Mama and papa were really fortunate to go to Cuba a few years ago (alone, because the tour they had to be part of to enter Cuba was cancelled at the last minute and they still had their ID so just went!). Mama says it is a country full of educated, kind, outgoing and generous people, and it’s not easy to be generous when you have nothing. They rented a car and drove the length of the island, picking up hitchhikers along the way who told tales of their lives, their past, their hopes for the future.
All of that is going or gone, mama says. She says they were lucky to visit Cuba before Raoul Castro, who seems to have let Cuba go to the dogs, started maligning his people for losing their culture, their elegance, their sweetness and who is to blame for that? Hmmm…I wonder if having the Russians pull out had anything to do with it? After all, they solved all the peoples’ problems and left no one able to be suddenly independent or entrepreneurial.
I supposed I could have helped start a cat hospital like LargoArgentina, if I had been there. Mama said there were lots of kitties who looked as if they needed homes.
A dictator who cannot seem to solve the problems of hunger, young people without jobs, no infrastructure repair, no places to sing, to dance to read poetry, to live life! But mostly, no incentive or knowledge of how to begin, and that is the sad part.
Mama and papa said they had never met such sweet people, so kind, so open, and so many, educated, which one does not always find in such politically difficult countries. The ladies who worked in the hotel made the towels into hearts and swans after they saw mama and papa kissing.
There was a night of music with old musicians that could not happen anywhere but Cuba, and mama still has her drawings of Lino, the horn player.
There was a kitty there, too. And mama and papa ate in paladares, the homes of Cubans who served simple, delicious local foods—black beans and rice, chicken, pargo and occasionally, lobster. Mama says you could eat off the floor in houses that were very, very poor but kept beautifully.
Perhaps Raoul should clean his own litter box.
