Time Travelling in the Caribbean

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The last time I was in Cuba was 35 years ago when I attended a one-week educational summer camp for kids. In retrospect, it was probably a propaganda camp, but honestly, at 14 what did I care? I got to be away from parental control for a while and got to play with 50 other kids my own age. At that time, Jamaica was still flirting too dangerously close to communism for the comfort of the USA and we were in the midst of the global geopolitical power play between the then USSR and America. It was a controversial time but it was also an intellectually and culturally prolific time. In the end, the American way of life prevailed. Cuba in some ways represents our alternate history.

When Obama announced a few months ago that he was actively seeking to thaw the Cold War relationship between the USA and Cuba, I decided it was probably a good time to check it out again before Havana became like Miami. I messaged a trust fund friend (read: always has time and money!) Zoran from Macedonia, whom I knew from my London party days and who happened to be travelling in this hemisphere, and asked him if he was game to go explore Cuba. He said yes and we agreed to meet in Havana. And so I called Pauline’s Travel to arrange the flights, visa, insurance (yes, you need insurance!) and hotels and it seems like the whole world had the same idea — all of the major hotels in Havana were suddenly solidly booked and have remained so even up until today. Los Americanos estan llegando! Gracias Dios for las casas particulares!

Casas particulares are either entire apartments or rooms in houses which locals rent to visiting foreigners to earn some hard currency (read: US dollars, euros, British pounds). The deal usually includes your own bathroom and some quite elaborate breakfast of fruit, pastry, eggs and meats. Through a friend of a friend of a friend — the way so much is done in Cuba — I was able to find two magnificent en suites in a large penthouse apartment overlooking the ocean in Havana. It was being rented by a divine couple in their early seventies for the steal price of US$45 a night per room. Even though they lived there, it seems that they went out of their way to stay out of our way, locking themselves in their bedroom when we were around, such that it always seemed that we had the entire apartment to ourselves.

My 10-day itinerary included first flying into Havana and exploring in and around the capital for five days with Zoran, and then travelling across the interior of the country alone by route taxis and tourist buses, ending in Santiago, and from there flying back to Kingston. And so began my incredible journey through time in a country not 100 miles from The Rock.

There is much to despair of and love about Cuba. Late-stage capitalism (for precisely the time that Cuba has been under the embargo) has brought with it incredible material and technological advancements which are either completely absent in Cuba or so expensive as to be in the province of only the very wealthy. For example, the smartphone and Internet access which we in the West now presume to be an inalienable right is nowhere to be found outside the tourist zones, and even in those zones you have to use it very sparingly as it is expensive, slow and unreliable. The lack of career opportunities and the tourist influx have given rise to a sizeable underclass of prostitutes priced so low that it would feel doubly criminal to engage their services. Even highly educated people often end up in menial jobs; my go-to cab driver in Havana was a trained historian who found it far more lucrative to drive a cab for foreigners than to continue his passion teaching at the main university. He dreams now only of owning his own taxi car one day.

And yet Cubans have held onto much of what we, in the rest of the Caribbean, have lost. Firstly, they still have a strong sense of community. Afternoons are spent walking the Malecón along the water where all classes and manner of people are simply out and about enjoying themselves and each other.

Their love of music is infectious. Most bars have live music, which means that the reading of music and playing of instruments is widespread and not just for the upper classes. Spontaneous parties erupt on street corners for no reason and everyone joins in the fun.

Farming is still a respected profession and you meet proud third- and fourth-generation farmers in the countryside as the indoctrination into the idea that “city life is the better life” — which has destroyed the food belt of the rest of the Caribbean — has yet to fully hit Cuba.

The art scene is legendary. Official and makeshift galleries are everywhere. Their flea markets are a treasure trove of interesting finds. The embargo-driven difficulties of getting art work materials have made them superlatively creative. I bought a fashion-forward ring made out of the handle of a silver fork. I also found a superb wooden cross that was adorned with an iron fork and spoon in the place of the Jesus figure — spiritual and physical nourishment combined through symbolic imagery.

One of the highlights of any visit to Cuba is to encounter the classic American cars from the 1950s. The variety of colours and shapes takes us back to an earlier time when the original promise of capitalism was individual choice and uniqueness. Remember the Wendy’s ad in the 80s that mocked the stale sameness of Russian fashion — “swimvear, eveningvear…” — while the fat Russian babushka walked up and down the grey aisle to bored eyes. The stale sameness of modern cars (SUVs or sedans), compared to what was, is a shocking reminder of how much we are losing as products become more and more mass-produced. Cars once had personality at every price point.

Meanwhile, Cubans still have that generosity of spirit with that sense of laughter and forgetting. They are still rooted in that spiritual life force we all had before we became obsessed with money and things and stopped greeting each other as we walked down the streets. You walk into a bar and can strike up a conversation with anyone, on anything, as long as your Spanish is even barely passable. The divide of class cliques and professional associations has not yet ossified their general public. Their appreciation for the simplicity of island life looks like the Jamaica our grandmothers spoke of, except with a more educated populace.

All this surely is about to change as they enter the modern era and begin to develop our anxieties about Armani trinkets, Nike shoes and Hennessey White. They, too, will soon be popping anti-depressants to ward off sleepless nights, and feeling pangs of loneliness brought on by the competitive isolation. Their nightmares of lack will undoubtedly be replaced by nightmares of affluence.

I will go back to Cuba, and often. It’s cheap. It’s nearby. It’s safe. It’s gentile. It’s easy. It’s got an energising art and music scene. And di people dem pretty! What’s not to love? I can’t believe I waited so long to return. I won’t make that mistake again.

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Time Travelling in the Caribbean

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