Come morning in Cuba, you don’t know if you’ll have electricity. Or water. Or friends – they’re leaving in droves. You may not even have access to your hard-earned (or ill-gotten) funds.
The outpost of Banco Metropolitano in my neighborhood is a repurposed shipping container. It has two broken ATMs and no money for the teller to disburse. A famous artist who lives nearby had to come to the rescue, depositing 70,000 pesos in a unique-to-me public/private bailout which warms the heart (but troubles the mind). Naturally, I opt to bank at a proper branch, where at least one ATM should work and there’s actual cash. But nothing is assured in today’s Cuba; when I arrive, the whole area is in a blackout. No banking today.
I return the following day. There is electricity and a longer line than usual as a result. People exiting the bank have to elbow through the crowd waiting to gain access. The sun blazes. There is nowhere to sit. We are used to it. We have no choice.
For many reasons, standing in a Cuban line is bad for your mental health. The generalized national lament about ‘la cosa’ – everything from blackouts and mountains of festering garbage, to dismal public transport, inflation, and more. Even when you withstand an hours-long line and the sad stories of those in it, there’s no guarantee you’ll be served, met, or able to conduct the business you came for. The lights could snap off, the bread could run out, the one person in the office might be picking up their child or have a doctor’s appointment. Maybe they’re taking a leisurely lunch. Any manner of things could happen that prevent the line from moving.
When this is your day-to-day, you have to be strong, yet flexible, resilient while remaining human, and take concrete steps to keep yourself sane. Happiness is a luxury reserved for other contexts. This is survival. And some people aren’t making it. Loneliness. Helplessness. Hunger. Fatigue and frustration. Friends whisper to me about suicide. Therapists are in high demand and short supply. Yesterday, a doctor friend told me she was ‘in critical condition, but stable,’ which is an accurate diagnosis for the country as a whole right now.
Cuba has been in acute, more-than-usual crisis for the past several years. We’ve all been sick without medication and lost friends to emigration. We struggle to get where we’re going and pay out the nose for necessities. But I reject the ad nauseum crisis dialog and beeline elsewhere when someone starts in with it. I try to remain calm on every line. I breathe deep with each new bureaucratic odyssey and expect the least, hoping I will be pleasantly surprised. I realize lowering expectations is succumbing, a soft surrender. Still, I decline to participate in the national lament. Sometimes I fail.
But not today. I approach the line with a buenos días and a smile, taking the ‘último’ from a middle-aged woman and giving it to a hunched 92-year-old with cloudy eyes who ambles up next. A fellow arrives, asks for the last person in line, and inquires how fast it’s moving.
“It isn’t, but we’re hopeful,” I say.
“YES!” says the woman in front of me. “This is the corner of hope. We will get in!”
Within moments, the door opens and five people are granted passage. We smile and back clap. Score one for the hopeful crew.
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Ostensibly, this post is about hope in Cuba, autumn 2024. I’m on the lookout, my antenna swiveling towards those good people, doing charitable acts guided by ethics, not greed or individualism. The young man who helps a little old lady configure her phone while they wait for the bus. The single mother who rescues dogs abandoned by their owners when they split for El Norte. The neighbor who plants trees instead of cutting down yours under the cloak of night (true story, like everything I write here). Local Development Projects that put people before profit like Bacoretto and Armonía. I’m collecting these stories so that the world knows that todavia queda gente buena in Cuba. Here, there are still good people. If anyone tells you different, send them this link.
For reasons too complex (and boring) to go into here, I found myself in the Comunales office last week. Comunales is a strange administrative division charged with garbage collection, keeping green areas tidy and other mortal matters like cremation and freezer rental for cadavers. I was there about garbage: how and when we dispose of it and our right as a Local Development Project to do so. Even though garbage collection is largely theoretical these days (the bulldozer and convict brigade shoveling the rubbish into an open truck haven’t been by in a while; there is rotting garbage half a block long), community projects like ours have to pay to use the dumpsters.
I arrived with a smile and my ‘hopefully I can achieve something today’ attitude. Every person in that dim and doleful office where they earn in a month what a coffee and donut cost at Starbucks, was incredibly kind, friendly, and professional. As I sat with the garbage specialist, she multi-tasked in a way that is shocking for a Cuban bureaucrat, taking calls from her daughter (Supermarket 23 was at their door with a delivery), fielding questions from colleagues about garbage paperwork, and deftly sifting through contracts old, new, and out-of-date on her dented metal desk. We were laughing at one of her jokes when a man entered, holding aloft the keys to my e-bike.
“Are these yours? They were in the street beside your moto.”
“Oh, my god. Yes!” I hadn’t even noticed I’d dropped them.
“Anyone could have taken it.”
We were stunned. He was right. Anyone could have taken it. HE could have taken it. If he hadn’t done the right thing and hunted me down behind the hallway of closed doors, anyone else WOULD have taken it…todavía queda gente buena.
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The chance to steal an e-bike and he didn’t?! I shared this unbelievable story with Alfredo which prompted him to share his own: cruising in a collective taxi recently between Vedado and Centro Habana, the four other passengers disembarked one by one between the University and Ameijeiras. Barreling down San Lazaro, it was just Alfredo and the driver when a young man waved down the hulking car. Accompanied by three foreign women, the tout offered the driver $5 USD to go the dozen blocks to the Capitolio. The driver nodded ascent and motioned for them to get in the back.
“Five dollars for the entire car. Without other passengers,” he said, looking at Alfredo.
My friend sighed, preparing to get out.
“Keep your five dollars. He was my fare first,” the driver said before speeding off. He wouldn’t even take the 300 extra pesos Alfredo offered him. Todavía queda gente buena.
People around me are clamoring for these human stories. We crave an uplifting, a pause from the crisis lament in which we wallow. When friends hear I’m writing this post, they offer their own tales. Dr Laura tells of taxi drivers who refuse to charge her on her morning commute and José was able to recover his wallet, left on an incoming American flight and found by aircraft cleaning crew. Drivers have saved Dr Laura thousands of pesos and the money in José’s wallet was more than a year’s salary for one of those cleaning people.
Aldito offers another gente buena story to the collection: A neighbor came to his door to change US dollars for Cuban pesos. Sounds straightforward but in reality, involves rucksacks of bills, big numbers, and some risk. A calculator is always involved and a bill counter as well, but only when there’s electricity. The neighbor is selling $50 USD, for which he’ll receive 16,000 pesos. But Aldito had been conducting business all morning and his brain was a bit frazzled. He had $100 USD/32,000 pesos stuck in his head and this is what he gave the neighbor, who suffers from bad eyesight and perhaps a touch of dementia. They sealed the deal with a handshake.
Fast forward a few hours and Aldito realizes his mistake. He has no way of contacting the neighbor and though he’s from the barrio, Aldito doesn’t know where he lives. Swear words are uttered and self-loathing gallops headlong into the evening. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door.
“I’m not good with money or numbers, but as I was paying me bills, I realized I had a lot left over. You must have given me more. I think you made a mistake.” He handed a stack of bills to Aldito totaling 15,650 pesos. Todavía queda gente buena.
Lend a hand. Give a lift. Slow down. Cede way. Walk in your neighbors’ shoes. Be mindful. Join us in making each day somehow better.
¡Gente buena! Do you know some or a good story? Please share!
