Nearly lost it! and the ridiculous story of internet in Cuba

I spent a few tense days last week, when it appeared that this blog had disappeared into cyberspace.  I couldn’t find my website and I couldn’t get into the website of any of my host or domain suppliers to update information.  In the end in desperation on Friday night I went to a friend’s house where they have satelite and managed to get onto my site only to see that there was nothing there but a page saying that if you want to buy this domain name go to this link. What!  They’ve disolved me and are selling my name to any Tom Dick or Harry.

All that time I spent writing and although I had some copies and could ask faithful readers to email me back the ones I couldn’t find, the task of collating and getting everything back, especially here in Cuba, where being online is about the most expensive and difficult thing you can do, seemed an insurmountable and desperate task.

The film school is being asked to pay a monthly fee of 11,000 cuc ($) for their internet serivce which is much better than the dial up in my house but a long way off what you folk in the rest of the world are used to.  This is a ridiculous amount to pay and we are still struggling to negotiate something more palatable.  In the meantime we are at the mercy of whatever speed they seem to feel like giving us on whatever said day.

This is the reality of Cuba and although I do not like to criticise when I write about Cuba, I really feel that this futile refusal of a basic human right has to stop and I hope one day before we are off this island.  Meanwhile my children are not allowed to go online, I cannot download them kindle books from their grandparents or music for me and I live with the stress of a clock ticking on my online life.  Hence that this blog and facebook are about as much as I can manage.  And the rumours are that the broad band cable is already working ………… so why so afraid to give the people what they want?

If you ask any young person in Cuba what they would like to change here, the first comment is always undoubtedly THE INTERNET, in fact the almost shout it in unison, as if, what a daft question!  Those of you who have been reading me for a while will remember my fear before I came.  Imagine a world where there is little connectivity,no wifi, no connected iphones or ipads.  I began to dream of an ADSL connection but that requires a letter from the Minister of Culture which could take months and will leave us with a monthly bill of $600 which I would feel slightly guilty about.  That’s a flight for god sake!

Here in Cuba the lines of the Stereo MCs (old favourite of mine) often ring in my head.

Gonna get myself connected
I ain’t gonna go blind
For the light which is reflected
I see through you, I see through you
I see through you, I see through you
……………….

If you make sure you’re connected,
The writing’s on the wall
But if your mind’s neglected,
Stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall

Anyway I tucked into the wine in my moment of grief, and had great fun at the first British Embassy pub quiz trying to forget about it, and then woke up the next day feeling even more tragic.  And remembering how my new Pub Quiz friend Kester had told me that he read my blog and thought it was really funny.  Alas no more I thought and I think I am about to lose my sense of humour big time.

The next day a lunch with friends in a beautiful restaurant with botantical gardens, I kept my misery to myself.  By Sunday morning before Nico’s Birthday party I decided to make an international phonecall to see where my blog was and my 2 and a half years of writing ……….

Needless to say I got it back but still a mystery as to what happened, as everybody I spoke to claimed to have not messed with it.  Was I hacked by some malignant force?  I had received a couple of nasty comments lately from some old stalking acquaintance who is somewhat short of a few marbles but with many technical skills.  But maybe that was coincidental?   Not much time to write today so I am celebrating by managing to post some photos although for some reason I don’t seem to be able to chose which ones so here is a very random selection of my nippers ………….

Saskia and Nico big cheek to big cheek

 

My boys with their Cuban hats in Viñales

One year in Cuba …. the best telenovela!

I missed my one year anniversary here in Cuba.  It was August 14th when we arrived last year so I am summing things up a little late, partly due to not having much time to get on line; and also we were all in a temporary dip in our enthusiasm for our life here.  The telenovela had become a little bit too gritty and I was too hot and bothered!

Now we are back up, and I am enjoying my Cuban life again just as I did when I first arrived.  I am still not tired of meeting film makers and teachers and dancing with the students at the film school or getting dressed up and going to diplomatic parties in beautiful venues, palaces and hotels in Havana.  I am still meeting interesting people from all over the world and making good friends and I still have so many things to write about and to do that I am always busy.

Rafa gave me an official role at the film school which I was already doing.  I just wanted the acknowledgement and a card saying ….  International Public Relations, which means I get to talk to anybody and everybody about how great the film school is.  Not a difficult task.  But I too have other little projects like trying to get more African students, not easy but we are making progress and collecting contacts.  I also enjoy meeting and entertaining the visiting teachers who are a very important part of what makes the school unique.  We have around 40 teachers who come every month from everywhere ……. Spain, UK, France, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, US, to name a few …….. over a year that adds up!

After a year of good and bad domestic experiences, I now have my lovely Mayda running the house and the parties and the shopping and the maintenance and the children. She does it so well that there are days when I feel as though I am living in a hotel.  If there is one thing I would like to do for her in the time I am here, it is to reunite her in some way with her daughter and only child who left with her husband on a boat 4 years ago.  A classic Cuban story, Mayda is too young to be allowed to visit her in the States and her daughter was recently denied her entry back into Cuba to visit.  Her son-in-law was given permission to come back but not her daughter and they both shed many tears of disappointment.

Mayda to me represents the good side of Cuba.  She works hard, always has a smile and a kind word and is loyal, funny and noble.  Some days I have to force her to sit down and eat a proper lunch as she never thinks about herself, just how she can make my family’s life better.  She is the one who has consoled me when times have been tough, and my decision to promote her and recognise her work, I hope will help in some financial way, to reunite her with her daughter.

The boys are happy in school and reading and speaking French which makes me so proud.  They now have Cuban accents when speaking Spanish and supported every Cuban athlete in the Olympics.  In fact during the Olympics it was fun to see how they supported UK, Cuba, France, Guatemala (got their first medal!!) and of course Jamaica (on the grounds that it used to be British and was in the Caribbean and they had Bolt!).

And how do I feel about Cuba?  Life is never boring and I have learnt a lot about humanity and life and love already.  I know I will always defend the Cuban people for their fun and their intelligence and their ability to resolve their lives no matter what the world or the state throw at them.  You have to admire their resilience.  I hope that all the good things that they represent can shine through all the corruption and unfairness that can make life bitter sweet.  I also hope that the Bling Blings don’t take over and turn the country back to what it was becoming in ’59 except this time with Reggaeton and Dolce and Gabana fakes.  Please Cubans learn how to do business without selling your daughters and your soul and keep your own quintessential style, don’t copy from the mainland.

Now I am planning my trip back to the UK with my Saskia to see her Grandma (not Granma!) and family and godmothers and good old friends who have patiently kept in touch with me and my life over all these years.  For those who don’t get the joke see link.  Granma was the name of the yacht that transported Fidel and Che and the others to Cuba in 1956 and has since become the name of a province and a newspaper.  The boat itself was restored and can now be seen outside the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.  I find it a little ironic that such an icon of the Revolution is a misspelled American word because we spell it correctly in England with a d!

 

 

 

Mexicans, Scorpions and decapitations

I flew off to Guadalajara film festival for the third time last week.  Leaving my Saskia for the first time with her brothers and her adopted Cuban family.  Two nannies and Rafa’s driver, Mario.  In fact they all had a pretty good time.  70 photos from their jaunt around Habana Vieja.  They went to the park of inflatables, the museum of classic cars, pizza for lunch, Paulo and Nico carried by the men on stilts through the streets, donkey rides in the park…….and more.

When I managed to get a call through on Friday evening from Mexico, Paulo told me calmly that he had been stung by a scorpion at school and was taken to the hospital to have an injection.  Why do these things always happen when you are away?  He was fine and quite proud of how brave he had been.  All told, it had been little Nico who was the most upset for his big brother.  Bless my little emotional one!

We arrived in Guadalajara late on Thursday night as we had missed our connection in Mexico City.  We couldn’t find any of our friends to play with, as they were all staying in different hotels and they thought we were staying in their hotel.  We found out later that there was a welcome committee in the bar of the Hilton Hotel waiting for us until 3am!

Anyway, not realizing there was a party a few metres from where we were standing, we went off to a party for the press in a cool bar, but full of such young people that we began to feel old and the night had got off to a bad start.  We did not have our festival credentials as we had arrived so late, so Rafa who never pulls rank, reluctantly used his name to get us into the party, however the initial reaction of the revoltingly obese head of press for the festival (his stomach moved independently from the rest of his body) was so bad mannered that we could not get into the mood even when we had our free passes etc.

Usually in Guadalajara the Mexicans are so smiley and hospitable so we have got used to always feeling like VIPs.  But once again it was fun at the festival and we met old friends, made new friends and I managed to watch two films.  United Kingdom was the invited country and their had been a homenaje to Mike Leigh who had already been and gone, showing his latest film at the opening party.  The British Council party had passed and although I thought I was going to be bumping into my folk all over the place, it wasn’t like that at all.  I hardly even heard British music!

I was determined to make it to one film from the British contingent and noticed that at 4pm that day there was an interesting documentary on Andrew Logan that sounded just like my cup of tea, and it certainly was.  Who is Andrew Logan?

A wonderful man, in my humble opinion.  For those who are not familiar with the name, you will certainly be familiar with his style and influences. I found this quote about him on Wikipedia and it serves as a good introduction to this wonderful character.

Andrew Logan’s work blends camp pop-art and neo-romanticism to form a quintessentially English ‘eccentricity of vision’.

The documentary The British Art of Showing Off, by Jes Benstock was very well put together and served as a retrospective of the man and his art with a good dose of English humour.  Synopsis from the catalogue read:

British Artist and living legend Andrew Logan, loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, takes us under his glittering wing and inside his outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant: the Alternative Miss World Show.  Using live observational camera, archive and exuberant animation, this documentary charts the mounting of the 2009 Show, interwoven with its history, the rise, fall and rediscovery, of both the event and the artist at its centre.

As I sat in the over air conditioned theatre I chuckled away to myself and felt truly proud to be British watching some very famous eccentrics and admiring, once again, our ability to laugh at ourselves and not take life too seriously.

I hope I would get a chance to meet Andrew after the film but outside the cinema their was a narco battle taking place all over the city.  Two weeks before there had been 8 decapitated bodies found and the police had finally, that day, nailed one of the top guys.  Because of this, his gang was setting fire to buses all over the city (25 I think!).  They were decent enough to get all the passengers off first though, a little touch of humanity in the madness.  For that reason Andrew and Jes had not made it down to talk after the film.  I managed to get a taxi and head back to find my slightly concerned husband waiting for me in the Hilton bar.

However, I was lucky enough to meet Andrew and Jes, the director, later at the Gay party and awards held in a club close to the festival.  The Gay party was good fun and we had a handful of friends to help us along with our plastic pints of Tequila and sprite (yeah really elegant!). There were two dancers who came with their prerequisite 6 pack bodies but were on the podium, dancing badly like a couple of bored toyboy housewives and spent most of their time picking their skimpy underwear out of their bum in a very uncharming fashion.  I am sure that if Andrew had organized the entertainment it would have been much more fun.

The closing night entailed another walk on the red carpet in my new woman shoes (with a heel!) and a great Danish film called Superclassico.  We arrived back in Cuba on Sunday afternoon like true Cubanos with a suitcase full of nappies, cereal, tortillas, shoes, pesto,  ……… and the rest.

I found my 3 children utterly charming and wanted to stay up chatting with them all night about their adventures, thinking maybe it is good to have the odd little break from being a mother ………. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.  Paulo and Nico also had really good school reports from the French School waiting for us that brought proud tears to my eyes.  They are well on their way to being trilingual, the clever little things.

Next trip we are all off to Guatemala for a wedding and a step back in time, but got to organize another party, and looking forward to the French food tasting evening on the roof terrace of the Sevilla, (very posh hotel in Habana Vieja).

 

The Toaster

We have moved out of our house and our things have left in a big truck headed for Cuba but not without some interesting issues along the way.  One of which, I would like to share here as maybe it could be symbolic of my future life in Cuba!

Anyone who is British or has visited a British home or spent any time living in the UK knows the importance of the toaster and the kettle as the most humble but most valued of kitchen appliances.  We are brought up on TOAST ……… Marmite toast, beans on toast, egg on toast, honey toast, toasted sandwiches, toast can be for breakfast, supper or just whenever you feel like filling up.  Toast can be beautiful wholewheat toast with smoked salmon, toasted bagels with cream cheese, toast soldiers to dip into your boiled egg, or just plain white sliced toast soaked in melted butter ………. and they all can be equally delicious depending on your mood.

As a nation we are not so obsessed with having huge fridges, enormous gas fired barbecues and ridiculously extravagant domestic appliances that after a few days get forgotten about.  But we always have a toaster and a kettle in every kitchen.

Now that I remember there was even a hit in the eighties by that popster Paul Young when he was still singing with Streetband called Toast ……… everybody was humming it.  (I have shared the lyrics at the bottom of this post for your amusement).   So you see our affection for toast reaches quite tragic levels that others really should not mock.  Toast crosses all regional and class boundaries and in school common rooms is almost like currency, or in mine it was!

Anyway, not to put too finer point on it, the toaster is as important to a Brit as the comal is for the tortillas of Guatemala.  I don´t think anybody would make a fuss about a Guatemalan wanting to import their comal into Cuba but I suppose it doesn’t have a tiny electrical element which apparently is not allowed.  However I think I can bring my hairdryer so not quite sure about the logic.  Rules are rules I suppose.

Anyway my poor husband has learnt the importance of toast to his wife over the last few years and now we even have toast with our desayuno chapin (typical Guatemalan breakfast) that my husband always makes for us on Saturday mornings.  I now do not miss HP sauce but have chili sauce on my breakfast, something a few years ago I would have found impossible to contemplate.  So I don’t see myself as someone rigid and inflexible but TOAST is TOAST!

When we visited our future house in Cuba there was no grill and no toaster and we were reduced to microwaving Bimbo style bread until it become like a rock.  The two women in the kitchen urged me to bring a toaster and anything else similar.  So on my list of essentials was my toaster and my little oven/grill.  Anyway a few days ago we were told absolutely not to even contemplate bringing anything like that.  I have to admit I took the news badly, there are many things I am willing to give up ………. potatoes, lemons, avocados, mangos, grapes and whatever else, as usually it is liberating to discover other alternatives and expand your gastronomic horizons.  However TOAST is TOAST!

toaster, UK, England, British, Paul Young, Streetband, marmite, smoked salmon, Cuba, customs, capitalism, humble
The Offending item - my humble toaster.

Needless to say my concern about not having my, soon to be abandoned, toaster (pictured here) seems to have incited what I can only describe as thinly disguised prejudice.  Me and my humble toaster have become a symbol of extravagant capitalism rather than a simple cultural reference point.  We have been told that the Cubans have lived for 50 years without toasters and we should use our contacts in the diplomatic world to acquire our toaster in Cuba as though it is diamonds or a Rolls Royce that I am hankering after.

So once again I feel difficult and my poor husband has been fighting nobly for my right to have TOAST but now I have been made to feel like the Princess of the Toaster ……. it could be the next Harry Potter sequel.  I bet JK Rowling likes toast no matter how many millions she has made.

Toast by Streetband.

Morning all. I’d like to tell you about when I was a young boy. I must have been three or four months old at the time. I didn’t really know what I wanted, and if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anybody, ‘cos all I could do was gurgle. So I sat there in me highchair, thinking one day, looking at me tray and thinking what I’d give for a meal on there. So I started looking round to see what I could have. I was rubbing me eggy soldier in me head, trying to think, and then I looked in the corner and there’s a little breadbin with its mouth open, just staring at me, like. And then I looked in and I saw bread.

I thought, oh yeah, I’ll have toast,
A little piece of toast.

Well, then I started getting older,
I hated this, I hated that,
Expensive state was ludicrous
And cafes couldn’t cater for the finer things in life:
The upper crust was not for me,
I could tell that.
So I’d go back home,
Switch the kitchen light on,
Put the grill on,
Slip a slice under

And have toast,
A little piece of toast.

‘Cos there’s so much to choose from.
There’s brown bread, white bread,
All sorts of wholemeal bread;
It comes in funny packages
With writing on the side,
But it doesn’t matter which one you have
‘Cos when you cut the crusts off,
Have it with marmalade
Or butter, cheese, tomatoes, beans,
Banana
Or chocolate if you’re strange,
It doesn’t really matter.

Oh no, it all goes with toast,
Just toast.

I’m gonna think about it some…

That’s toast, mmm yeah,
Just toast,
That’s toast,
Just toast.

Well I go down the supermarket
With me basket in me hand,
I’m walking from one counter to another
Trying to find the bread stall,
But I can’t find it anywhere
And then I bump into a mother
With a baby in a basket
And she says

“Oh look, you’ve started him off again,
I come down here for a little bit of peace and quiet
To get some bread to go home to make toast,
Just toast,
I like toast”
Yeah, but I don’t half like toast.

OK, scrape that toast, boys.

That’s toast,
Yeah, just toast.

[Spoken]

I can’t think about it any more. I’ve got to go and have some, it’s no good. Here listen, I’m getting a bit browned off standing here. Me too. Shall we go and have some toast? Good idea. Why not? OK. I’ve got the grill on. Got any brown bread? Yeah! Have you got wholemeal bread? Wheatmeal bread? All sorts of toast. Let’s go………

(They proceed to make toast, accompanied by various kitchen noises.)