by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)
The next afternoon in the town of Cienfuegos we walk the Paseo del Prado, a long tree-lined boulevard, down to the pier, stopping to photograph the classic cars covered in house paint—shades of popsicle pink, orange, lime, grape—and the remarkably lifelike statue of Beny Moré, a native of Cienfuegos. Moré is Cuba’s most beloved musician, known as the barbaro de ritmo—the barbarian of rhythm. The day is hot and humid, and we are dripping but determined to make it to Punta Gorda. As we finally near the pier, a young guy rides by on a bicycle, slows down, and—cupping one hand around his right man-breast—looks me square in the eye and announces loudly and reverently: “Bueno.”
“Did that just happen?” I ask.
“Oh how sweet!” Erin says. “But we should teach him how to say it in English. ‘Hey!’” she calls after him. “It’s ‘nice rack!’”
That evening at another casa de la música, a lively salsa band plays and Erin dances nonstop. “Why does everyone ask you to dance?” I whine. “And never me?”
“Because I sit here chair-dancing till someone takes pity on me,” she says. Then she stands up to be swung around by the translator who has claimed her for the evening. When we leave the club an hour later (fending off the translator’s disappointment), we see the guitarist from the band crossing the street.
“I’m going to ask for his autograph,” I say, suddenly fourteen.
On the liner notes of my CD he scrawls his name, Roberto, along with a long and involved inscription, the only words of which I understand are “a las 2 chicas Americanas,” and we chat for a few minutes—his English is practically perfect. Then his friend saunters up holding a guitar, and they serenade us on the sidewalk. After, they translate the lyrics: “When will I see you again? When the world turns over.” The evening is warm, and people are out strolling on the malecón, so we join them. After a few minutes we pair off, and as I walk ahead with Roberto, I try to figure out how to broach the topic of his political situation—I want to ask everyone we meet about the “situation,” and Erin teases me about this. If I comment that a little girl is cute, she asks, “Do you want to ask her about her situación?”
I do. I’m ignorant about Cuban politics, I know—I’ve done my share of reading but it’s complicated and I want more. I want to know things I cannot intuit or see in the streets. I want to know whether things are changing with Obama in office—how they are changing with Raul Castro in charge. I want to know about limitations and expectations, shortages, and to what lengths they go. I want to understand why everyone is so friendly to Americans while I feel, if not guilty exactly, genuinely sorry.
I’m too afraid to ask, though, so we talk music. But after some time, Roberto opens up. Every Cuban, he tells me, has a second source of income—selling cigars, helping tourists, hawking CDs. It’s the only way, when you make the equivalent of $20 a month. “Can you imagine if Cuba changed?” Roberto asks at one point, his voice becoming higher. “Can you imagine?” Ninety percent of Cubans want it to change, he tells me—but most won’t allow themselves to even hope for it. They live each day identical to the day before: without dreams, because there’s no chance of dreams coming true. “We have nothing,” he says at one point, stopping the conversation. “We have no freedom, we have no money, we have no food, we have no clothes, we have no instruments. We have no, we have no, we have no.”
Then he pauses beneath a tree, takes a breath and says, “If you and I got married, you could take me to Hollywood and introduce me to people.”
As the moon shines down on us, as Erin and her guitarist approach, I fumble awkwardly, sadly, for the words to explain why I can’t do that, why it won’t ever happen. I have a boyfriend, I have no connections in Hollywood, I couldn’t, I can’t, I’m sorry. I’m genuinely sorry.
From Cienfuegos we take a bus south to Trinidad, where we’ve booked into the same casa particular where Dan and his friends stayed a week ago—in the same room. Our host shows me his name in the guest log, and as I set down my bag and lie on top of the bed where he slept, I feel the loose filaments of our new relationship tightening, strengthening. The last time I saw him, before he left for his trip, he told me he loved me. I haven’t said it back yet.
On this, our first day in Trinidad, Erin is violently ill. I sit with her through the afternoon and evening, writing in my journal and conjugating Spanish verbs in my head. Canto, I sing; Canta, you sing; Cantamos, we sing. But Erin finally insists I go out—she’d rather be alone. And within sixty seconds I am at yet another casa de la música. This one is al fresca, just off the Plaza Mayor. The steps of the staircase leading up to the Iglesia Parroquial are filled with locals and tourists drinking beer and watching the show in the square below. Today is one of many Santería holidays, and the performers—band members and dancers alike—are dressed in white from head to toe. I lean against a crowded bar and wait to order a beer, and before long I make friends: Torsten is German, Angelica is Swiss, her husband Orlando is Cuban. Angelica tells me that when she and Orlando were courting, he was arrested for talking to her on the malecón. “There are cameras everywhere,” she tells me. “Be careful.” (Later I’ll learn that none of these cameras actually work.) We dance, drink, and at the end of the night Torsten asks if he can kiss me. Though I say no—definitely not—I am beginning to see how this place can change you, make you feel more desirable, more alive. It turns you the way it wants to, gently, like a hand on the small of your back as you dance.
The next day Erin wakes up with an appetite and some color in her cheeks, so we strike out, hitting the lone Internet café in town first, where she receives an email offering her a new, better job. We celebrate that night at Casa de la Trova, a small club with a warbling trovador who sings soppy ballads, the kind Erin and I hate ourselves for loving. “Besame,” we sing along, “besame muuuuuuucho.” I’m asked to dance finally—the first time in Cuba—by a nerdy boy named Leonardo who’s clearly looking to practice English (though he’s already quite proficient, having mastered lines like, “I have never in my life met a woman like you”). But my feet are clumsy and he leads me into the hallway, presumably to prevent me from embarrassing him.
Casa de la Trova closes at eleven, but then La Cueva opens: a thumping after-hours nightclub in an underground two-story cave the size of a Walmart, complete with massive stalagmites and stalactites, water running down the walls, disco spotlights, and an animated DJ spurring an already-frenzied crowd from a cage above the dance floor. We climb the steep hill to the entrance of the grotto and enter to see the mob of bodies—hundreds of Cubans—bouncing up and down on the dance floor to the Black Eyed Peas. As we join in, Erin shouts in my ear, “We’ve still got it!”
Walking down the street the next morning, our final day in Trinidad, we pass two men who whistle, kiss the air, call after us: linda, linda.
“When I get back to Canada,” Erin says, “I’m telling Drew, ‘You don’t have to say I’m beautiful, but when I get up from the couch to walk to the kitchen I’ll need you to make kissing noises, because I’ve been getting that all week and I’m used to it now.’”
“I know,” I say. “I’ll miss this when I’m back in San Francisco, where all the men look at other men.”
“Tell me about it. In Canada they just look at livestock.”
I talk about Dan too much. Dan says we should only eat at private paladares. Dan says to make sure we catch this show. Dan says there’s a woman in town who gives private salsa lessons in her house. When I return I will tell him I love him too, and Erin will say, “I knew in Cuba you loved him—nice of you to finally let him know.”
Tomorrow we will leave Trinidad for Cienfuegos again, and then Havana, before heading back to the States. But today we follow Dan’s advice and take salsa lessons in a cramped living room from a spirited older woman named Mireya. When we finish, it’s late afternoon and we’re hungry. Normally we’d check the guidebook for recommendations for a paladar—an in-home restaurant many Cubans run as a way to improve their “situati
on”—but today I decide we should wander. I want to escape the well-worn cobblestones and find a secret spot, a memorable meal, a languid afternoon. Erin is dubious; I’m not known for my sense of direction.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asks.
“Not really. But I think there are restaurants over here.”
“O.K.,” she says. “I just want to know that you know where you’re going.”
“I don’t.”
But then we turn a corner and hear live music—a traditional son band. We peek behind a lime green wall into a long cobblestone courtyard filled with dark wood tables and benches, wind chimes, potted palms, and people kicked back under umbrellas drinking, listening, and exhibiting an air of contentment. There is no kitchen and therefore no food, but we don’t care—we’ll fill up on beer. We claim a table and watch a wiry old man dancing in the space in front of the band. He wears a worn straw cowboy hat and plays the güiro—a hollowed-out gourd instrument—and a cigar the size of a small thermos dangles from his mouth. He looks eighty, dark and wizened, with bushy silver eyebrows and a constant grin. There’s something inexplicably beautiful in his face. He’s mesmerizing, and I can’t stop photographing him—but I can tell he isn’t one of the “professionally photogenic” old Cubans who troll for tourists with cameras, offering to pose for a fee.
When the song ends, I turn back to Erin. “I love that old man.” And as if answering the call, within seconds he’s at our table inviting me to dance. “Go!” Erin urges. I’m feeling only slightly more confident after the private lessons, but I obey. As he swings me, Erin takes photos. When it’s her turn to dance I take video. Other tourists take pictures of us all, and I can’t help but feel we’re in the company of a star.
I buy José Luis a beer, and only then does he tell me today is his sixty-sixth birthday. I wonder over his life that has made him look fifteen years older than his age (especially when Cubans are known for looking younger than their years), his life that has made him so grateful for the cigar a friend bought him for his birthday, and for the cans of Cristal we share with him. For an hour, maybe two, he sits with us. Somehow we speak only Spanish (astonished by how useful See It and Say It in Spanish has become), and when Erin mentions she wants to learn to play the güiro, José Luis disappears and returns holding a second one to teach her. After Erin masters the instrument, he asks me where we’re heading tomorrow.
“Cienfuegos,” I say, “on our way to Havana.”
José Luis immediately takes my hand and begins crooning to me, a song by Beny Moré. “Cienfuegos es la ciudad que más me gusta a mí,” he sings slowly, carefully enunciating every word. Canto, canta, cantamos, I remember. I learn and sing and clap while the band keeps playing and José Luis keeps pulling us to the dance floor. He is vibrant, joyful, smart and funny, wrinkled around the eyes and missing a tooth or two. He looks older than sixty-six, but he’s undeniably younger than his years—and at last, at last, so are we.
Lavinia Spalding is the editor of Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing annual compilations. She is author of Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler and With a Measure of Grace, the Story and Recipes of a Small Town Restaurant, and she introduced the reissued e-book edition of Edith Wharton’s classic travelogue, A Motor-Flight Through France. Her work has appeared in many print and online publications, including Sunset, Yoga Journal, Tin House, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, and The Guardian UK. She lives in San Francisco, where she’s a resident of the Writers’ Grotto and co-founder of the award-winning monthly travel reading series Weekday Wanderlust. Visit her at www.laviniaspalding.com
KEN MATUSOW
Biko
One man, many memories.
Steve Biko was my teacher and my guide. He led me, hand in hand, on a grand tour of political illumination that started in the ghetto of Maseru and ended in the white suburb of Westdene. For four months he was my companion, a quiet, incorporeal spirit subtly pushing me from one encounter to another, each one seemingly independent from the others. Yet when fused together they created an indelible impression of the realities of South Africa circa 1980, and a wake-up call that stays with me to this day.
At the time of the South African winter of 1980, Steve Biko had already been dead two and a half years. I, on the other hand, was very much alive and about to begin the second year of a “three-month” visit to Africa. I had settled into a comfortable life in the suburbs of Johannesburg. At that time Fourways was a quiet rural community of eclectic estates, folksy cabins, and hardscrabble farmland that was supported by a few small general stores. We, four friends and I, had rented a newly built four-bedroom home on three and a half acres of land, with a swimming pool complete with a waterfall in the deep end and a family of black servants. With its round rooms and ultramodern design we affectionately christened our home the “Mushroom House.” We each contributed $60 toward the rent, a monthly sum that included both utilities and servants. The servants, Maggie and Arthur, were physically and legally connected to the house. They lived in a shack in the backyard with their two children. The builders of the house had thoughtfully placed the shack behind a large boulder to avoid spoiling the view from the swimming pool.
South Africa in 1980 was a country of extraordinary ease and wealth for the obedient white population, and a country of extreme cruelty and oppression for people of color and their white collaborators. It was a schizophrenic land where even mundane daily events could be viewed within a variety of contexts. Most white South Africans, and most visitors, were forced to live within a saccharine domain controlled by the government. It was illegal for a white person to have a nonwhite guest to his or her home, to visit an official “black” area, to read certain books, to use a “NonWhite” toilet, to use the “Black” entrance to a store. It was practically impossible for a white South African to have a nonwhite friend, as it was illegal for black Africans to legally be in the country of South Africa without “papers.” The government was based on the principle that any interaction between the races was proscribed. To most white people, black South Africans, even though technically there weren’t any black South Africans, were simply servants.
South Africa was a race-based society where Indians and Pakistanis were legally categorized as Asian, while Japanese and Chinese were considered White. Oddly—and interestingly—black Americans were ordained as White. I knew a black American Peace Corps volunteer who had a devil of a time coping. He was once arrested for using a “White” toilet even though it was illegal for him, as an official white person, to use a “Black” toilet. When I, American and non-European, once encountered a “Europeans Only” toilet I threw up my hands in frustration and pissed in the woods.
The South Africans had a name for this unnatural and deranged state of affairs: apartheid.
One Sunday afternoon, while sitting around the pool enjoying a braai, a traditional South African barbeque, I began reading a book written by a friend of one of my roommates. The book was titled Biko. Although Biko was written as a biography of the South African Black Consciousness leader Steven Biko, the book is usually thought of as a powerful human rights polemic. It was banned in apartheid South Africa as was its author, Donald Woods. The banning of the book meant that mere possession of it was a criminal offense. The banning of Donald Woods meant that he was stripped of his editorship of the newspaper, the East London Daily Dispatch. It was illegal for him to write, travel, or be alone with more than one person at a time, including family members, for the duration of his five-year ban. After his six-year-old daughter was severely burned by an acid drenched t-shirt, an act he attributed to the South African government, Woods fled to England to continue his anti-apartheid campaign.
My South African education started at the Mushroom House pool lazing under a semitropical sun, smelling the grilling boerewors, drinking in the good life. As I opened the book, Biko smiled and said, “Let me show you South Africa.”
&n
bsp; Maseru was a Wild West kind of town. Providing a bit of civilization, it was the entrepôt and capital of the country of Lesotho. Just outside of town there were cowboys riding horses, general stores selling tins of tobacco, and occasionally snow-covered mountains. Lesotho was an enigmatic hundred-mile diameter circle of black Africa embedded in the middle of white South Africa. Completely surrounded by its larger, incalculably wealthier neighbor, it was an independent country, a member of the British Commonwealth and the United Nations. Lesotho was also a haven for those South Africans needing to flee the omnipresent specter of the South African government. Apartheid did not exist in Lesotho.
Not long after reading Biko I hitchhiked from King William’s Town, close to the birthplaces of Donald Woods, Nelson Mandela, and Steve Biko, to Maseru, 200 miles distant. My hitchhiking host was an amicable Afrikaner who spent four hours cheerfully discussing his political hero, a “German chap” named Adolf Hitler. Not wanting to embarrass him I neglected to mention my Jewish heritage. Going forty-five minutes out of his way, he good-naturedly took me across the international border and deposited me in downtown Maseru and offered to buy me lunch. I declined.
With backpack and camera bag I began to walk the streets of the capital city. Although Maseru was poor and somewhat decrepit, it was a joy to walk its streets. Its people had a carefree air. Men walked hand-in-hand, as did women, but never a man with a woman. The people wore smiles and constantly stopped to offer greetings or idle chatter to other passersby. Within five minutes of beginning my stroll I was interrupted, or rather surrounded, by a pair of young Africans.
“Hey, you American?”
“Yeah.”
“Welcome to Lesotho. Welcome to freedom. Can we buy you a coffee?”
I nodded and we headed off to a nearby café. The two were political refugees from South Africa. Wanted by the South African secret police, the hated Bureau of State Security, also known as BOSS, the two had fled the country to the relative security of Lesotho. After I explained that I had just finished reading Biko, they exploded in a touching display of excitement while pulling out their own copies of his biography.
