reps from Holguin and ICAP, and presentation of a wreath to commemorate our arrival.
Then we walk back to the hotel. Now it is time for the essence of Cuba - for us touristas anyway. An icy mojito (spearmint crushed in sugar, with lemon juice, ice and soda) followed by a dip in the pool followed by another mojito, followed by another dip in the pool, followed by... you get the picture.
Then it is time for an afternoon meeting with the Federation of Cuban Women. Founded by Wilma Vespin Guillois, Raoul Castro’s wife, this organization is the spearhead of the women's equality movement that swept across the island after the triumph of the 1959 revolution. Cuba's long history of machismo and male dominance is very changed. Now they are Caribbean leader's in gender equality. Among other things we are told that more than 60 percent of the technical jobs in Holguin province are held by women.
May 1
Primero de Mayo. The great worldwide labor holiday- and the biggest holiday in Cuba. Last year the Che Brigade had front row seats at the giant parade in downtown Habana, where we watched over a million people march in support of the Cuban Revolution. This year in Holguin we will be part of the parade.We assemble around the square surrounding Calixto Garcia Parque, all of us wearing our Che Brigade T shirts. Parades start at dawn in Cuba, cuz only an idiot would march around in the burning midday sun.
We 50 brigadistas are lost in the swarm of half a million marchers and spectators. Some of us are holding the brigade banner, which will soon be mounted on the front of our bus for the next 3 weeks.
Others are holding big Canadian flags. Somebody hands me a big white flag on pole. I don't know what it is for, but I carry it along on the march. I also brought my own tiny flagpole, on which I am flying my small Canadian flag plus the flag of the IKN - the Inflatable Kayak Nation, of which I am the founder and still the only active member.
But all revolutions start small, and I know the IKN is bound for future glory.
Soon we are marching. We pass by the review stand, where the bigwigs are speaking, and loudspeakers are blaring. "And now, from Canada, the Che Guevara Volunteer Work Brigade!"
Yeah!
"Viva Fidel! Viva Raoul! Viva La Revolution! Viva Primero de Mayo! Viva Socialismo! Viva Cuba!"
Some people can see the future. But I - as leader of the IKN - can HEAR the future. In a few more years these loudspeakers will be blaring out a slightly different tune:
Viva Primero de Mayo!
Viva Socialismo!!
Viva Kayakismo!!!
In its own way this parade in Holguin is almost more impressive than the one we saw in Havana, because the party after ther parade there spread all out across a huge city. The party after this parade is centered on the parking lots around the ballpark, 2 blocks from our hotel. The people here have tremendous support for the party of Fidel and Roaul and Che, and also for the party that comes after the parade! After a few blocks our part of the march is over, and our compact unit of brigadistas are scattered and disorganized, melting into a crowd of half a million, and left to our own devices. I follow the thalweg of the river of Cubans, heading towards the beisbol stadium.
Now I see why the pizza stands and portable banos (toilets) were stored here yesterday. The parade is over, and these people are getting ready to PARTY! You can argue all you want about the success or failure of Fidel, the Revolution, the Cuban economy. But one thing you cannot argue about is the undeniable fact the Cubans sure know how to party. And this is going to be a big one. It is not only Primero de Mayo all over Cuba. Here in Holguin it is also the start of Las Romerias Festival. Eight days of music, dance and other cultural events, and party party party! There are lots of Che T shirts in vogue today.
Everybody is heading to the ballpark.
Food and drink stalls everywhere.
Everybody seems to be having a good time, including the dogs and sparrows scrounging for scraps. They are celebrating too. Everybody except the pigs, who do not seem to be enjoying the entertainment nearly so much.
At first I feel sorry for them. Everybody else is so happy, but the pigs not so much.
But then I realize these are not ordinary old pigs. These are capitalist pigs. And they got what they deserved.
The Cubans love pizza, which they make in their own unique fashion. A small thick 8" crust with cheese, spices and meat, baked and then folded over like a clam.
The party is starting to rock now.
Getting really hot now, so I stumble back to the hotel. I meet many friendly Cubans, who are excited to meet a Canadian, especially one who is sympathetic to the Cuban cause and El Che.
One uncomfortable reality about Cuba is the prevalence of prostitution. I am not totally opposed to the concept. I support the principle of private enterprise, and a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body. But whenever you have a mix of people with very different levels of "wealth", the issue of prostitution rears its ugly head.I am uneasy about being approached by men trying to hook me up. Which happens to me twice on the short walk back to the hotel. The second guy is trying to pedal his younger sister. Sex tourism is a part of the general tourist boom sweeping Cuba. But that is not the purpose of the Che Brigade.
Back at the hotel. They have lizards here.
Viva Primero de Mayo! Viva La Mojito! Viva Kayakismo! It is time to break out the inflatable kayak I brought with me from Canada. All revolutions start small, and the first aquatic ecosystem I plan to conquer is the pool at Hotel Pernik.
The music at the pool is just as horrid, and even louder, than the awful pool music at the hotel in Veradero last year. After the IKN revolution it will be policy to deal with the biggest problems first. Solve the big problems and the little ones will take care of themselves. So of course my first priority, as I stated in my last year's blog, will be to appoint myself as International Commissioner of Music. My credentials and knowledge of music are vast, extending all the way from Flying Burrito Brothers to Lynyrd Skynyrd. My first task will be to bomb these speakers next to the pools with molotov cocktails, and put an end to this horrid blasting hotel pool music.
There is a kid in the pool playing with a little plastic boat. He is watching me with great fascination as I pump up my big ship. This kid is already targeted for future conversion into the IKN. Of course, my kayak is already flagged and registered with its IKN Hull Identification Number.
Now it is time for christening.
And then it is time to hit the water for the first time in Cuba!
This is a great ship! Much better than my last year's model.
Way more freeboard, and 4 floatation chambers instead of 3, for added security in case of enemy cannon fire. My first attack is on the brigadistas playing volleyball.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
They laughed at Edison, and also at Einstein, and also at the IKN. But not for long. The little kid is google eyed at my fearsome battle cruiser. Biggest and most powerful craft to ever sail in this ocean. Soon I have my first convert to the IKN.
I have only been in the water for a few minutes, and I have already doubled the total manpower of the IKN. Things are looking up!
I decide to teach the kid a few lessons in guerilla warfare. We will ram the volleyball net at warp speed. Then things turn very bad. Ever since I launched I have been hearing nasty little crackling sounds when I try a hard paddle stroke. Now I dig deep and try one monster stroke to drive the kayak into the net. But the paddle snaps right in half. Mucho mal. As the famous saying goes, a kayak without a paddle is like a fish without a tricycle. And a kayak with only half a paddle goes in circles.
My revolution is postponed for the time being, and it is a little bit embarrassing to my charisma when the kid's mother has to come out and rescue us.
I am discouraged, but not defeated. Fidel's first attempts at revolution in ended in worse disasters. And Che was shot and nearly died when he hit the beach in Cuba. At least the little kid is OK, and we have no casualties. In fact, I learn that it is his birthday, and he and his family are ecstatic about his chance to sail in the IKN navy. But it looks like the immediate plans for larger invasions will have to be postponed. Time to sip another mojito, and re-evaluate the revolutionary agenda.
Lying in this boat with my feet up on the bow and little ripples rocking and bending the ship… the most relaxing feeling in the world. Hell with the revolution, for the moment.
I know it is suicide to attack with a broken paddle, so I decide to try some fishing. There are said to be over 1,000 bass lakes in Cuba, and this may be one of them. I bring down my rod and rig up with a scum frog. The Cubans drinking at the next table start laughing, and tell me I am loco. But I am sure I saw a big bass hiding under the ladder at the deep end of the pool. "Pesca! Pesca!" I tell the Cubans, "Trucha grande!" (Bass are called trout in Cuba, where the water is everywhere too warm to support real Canadian trout.)
But they are still pointing at me, and laughing, and making little circular motions with their fingers beside their heads. Well, he who laughs last laughs loudest, and it does not take long before a lunker trucha slashes out from under the ladder and swallows the scum frog. Must be 8 lbs at least.
But after 2 big jumps it shakes off and gets away. Such is the life of a fisherman.
Back to the party by the stadium again.
Smokin hot out now. And there is lots of grub.
The Cubans are all huddled in thick masses under every available inch of shade, or moving around trying to find some. The intelligent socialist pics are all back home in the cool of the barn. But the foolish capitalist pigs are still lying out in the hot sun. They should not do this, for they are getting a very bad sunburn. Why don't they wear sunblock?
Some are getting so badly burned that the flesh is falling off their bodies.
But still they will not get out of the sun. Foolish capitalists!
There are stands selling little cups of crushed ice and sugar cane syrup. The Cuban slurpee. I inhale these one after another. All sorts of weird yummy food stalls, and people selling jewelry and crafts.
The bano wagons are crowded with gents recycling the beer from the big steel tankers full of cheap home brew.
And there are other wagons bringing in full tankers of beer. Viva Cerveza!
I stumble back to the bar by the hotel pool.
Enough partying for one day. Tonite the real and action packed brigade schedule begins. A film about the Cuban 5.
For those who are not familiar with the plight of the "Cuban 5" (should be no one, but probably approaches 99% oof the population across N America), this is the name for 5 Cuban spies (gusanos or worms as they were called by Cubans) who acted made believe they were anti-Castro exiles in Miami. They infiltrated US based terrorist groups that were planning attacks on Cuba. These groups work in partnership with- and are funded by - US government, and other forms of organized crime. The 5 gusanos fed the information they gathered to US authorities, hoping the US would step in and halt the terrorism.
But it is the US that sponsors the terrorism in the first place, so they turned on the gusanos instead. Gave them multiple life sentences for Spying Without a Permit, and actually trying to fight international terrorism. Now they have been in jail almost 15 years, and the clamor to release them continues and grows all over the world. After Fidel and Raoul, Che, and Jose Marti, the 5 are the primary icon of the Cuban Revolution. They stare down from billboards and walls all over the country.
Tonite’s movie is good, one of many Cuban 5 movies in what has almost become a mini industry in Cuba. Their story is a tragedy, but it gets lost in the carnage of a country that slaughters people all over the world – a million in Cambodia, a million in Iraq, half a mill here, quarter mill there. And they have not yet been killed, as have so many who defied the US empire.
May 2
Like last year in Havana we attended an international Solidarity with Cuba forum. Last year's meeting was giant, held in the same auditorium where the Cuban National Assembly meets. There were speakers from dozens of countries around the world all voicing their support of the Cuban Revolution. This year's event is held in a much smaller venue in Holguin, with only a few countries present. It is more of booster for the Che Brigade from Canada than an international forum.
It begins with a choir of Cuban school kids. They are always great and fun to watch. So clean and tidy and sincere, and so good at music.
They sing a number called "Ode to Joy", by the famous Cuban composer Ludwigio de la Beethoven.
This is a big favorite in Cuba. You hear it played everywhere. Then comes the searing trumpet cadenza I know so well by now. I jump to my feet by the 2nd note. This is the intro to the Cuban National Anthem. After this the meeting opens.
After the meeting ends we head out into the park outside. Holguin is known as the City of Parks, cuz there are lots of them. Girls in bikinis are getting body painted.
At the far end of the park is a wall dedicated to famous anti-imperialists.
The guy with the AK-47 in his hands is Salvador Allende, democratically elected socialist leader of Chile, overthrown in a US coup d'etat, assassinated with his gun in his hands, spewing hot lead.
I had only been in BC a few years at this time. And BC’s left-of-center NDP party had just been elected to the provincial government. I lived on Texada Island, where union leader Don Lockstead sometimes drank beer at the local pub. I knew Don casually over a few beers. Suddenly he was elected MLA, the socialists were in power in BC, Allende was overthrown and shot, and life got very tense for the elected government in BC. Would the yanks come up and murder them too? Don handled it well, but he must have been under a lot of stress.
There are more peaceful activities here. Like Cuban men playing chess in the shade.
In the afternoon we visit the School of Arts in downtown Holguin. This city is known for its devotion to music, dance and literature, as opposed to many more industrial cities in Cuba. The buildings are very old, but the musicians are often very young, and really good.
First comes a piano and xylophone.
We hear another rendition of Ode to Joy, and an amourous singing duet by a couple of young cuties.
The bass player is way cool.
After the show some of the brigadistas take over the keyboard for a jam session.
Outside is the ancient and historic central square, with monuments to military and religious heroes.
Looking down the street you can see the long stone stairway up to Loma de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross) which is the highest point in the hills that overlook the city of Holguin.
In 1790 the catholic friar Antonio de Alegria climbed this hill with a huge wooden cross on his back, and planted it at the top of the hill. Incredibly, he walked right back down and climbed right back up again, carrying the giant steel telecommunications tower that he installed to the left of the cross. Both icons are still standing there to this day.
There is building reconstruction underway, with scaffolding that may not meet BC Workmen’s Compensation Standards. But it gets the job done.
And at the end of the square they are setting up big speakers and amps. These people are getting ready to party.
After lunch at the hotel I need to walk a few blocks to the booth where they sell Havana Club Siete Anos (7 year old) rum for $11, instead of the $16 per bottle price at the hotel bar. Three blocks each way in the afternoon heat to save $5. On the way I find a unique Cuban solution to a plugged storm drain. Chop a hole thru the curb and sidewalk, and drain the flooding off into a ditch. This would be tough on wheelchairs, and in Canada/US this would bring an instant lawsuit from the Citizens with Disabilities. But in Cuba you do what works.
On the way I pass a beautiful organic produce farm. Would love to get a closer look at this place, but it is locked up. They have more sense than to work in the hot sun at this hour.
Next to the farm is a creek - well more like a running sewer really. Very shallow, infilled with gravel, no curves, awful riparian condition. This section would get X-rated in an stream assessment in BC or Oregon.
The bottom is covered with slimy green algae, which breaks loose occaisionally and bubbles to the top. Upstream it gets deeper, and there is riparian cover, and large woody debris.
And looking upstream I can see fish swirling in a deeper spot.
Must get back here with my rod!
After dinner we are bused back downtown. The square is filled with music and party. We are herded into a big old auditorium. Tonite we will listen to opera, and I ain't talkin about Winfrey here, but the real deal.
Well, as future International Commissioner of Music I do not claim to know it all, and I admit that opera is not one of my strong points. I know about a few of the big hits, like Figaro Figaro and my dad's old favorite "O Leonora, don't spit on the floor. Use the cuspidor. That's what it’s for!" But I did not know that they are all part of the same opera, along with "Ode to Joy" by our old friend Ludwigio.
The show is fantastic - even if there are no electric guitars - and late in the opera a guy in circus tights comes on the stage and grabs onto the 2 long drapes that are hanging high from the ceiling, and starts pulling himself up swinging around like the old Circ du Soleil. All while they are singing opera below. I did not know they did circus acts in opera.
And I can’t figure out what language they are singing in.
Stunning performance, but it seems I need to brush up on my opera a little before assuming the position of ICM. Turns out that what we have been listening to is a compilation of a whole bunch of famous operas sung in different languages and written by guys like Verdi and Puccini and Mozart and Rossini and Bach and Bizet and our old friend Beethoven. All merged together into one big show. I thought we were listening to one opera written by one composer, and all in one language. No wonder I am confused. Must brush up on this opera stuff before I start making changes as Music Commissioner. But since I broke my kayak paddle this morn the IKN revolution will be delayed, and there is no immediate rush to study up on opera.
After the show I wander around town with our ICAP tour guides Sandra and Milagras. We have cold ice cream on a hot nite, and there is music and partying everywhere. At the end of the square I see why they were setting up the speakers earlier. African rhythm and dance band here now. Due to the long history of black African slaves imported into Cuba by the Spaniards, the African beat is a big part of Cuban music. And these people know how to get down.
Back at the hotel. My roommate has stayed in town to party, and he has the only key to the room in his pocket (except the one I misplaced in the pocket of my shorts, now locked in the room.) The hotel staff will not give me another one, so I hang around the pool. The staff won’t give me another, so I can’t get in.
You never know who you might run into while you are drinking and hanging around the pool at Hotel Pernik. There are two really good musicians in this picture. In the background, with the white beard, is Canadian Phil Caine, who is here for a week or so on some kind of cultural exchange to help teach the Cubans how to rock and roll. The other is Cuban Augusto Enriquez.
Even tho they have so many hairy heroes like Fidel, Che, and Camillo Ceinfuegos, most Cuban men are almost obsessive about being clean shaven with meticulously coifed short hair. But there is one guy around the hotel who has long shaggy black hair hanging down past his shoulders. I learn that he is a famous Cuban opera singer, Augusto Enriquez. I admit that my reputation as an expert in the field of opera has taken a bit of a beating recently. But there is some guy named Pavarotti who is supposed to be pretty good. And I am told that when he was asked to choose 5 singers from around the world to record with him, one of the people he chose was Augusto.
Augusto and Phil jam late into the nite at the bar next to the pool. By 2 AM my roomie is still not back with the key, so I have to lay across the 4 foot long benches in the lobby of the hotel, getting chewed by mosquitoes, until dawn. I feel even worse a couple days later when I find my misplaced key in my pocket.
May 3
You meet some unusual people for breakfast at Hotel Pernik.
They are having the opening parade for Las Romerias festival, but I am too tired to go. Las Romerias de Mayo (The Pilgrimages of May) is a Christian tradition that has been adopted by the entire city as a festival of arts and culture. Ever since the cross was placed atop Loma de la Cruz in 1790 people have been going there worship. In 1950 it was decided to build a stone stairway up to the cross, and the work took 23 years to finish. Now the Las Romerias festival begins on May 3 with a parade to the base of the hill and stairway. Once the parade is over it is time for a whole week of party party party. I was too tired to go, cuz I did not get any sleep the nite before.
I have my usual breakfast at the hotel - 3 cups of coffee, sometimes a few shortbread cookies. For lunch I mainly eat soup. I don’t eat nearly as much here in the heat of the tropics than I do at home in Canada.
In the afternoon we are driven about 15 km out of town to visit the Aguas Claras cooperative farm. The Che Brigade is a big deal in Cuba. We hang the brigade banner on the front of the bus wherever we go. We have our own personal motorcycle cop acting as lead dog in front of us, with a flashing blue light on his rig. So we do not have to stop for red lights or stop signs. If people do not clear out of our way he hits the siren. You do not want to contest a right-of-way issue with any cycle cop in Cuba, especially with ours, who is named Willie. This guy is all business. Impeccably groomed and dressed, with silver spurs on the heels of his polished black boots, and a meanass gun hanging off his belt. Respect for uniforms is imperative here, and Willie stares down his fellow humans - countrymen and touristas like - like Darth Vader looking at worms. I really want to get a pic of him and his cycle, but I have been afraid to ask. Today he looks so sharp that I cannot resist.
Willie does not speak English, so I have to use sign language. Can I take your picture? He looks at me with icewater eyes and shakes his head. Simple answer: NO. The stone statues on Easter Island would crack a smile before this guy. But I finally persuade him to pose for one pic in front of his bike.
The coop farm is organized similar to the one we visited last year near Caimito. The land is owned by the government, and the farmers receive a base wage plus production bonuses. A lot of the market is sold at government subsidized prices to places that need it. We attend in introductory message about the farm given by 2 managers.
Meanwhile, the country is gradually expanding its gravity feed irrigation. I thought I saw a big irrigation canal from the plane as I flew in. Yes, I am told. There is some irrigation in Holguin Province, but not a lot. I later learn that the Cuban government is spending big bucks on developing multi year irrigation project. They are drilling a tunnel thru a mountain to deliver water from another trib of the Rio Cauto into a dry valley that needs water. The country is loaded with storage. Probably built during the heyday of Russian cooperation and subsidies, there are over 1,000 embalses and presas (reservoirs behind dams) across Cuba. And they store lots of water. But there is limited use of this stored water for irrigation. There is great potential here for turning large areas of dry scabland – abused by centuries of cane harvest and cattle ranching – into productive cropland.
After the talk there is a big table of fruit.
One thing I like about Cuba is that the food you eat likely comes from very near where you are at, with little or no use of pesticides or chemical fertilizer, and minimal use of oil/gas burning machinery. But there are a few diesel tractors.
There are a lot of things they grow here that I don’t really like the taste of, and a lot that I really do.
They have a compost hut.
Where millions of tiny worms do all the work. They never take a coffee break, and never go on strike.
Many of the coop members live within the farm limits. They live in simple, traditional houses, often largely built of local natural materials.
Back to the hotel now. We have a little time before dinner, so - after a mandatory taste test of the Siete Anos - I rig up my telescoping rod and head back to the creek. The water is foul, and smells like a sewer. A vulture sits on the bank, doing a riparian quality assessment.
The banks are eroded, and the channel is infilled with eroded gravel.
Across the stream is a small hut made of concrete blocks attached to what appears to be a small jail, inside of which is a large steel tank.
In fact, this is not a jail, but a beer joint for the locals. There are 2 main brands of beer brewed for the tourists and high class city folks - Crystal and Bucanero. They cost $1 CUC (= $1 Canadian) or more per can. The poor people in Cuba earn only perhaps 4 CUC per day, and they cannot afford to spend a quarter of it on a can of beer. So they drink local stuff, brewed in bulk and delivered by tanker truck or horse drawn tankers to places like this. The big tank inside the cervezaria holds the beer, and the jail bars around the tank keep people from stealing the beer at nite. There is no need for the bars right now, cuz they are out of beer. But not out of booze. A couple guys are hanging around outide, passing a bottle back and forth.
I have no idea what kind of fish might live in this stream. Certainly not bass, which could not tolerate this overwhelming pollution, or the minimal dissolved oxygen levels that it must create. Big chunks of anoxic algae occasionally break loose from the bottom scum and bubble to the top in a fizz of hydrogen sulfide. But I can see by the swirls that there are big fish in here, and lots of them.
One reason must be that no one ever tries to catch them here. Even a starving person would have sense enough to not eat any life form that can survive in this water. And there are no starving Cubans. And almost no Cubans who practice catch-and-release fishing for curiosity. So the fish in this creek never get targeted by anglers. They are bold and aggressive. Whatever species they might be, they are not shy.
Cuba had very few native freshwater fish in pre-Columbus times. The main species of indigenous fish, which is also endemic (i.e. it is found nowhere else in the world) is the biajaca criolla (Nandopsis tetracanthus), aka the Cuban cichlid. The Cichlid family – for the fish-impaired, who may not be aware of it – has great range and diversity. With over 1,600 species in Africa alone, Cichlidae is one of the leading families among all vertebrate animals for species richness. Another 120 species are present all across South and Central America, including the biajaca here in Cuba.
The Cichlids originally ranged up thru Mexico as far N as the Rio Grande. There they met head on with a similar looking group of fish that had radiated out of the Mississippi Watershed – the sunfish family. In particular, it was likely the pugnacious, belligerent, and largest species pf sunfish, the largemouth and smallmouth bass, that stood guard along the future US border and chased the Cichlids away. It seems that N America is one of the few places where the Cichlids were not able to displace the native species. On the other hand, the bass have been transplanted all over the world. Like the US military they are hard to get rid of once they get a foothold.
The biajaca is a pretty fish. Deep and flat, colored black and white, somewhat resembling the black crappie (another sunfish) which is native to the Mississippi Watershed in the US. Biajacas have been pushed out of much of their native range in Cuba by invasive species like catfish, bluegill, and largemouth bass that have been introduced from around the world.
Fighting a losing btattle to exist in their habitat now, due to the invasion of US imperialist largemouth, or trucha, as they are called here. The largemouth were imported to Cuba from the US and stocked as "sport"fish in the 1920s by the United Fruit Company. They are said to inhabit over 1,000 lakes and reservoirs now.
I doubt if there are biajaca in this creek, cuz judging by the pics I have seen on the internet they look to me like a fish that will not survive in a sewer. More likely the fish that are swirling are some kind of catfish or carp, which can tolerate low oxygen and high levels of pollution.
I have my rod loaded with my default setup when I am fishing unknown waters: 10 lb test line and a black rubber worm. I head up the right bank. Two guys are sitting outside the beer stand, which is not selling beer today cuz they have run out. I try to walk by without them noticing me, but one of them yells out to me. He knows some English, a lot more than I know of Spanish. "Don't go any farther!" he yells, "You get in trouble. Bad people up there." Well, I have never been hassled by anybody in Cuba, and I just have to make it up to the deeper spot where the fish are swirling. "I will only go where you can see me." I say. And I continue up to the deeper hole.
There are big fish in here all right. You can see their presence by the clouds of toxic mud and bubbles of hydrogen sulfide they stir up when the swirl. I throw the black yum worm in a few times, but get no bites. Each time the rubber worm, which is rigged to be weedless, comes back fouled with putrid stinky algae, the kind that lives in sewer pipes that get a little bit of sunlight. I don't even like to touch this stuff, but I must clean it off the worm. Finally I give up and head back downstream. These fish will not bite on a rubber worm.
The guy by the beer stand yells at me to come over. They have thrown boulders into the stream to make a way to get across without getting your feet wet. The guy's name is Alex, and says that he is here every day. He and his buddy are drinking tequila, cuz they are out of beer today. I tell him that I have been wanting to try some of this local beer, and he says to come by tomorrow, when his tank will be refilled. He is a fisherman too, and he tells me what I have just learned. He speaks very broken English, and often stumbles for words. But fishermen do not really need speech to communicate.
Alex tells me that the fish here will not bite a lure because they do not feed by sight (points at his eyes). They feed by smell (points at his nose). Sounds more and more like catfish to me. And don't eat them he says, because the water is mal. "I know! I know", I say, nodding my head. I would hesitate to touch any life form that lives in this foul water. No way would I ever eat anything from it.
He tells me the name of the fish in here - claria. A name I am not familiar with. "Catfish?" I say. "No. Claria".
I make a motion of pulling my mustache out of sides of my mouth. Whiskers. "Yes!" he says, "Claria!"
He says they will only bite on their favorite food. Lagartija. A word I do not know. And rana. Aha! This is a word I do know. Frog! And it is the same bait that my fishing buddy Nene told me about last year in Caimito. He got very excited about my rubber frog lures, and when we got drunk together the last nite in the international camp he drew me a picture of a catfish, and wrote underneath it wrote "20 lbs". Well, now we are getting somewhere. 20 lb catfish that eat frogs.
I ask about the other bait, which I get confused with langostino (prawn or crayfish). "Crayfish?" I ask, and make a slow crawling motion with my hand, pointing to the bottom of the stream. "No, lagartija." he says, and makes a quick scrambling motion with his hand, pointing at a tree. "Lizard?" I ask. "No. Lagartija'" he says.
Then he takes the rubber worm off my hook, and looks at me with a gleam in his eye and points to the woodpile, holding his hands about 2 feet apart. He has been drinking. My god, is he going to put a 2 foot long bait on my line? What kind of fish live in this little creek that would eat something 2 feet long? He goes over to the woodpile and rummages around, and pulls out a stick about 2 feet long. Aha!
Then he goes creeping around the back side of a big tree. Whack! He smashes something against the trunk with his stick and comes back, holding a squashed lagartija.
My amigo Alex with his lagatija
Aha! Lizard! I put the squashed lizard on my hook and go back up to the deep hole.
I throw it in. Does not take long before something bites. One good thing about fishing in a stream that is this polluted is that it is easy to tell when a fish bites. Before you even feel the pull on the line you see a cloud of mud and a fizz of toxic bubbles released from the bottom filth. But I am too impatient, and pull back before the fish gets the hook in its mouth. So I throw the lizard in again. Another swirl, and another cloud of toxic mud. And this time I have a fish on! I get it splashing to the top, good fish here, but it gets off before I can see it clearly. And when I reel in I only have half a lagartija left on the hook. Then I throw my hook in again, and it snags off on the bottom, so I have to break off my line. No more hooks, and no more fishing today.
I am finally making progress, and Alex is the man who showed me how to catch fish in Cuba. I go back and talk to Alex and his buddy. We drink tequila together, and I try to explain the Che Brigade to him, with limited success. I tell him that we are staying at Hotel Pernik down the road. He lives in the big apartments across the street. He says that dawn is the best time to fish for claria. But Alex will not be here till later in the morn when the beer delivery arrives. I tell him that I will use a piece of pollo from the restaurant as bait, but he says that the claria will not bite on pollo, only lagartija or rana. Well, these are too hard for me to catch, and besides I have no quarrel with lizards or frogs, and the whole process of fishing for me is supposed to be non-lethal, strictly in the interests of science. I will use a piece chicken that is already dead from the hotel smorgasboard.
Alex is a poor man, and any pollo he gets his hands on will not be used for fish bait but for his own food. So he cannot have any experience using pollo for bait. I am convinced now that these fish are some kind of catfish. And catfish will bite on any kind of meat that smells. Tomorrow morn I will be back here with a new hook, and a piece of pollo, and I will arrange a meeting with Mr. Claria, and convince him to pose for a picture.
But tonite we have another engagement. We will be attending a performance by Brian Sinclair, a Canadian actor, and world's foremost interpreter of Ernest Hemingway.
I have already had breakfast with Brian, and informed him that I have a special interest in his performance because: 1) My parents paid big $ to send me to college to learn to be a writer, a profession I never followed. (Maybe that is why I write endless blogs.), and 2) I studied Hemingway in college and was a great fan of his writing, and 3) I had not read Hemingway in over 40 years until this trip, where I have brought along 2 of his books centered on Cuba, which I am reading now, and 4) I have a famous picture of Ernest Hemingway talking to Fidel Castro on the wall above my computer, and 5) I happen to have been born in the same hospital as Ernest Hemingway.
This will be a special nite for me.
Then we are bused into downtown Holguin. Driving a giant bus around a 16th century city with very narrow streets and big stone buildings right against the curb is not easy. No way to just drive around a corner. Must jiggle the bus back and forth, inches away from the building faces ahead and behind. But our driver (whose name I have forgotten. Does anyone remember?) is a master. This guy takes no chances. Has icons to both Jesus and Spiderman on his dashboard. And he can drive this huge rig thru the eye of a needle, turn it on a dime and give you a nickel change.
The Las Romerias festival is now underway. 8 days of artsy stuff, partying and boozing, and the downtown square is packed with festival crowds. We file into one of many old buildings there dedicated to the arts. It has artsy sculptures and paintings all around.
Even the telephone is artsy.
There is a cool quotation on the wall by Cuban national hero Jose Marti. Jose was both a great poet and a revolutionary.
I twice ask Cubans to translate it for me, and both tell me it is almost impossible to interpret into Inglis. But roughly what he is saying is this: "When you are working with the arts, you are an artist. When you are in the mountains, you are a mountain man." Story of my life…
The old building is a series of enclosed rooms except for the seating area which is open to the sky. So the audience can look up and see the stars.
Brian enters the stage, gruff and growling.
But it is not really Brian any more. A world scholar on Hemingway, he has begun to look like Hemingway, and tonite he IS Hemingway.
His performance is called "Hemingway's Hot Havana." And it is brilliant.
After he is finished we present him with the ceremonial brigade T shirt, to make him an honorary brigadista.
By the time he is finished I am so choked up I can hardly talk to him during the rum & pastries afterparty. This guy needs more exposure, and I will be working with others to try to bring his act out to BC, as well as to try to get it recorded on video, which he says he has never done. If you ever get a chance to see him live don't miss it.
I had long forgotten what an impact Hemingway's writing had on creating the person I am today. How much Hemingway I channel on a daily basis. Little habits and manners of speaking. To me, it was worth the cost of the entire trip down here just for this one nite.
May 4
This is our first volunteer work day. After breakfast we are driven across town and dumped out at a construction site.
Cuba was already suffering from housing problems due to internal political policy which discouraged building and expansion for many years. Then, with the collapse of their major trading partner the USSR, came the austerity of the "Special Period." In recent years a string of severe hurricanes devastated Cuba. Some 70,000 people lost their homes in Holguin Province alone during Hurricane Ike in 2008. So now there are often many generations of Cubans living in the same tiny domicile. In Holguin the government is funding a development of inexpensive, simple apartment blocks to help mitigate the housing shortage. Since I have a working background in urban infrastructure and engineering I am curious to see what they are doing here. There is an excavation for a future foundation.
There is a big crowd of brigadistas ready for action today. We are not welders of engineers or crane operators, and most are not familiar with building sites and many are not familiar with manual labor at all. So the site supervisors must find work for 50 eager people who don’t know what they are doing.
We end up moving sand and gravel to the concrete mixer, or scraping concrete smears off glass and mirrors, and sweeping up inside the new buildings.
This is very simple and quick construction.
The whole island of Cuba seems to be just a huge block of limestone – petrified remains of a giant coral reef. The early Spaniards just busted to coral to pieces, and cemented them together into walls to build stone houses. Now the limestone is ground into cement, and mixed to form concrete pre-fabbed slabs and columns. Concrete is easy to come by in Cuba, but other common N American building materials like steel and glass and plastic are expensive to import, especially in the face of a long and bitter US embargo. So there is way less steel in the concrete here than in US/Canadian buildings. And most buildings do not have glass windows. It never gets cold here, so they just have wooden slats to let the air in and keep the rain out.
The concrete blocks are very fragile. They crumble with the slightest impact, and would never pass a building code in Canada. The entire site would be condemned, and all the buildings on it demolished as unsafe, if this site existed in Nanaimo.
But this is Cuba, and the building code is different. These buildings will cost very little to build, they will go up real fast, and they will provided people whose houses were blown away by Ike with a roof, water and sewer, electricity, TV, kitchen, furniture, and a chance to get out of their relatives spare bedroom. The down side is that in the event of a big earthquake, they will collapse into a pile of rubble, and everyone inside will die.
I am forced to compare what I see here with the reality I left a few years ago in the US. After the initial "success" of the Iraq invasion, the US was feeling smug. People were building houses at an unbelievable rate. Not tiny cement cubes where 3 generations of family might live, like what we are helping build, but huge mansions where perhaps only a young man or old couple might live – part of the year. I remember watching a TV show during the middle of the boom phase, where an economist stated that this was the greatest mis-appropriation of funding in human history. Later, when the middle and lower-class sections of the US economy collapsed into a miasma of loan defaults, ownership of millions of homes, new and old, reverted to the banks that had made the bad loans. Now – years later – the banks are going around the US and demolishing whole subdivisions of new houses that have never been lived in. They are getting rid of their toxic assets. While millions of US citizens are out of work, and living on the street, and under bridges, and in the bushes, the banks are demolishing some of the classiest new housing ever built. Nobody is bulldozing new houses in Cuba for the benefit of a bank’s profit margin.
We all get gloves and hardhats. Then we wheel rock around.
And tidy up inside.
Back to the hotel now. On the way back we pass Alex's beer stand. The tanker has arrived, and there is a big party going on at Alex's. Wish I could go over and drink with him and his buddies, and tell him about my great claria. But there is no time.
I eat mostly soup for lunch. The sparrows come in and out for lunch just like the tourists.
In the afternoon we head over to a big hospital where a doctor gives a talk about the Cuban health system.
Then we visit the opthalmology lab there. Cubans are world leaders in medicine, and I learn that they are becoming a more and more popular destination for "medical tourism". Get the treatment you need in Cuba done cheaper and better than maybe you would at home, and stay at a posh resort hotel while you are here. Cuban citizens have free medical coverage, including dentistry and eye treatment, including glasses or laser keratotomy.
I think of hospital as sterile and antiseptic places, hermetically sealed against the outside world. But here the wind and bugs blow in and out. Many of these glass panes missing – maybe the result of Ike? – and yet there is no panic.
Then we are bused back to the hotel. Today I was too busy to go back to the creek and fish again near Alex's beer stall. But at dinner I can see the future. I tell everyone about the fish I hooked yesterday, and calmly inform them that there is no question I will catch my first Cuban fish in short order tomorrow morn.
In the evening we watch another movie about the Cuban 5, and about US terrorism against Cuba in general. Well made and delivers its message well. It is called "Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand UP?", and guess who the real terrorist is. (Hint - it is the same country Hemingway referred to as The Great Colossus of the North".) Watch it if it ever comes around on your TV cable.
No comments:
Post a Comment