Tag: cuba

I’m back ………

I know, I know ………. I well and truly fell off my blogging wagon.  But after a long hot summer with 3 children under 8, a certain composure has finally re-entered my house this morning (can a house be composed?  not sure).  I am alone at my computer and I have managed to get on line and there is no child screaming up the stairs for me or trying to climb on to my lap.

One thing that I was thinking the other day, as I was trying to come up with my next blog, and thinking that it better be good, because if I did have any readers I am sure they have all forgotten about me by now.  Anyway I was thinking that really I need to write posts every day as Cuba is like one great big telenovela (soap opera) and you just have to learn to roll with the good and the bad like a true Cuban.  Also Rafa’s life at the film school would be worthy of a good drama series and he doesn’t have chance to tell me the half of it.  I know I have not worked as an occupational psychologist now for some years but I feel as though I am.  Also I now manage 10 people in my house which is akin to a small business venture.

Also I had a few moments this summer when I really did not want to be in Cuba anymore which was not a good feeling as I probably have at least another 2 or 3 years to go!  So I had to shake that feeling and get back my Cuba groove.  The Olympic parties also made me feel terribly homesick for everything that I love about my country: great music, sense of humour, fighting spirit, throwing a good party.  I wanted to be there on the back of the Rolls Royce with Jessie J spinning around the Olympic Stadium …….. and no stealing Cubans.

Yes you guessed it, the main reason I have been feeling down is that the stealing has carried on, or at least the discoveries of more missing things in the house has only just stopped.  The thefts really bothered me and I had to work at being philosophical and think ….. its only money and we are all healthy and I have 3 wonderful children and a noble hard working husband who loves me.  But at one point it didn’t seem to matter how much hard cash Rafa was earning it just kept disappearing.  You need to bear in mind that Cuba is a cash culture and we are paid in cash and all our purchases are in cash.  Prior to this, I was a girl who lived on plastic, and the whole thing of stashing money and moving my hiding places was a new game that I did not do so well it appears!

We are now the proud owners of a safe with a roundy roundy twiddly knob with our secret access code like something out of another century.  I have until today been reluctant to learn how to open it which is beginning to slightly irritate Rafa.  I am not quite sure why I feel reluctant, maybe it is because I feel like an idiot that all these thefts have happened under my nose by people that I thought I could trust and I don’t want to be responsible for maybe not closing the safe properly or losing my little piece of paper with our secret code.

Rafa and I spent the summer like two amateur sleuths trying to piece together when we last saw things and who could have possibly been inside the house to have got their hands on our stuff which pretty much all disappeared from upstairs (although the cook did a good job of removing a few things from my kitchen).

It was awful because some of the people in my life who are entirely trustworthy, I had to mentally put them through the process of being under suspicion, especially as I felt that my ability to know what people were capable of in Cuba was evidently poor and I had to get with it and stop trusting people.  This is not my natural state.  You’re talking to the girl who had a baby (and then two more) with a man she hardly knew ……but trusted, and then proceeded to follow him to two quite tricky countries.

Anyway, we had to fire another couple of people and re-organise the house so that the people who I have always trusted are working for me more and have had a big pay rise.  It has taken me a lot of time to find a new nanny as the whole thing of letting another person into my house has been difficult.  Marylin started yesterday so lets see …….

Anyway this week I decided that I had to believe that the people around me are all good and our bad luck has stopped and look to the future.  And stop torturing myself with images of strangers handling and stroking my possessions and cackling to themselves at their good fortune to come across me!

Everybody is back from the summer break.  The party season is upon us once more and I have already met a handful of new friends.  We kicked off with the Brazil party in the Beach Club next to our house (Club Havana).

I still feel frustrated about my inability to get out of the house and do things for myself but I suppose every mother of 3 young children feels like that and not every mother is lucky enough to be living in such a beautiful house in front of the sea where everybody wants to come and chat whilst listening to the waves.

Also our new fairy godfather Santiago is sorting me out better internet connection so I don’t have to spend half and hour getting on line and the rest of the time worrying about the minutes ticking by on my dial up but knowing that to hop on and off line could mean another half an hour ………..  Soon I will have internet access from the film school and I can be on 24/7 and read some newspapers and maybe even download music.

I wanted to say a big thank you to all the people that have sent me and brought me presents ……. clothes, cheese, Vanish, toys, Nutella, tortillas…………   And also a big thanks to all my friends here in Cuba who have listened patiently to my tales of thieving woe.

So I will endeavour to catch you up on the events of the summer over the next few days and fill in the gaps of this log book blog book.

Our first graduation at the Film school and the emotions and all night party.

Juju’s visit.  Our wonderful nanny from Guatemala gets on her first plane to come and holiday with us for 2 weeks.

Our holiday trip to Cayo Santa Maria 5 hours drive away.

This week we have another party in the Mexican embassy (looking forward to the food!), and a party to welcome the new Guatemalan ambassador, and then we are throwing our first party of the season in our house with all the new people who have arrived at the film school ……….. but I shall be writing again I hope!

1950’s wife in Havana

1950s woman

I don’t know what it is about my life right now but I feel like a 1950’s wife.  Is it Cuba or is it being the wife of the director of the film school or a bit of both?

It is true that life in Cuba in many ways has stood still since 1959.  The most obvious icon is of course, the 1950’s car.  There is something Madmen-esque about this world, even down to the Lucky Strikes, a world where men are men, like Don Draper.  Ice cream parlours, art deco hotel bars, trilby hats, cigars, sling back shoes, hourglass figures, no traffic, slow traffic………. And the music.

When my friend asked for some more modern music at a party the other day the DJ responded with the line.  In Cuba we are about memoria.  I disagree; I think Cubans should be shouting from their crumbling rooftops that CUBA IS THE FUTURE and the future’s so bright you gotta wear shades.  Otherwise Cuba will sell its soul to the capitalist devil along with Che memorabilia and black market cigars.  And Cuba I really do hope you find your modern soul and get yourselves a future, I do, I do, I do …..

Another favourite expression I heard before I arrived was that your heels get higher and your dresses tighter in Cuba.  I am not sure what that says about the island but I definitely have acquired a couple of pairs of heels since arriving to get me to the many receptions to which I am invited.  And yes I have dusted down some of my more feminine outfits, which did not see the light of day on the dusty or damp streets of backpacker, American tourist town Antigua.  More opportunities to get glamorous here definitely.

Are Cuban men more chauvinist, more machista than your average Puerto Rican, Mexican or Venezuelan man?  I’m not sure.  For me machismo is rife all over the Latin world, you don’t need to come to Cuba particularly to sample this cultural phenomenon.

However there was a Cuban documentary on the TV the other day just titled Los Machos.  It appeared to be a celebration of all things male.  Lots of images of good looking guys hanging out in the streets chatting, back slapping, playing dominoes, talking baseball……. laughing.  Just generally making that whole thing of being a man in Cuba look pretty damn cool!  There were even some very cute images of Cuban Dads with small beautiful children staring up into their eyes with love and admiration for their father’s tender manliness!

Obviously it wasn’t a serious or realistic documentary as I didn’t see any images of fat men with their T-shirts rolled up to reveal their sweaty large bellies or angry men clouting their young children for crying for a toy, like I saw in the plastic toy shop on quinta the other day.  The shop was full and nobody said a word except me.  I was so shocked and angry I had to tell him…well done, you’re a really strong man ……. Muy muy macho, muy fuerte! As I was watching the tears of confusion and shame fall down the cheeks of his toddler son.

But, truth be told, in general, Cuban men are an attractive bunch and their charm and seduction generally a little more subtle and laid back then many other races I have come across in my years of living abroad and travelling.  But I am getting old, and now a mother of 3, so maybe I am no longer a typical target for any lustful lewdness anyway!

Although apparently according to some of the students at the film school I am La rubia con lo mejor swing ……… which is a very Cuban way of looking at things.  It is not just about what you’ve got but how you move it!  And unlike my husband I like to think that I am the one with the best swing who just happens to be blonde rather than the one with the best swing out of a small subsection of blondes.  Yes, yes I know I am clutching at straws but we all need to clutch at straws sometimes to lift the ego.

But I digress, why do I feel like a 1950’s wife and mother?  Is it an accumulation of many years of devoting myself to my husband and my children partly because I wanted to and partly because I didn’t have much choice if I wanted this family to stay together, and I did.  Most days I see the upside of the story.  I am lucky to have been able to be with them so much, I have always been provided for, I have had many wonderful experiences and adventures with my family, I have enjoyed the added bonus of a husband with an interesting job.  No boring corporate partners dinners for me, just film festivals and parties and interesting film-makers both old and new.  So I should be grateful for this life and happy to be with my children guiding them though their bi-lingual, bi-cultural upbringing.  And I am very proud of them when their bickering and whining has not ground me down.   The global mother of 3.

But on the other hand I have been feeling suffocated.  Suffocated with the never-ending domestic trials and tribulations of living in Cuba and it feels like I have fallen into the last century.  I have 8 people that come and work in my house (I know it is ridiculous, believe me!) and I still feel as though I never have time for anything, or any time to myself.  If it is not my children that want my time it is my employees who need me to solve their problems.  I have still, after nearly a year, failed to turn that dynamic around ……. I want them to resolve all my problems and leave me free for the fun stuff and the stuff that is purely mine.

Oh in the mists of time I did have a career, I was going places, I was meeting interesting psychologists and sociologists.  My ideas about the creative career were bouncing around and taking me into new greenfield areas of research.

I have been wistfully thinking about my last summer in London when the sun shone, I cycled everywhere, did want I wanted, had an intellectual life, a career, people wanted to talk to me or help me, or collaborate with me because of my ideas and my research not because I was the wife of somebody.

Anyway …….. I took photos of the most amazing sunset last night, we have lots of friends flying in for the film school graduation and parties, we will get to have a holiday soon for all the family, I live in a beautiful house on a beach and I have a husband I love and loves me and takes care of me  ……. and I have the best swing  … sometimes.

But rising slowly up from the ashes is that feminist that I had forgotten about, the one that got out there and grabbed every opportunity going for herself, grabbed the moment and her own money ……. and she will be back, and she already has lots of ideas up her sleeve, just got to go downstairs and sort out the drama of the temperamental 1950’s plumbing and the drains in the kitchen which have flooded, but I’ll be back with more gutsy feminist adventures soon ……. I promise 😉

 

The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover …….. in Cuba.

As I was thinking about writing this post, the Peter Greenaway film title that I stole for this post title kept playing around in my head all jumbled up and back to front.  I think Peter Greenaway has visited the film school and if not he should be invited.

I have a new cook, there was a thief about, I am a wife but I don’t have a lover, although in Cuba a lot of people do …………. anyway on on ….

The boys have broken up from school and a lot of our more wealthy friends have left for the summer to their properties in Europe along with most of the diplomats and bureaucrats.  Luckily we have enough Cuban friends and enough going on that I don’t feel too lonely and abandoned.  A little bit of breathing space ……… and now with our new air con in the living room, things are looking up!!

I escaped for a few nights to a global city alone, such things have hardly been heard of in our house!  I enjoyed walking the beautiful streets without having to keep my eyes on 3 little naughty heads, lunching in cafe terraces, visiting several galleries, finishing conversations with adults, topping up my fashionista desires ……… bliss …….. but that is another story for another time.

I returned to three happy but slightly resentful children, a husband ready to offload all his problems and trials and tribulations of being a single Dad and director of a film school ……… and yet another robbery in my house.  We let our defenses down for a moment, and of course I wasn’t here to keep my castle safe!

So there was the usual  ……why on earth did you let these people into our house?  Because I wanted to get things done well you were away. ……. conversation.

On the few occasions that I have left my husband alone since we met, he is always intent on improving the house and/or my car for me while I am away, which can often lead to conflict as I like to be heavily involved in the style of said improvements and also who they are done by.  He is then hurt, as he says he does everything to make me happy …… hmmm.

Anyway some workmen came to my house from the film school and were in my bedroom fixing the air con or pretending to fix other things and some cash walked.  Not helped by the fact that we live in a cash world in Cuba and do not have a safe.  Luckily we were approaching the end of the month and we did not have that much cash and they were decent enough to leave us some.

The film school was supposed to find us a safe but failed to do so.  I have now taken all matters into my own hands and decided that the only people who come into my house will be friends, family or people invited by me who have already had my tough character analysis test. I want to be independent from the film school in all matters of administration and maintenance of my home.  Apart from anything else they all like to have a good snoop and gossip is rife in any institution and all over the island.  ‘tonces no mas!

To this end, I now have a new housekeeper and cook who is proving to be a great investment.  Just as well as I had 9 adults and 9 children in my house over this weekend at various stages and I managed to just about feed those who were hungry.  Mercedes lives nearby, is a hardworking, organised women who is transforming my kitchen into a place of homemade cakes and shortbread cookies and cottage pie and it is only week one!

After a few weeks of struggling alone with some help from my young babysitter Claudia, I decided that I needed to get on with finding another nanny before the long summer holiday began, still slightly reluctant to use my children as guinea pigs, but it seems it is the only way.  Take them on a trial basis and see how it goes.

Still not convinced about the latest.  I am trying someone who lives very close by, 5 minutes walk away, but although she seems very sweet and a good person she also gives the impression that she has really suffered a hard life, and that life has worn down her spirit.

I want to say to her …….. hey lady lets laugh and smile and skip with the children, lets make up fun games and holiday adventures.  I am sort of hoping that we might be able to cheer her up a bit but she told me the other day somewhat despondently that Saskia has asked her why she had such a big belly!  I was at the time playing footsies with a giggling Saskia throwing her around the bed.  On the one hand I felt bad, but on the other I was marvelling at my 2 year olds communication skills and astute observational abilities.

Anyway Elena is a black lady, an afrocuban who studied Russian and spent 5 years in Kiev only to return to Cuba just as the Soviet system was getting the hell out and leaving them with the worst economic moment in post-revolution Cuban history, the infamous special period.  Suddenly nobody wanted to learn Russian or bother speaking it too much when she returned.  The Ruskies were gone and it seems that Elena has been sad ever since at her bad luck.  Although she did tell me that she loved living in the Ukraine.  Maybe she fell in love with a Ukranian who stole her heart forever.  I wanted to say to her, well your belly’s not that big and you’ve still got a great pair of legs but in these situations it is best just to keep quiet I find …………..

Anyway a few more parties to organise before the end of the film school term, the graduation party being one of them.  Juju, our beloved nanny of 7 years, who nobody has come close to replacing, is arriving from Guatemala at the end of July for a holiday and by the first week of August Rafa will be free ……… and we have to plan some Cuban adventures.

Where shall we go? Colonial Trinidad?  Maria La Gorda beach?  Cayo Coco?  Exciting, cultural Santiago, the other side of the island, is calling me, but 12 hours in a car in tropical heat with 3 kids means I fear I might have to delay that one.  But I want to dance to more Rhumba, meet a few more Cuban DJs, teach some recipes to my new cook, spend quality time with my children (woops I suppose that should have been first!), try to make my husband forget about the film school for at least a couple of weeks and entertain any pale faces Brits that make it over my Caribbean way.

 

 

Varadero Vulgarity

I had never been to an all inclusive resort and I have the feeling that this was the first and last time.  I imagined all the tourists who come to Varadero and think they know Cuba after a 2 week break in a plastic resort.  VARADERO IS NOT CUBA!!!  Do not think for a minute you know anything about Cuba if your experience is a few days in Varadero with a quick trip to Havana to go to the Floridita bar (Hemingway’s haunt and a favourite with the tourists).

I had been told that this was low season and that I would find more Cubans grabbing offers but my Barcelo hotel was 90% blue collar or student Canadians with a surprising lack of families.  Not the school holidays in Canada I suppose unless your children are in the International French school.  Generally, I like Canadians so I apologise for this satirical post and want to stress that it is more about the kind of people who go to all-inclusive resorts rather than a nation.  In Cuba it just happens to be the Canadians that pack these places out.

So, there were a lot of Canadians in my hotel, generally quite amiable ….. just fat, tattooed, red and white striped and getting drunk wielding their huge super size me thermos jugs with straws.  They told me proudly with not one iota of irony, that they purchased them online especially for all inclusive holidays and could fit 10 drinks in them!  I hid behind bushes by the pool that had the bar, like a wildlife photographer getting photos of my beasts, or a daring anthropologist approaching a difficult and unpredictable subject.  One of them spotted me and good-naturedly got together his mates for a group picture.  I happily obliged and snapped away.  $800 for a week all inclusive flights, drinks and sunshine who can blame them??

When we first arrived we headed to our room, the boys scootering ahead of me somewhat recklessly but with no one admonishing them, so I let them go.   And in fact those scooters became very useful to get around the huge smalltown-sized complex.  We had a map and we needed it!   They boys were loving it, only a little disappointed at the lack of children and only one tiny water slide.

After checking out the first pool of drunks, I grabbed the attention of one of the gardeners and asked him if there was a more appropriate pool for children.  He directed us towards the other end of the complex so we had chance to check out the various eateries, the rather exciting (for us Cuban residents!) hotel shop, the large lobby with piano, and of course the undeniably beautiful beach.  We discovered that the Cuban Michael Jackson was playing in the theatre that night.  I promised the boys that they could stay up late enough.  Thinking to myself that I really had to check out the house red to throw myself into the evening ahead.

The boys bought some ‘message in a bottles’, back packs and other assorted pieces of tourist tat. I managed to find a nice pair of Havaianas for 10 cuc then we hit the buffet to find everything to keep us all happy.  In fact, the food was good, as was the service, for the price that we paid I was not complaining.  It was more my fellow guests who were making my jaw drop.  The boys decided to start counting fat people and large thermos cups to see which would score higher.  They then wanted to start taking photos of both things so I managed to negotiate that they could just take pictures of the super size me Thermos jugs.

I was amazed watching how these people ate.  The volumes and the choices.  One man I observed doing 4 or 5 trips back to the buffet with plates piled up with food and that was before he had started on his pudding!  As the boys ran around taking photos, I started talking to some young fresh faced students from Ottawa and found them so innocent that I couldn’t help but shock them with my progressive views on the world!

We installed ourselves in the theatre for the big show and got a decent table next to the sweet innocent students and a British couple who resembled Alf Garnett and his wife.  Paulo insisted on getting his own seat away from us, right at the front, reluctantly followed by Nico.  In fact they spent half an hour sneaking back stage and reporting on the dancers they had seen in various stages of undress.  At this point I was knocking back the Spanish table wine with urgency!  Trying not to upset Alf and his wife along the way, who were trying to engage me in conversation about British politics and how David Cameron should be in the Labour party.

Finally Michael burst onto the stage with a great troupe of dancers.  Needless to say, my two were on the stage at the end of the night singing along to We are the World, getting their photo taken with Michael and trying to master the moonwalk and later asking me lots of questions about why Michael Jackson was always touching his willy.  (I couldn’t find a good answer for that one!)

We went to the lobby bar with the masses after the show where I was cornered by another Canadian claiming his British roots in Leeds.  I politely replied that Leeds was a fun city, to which he replied no its not anymore its full of Pakis!  As my jaw dropped still lower I decided it was really was time to take my children and myself off to bed, just before the wife of the bigot chipped in with the immortal line ….. we don’t mind brown people if they are suntanned just not when they are born like that.  What are you doing in Cuba then I thought to myself?  and then I remembered, they are not in Cuba they are in Varadero.

As I contently drove the straight easy road back to the city with the boys watching Harry Potter in the back of the car, I thought about the very different Cuba that I know in Havana enlightened and global ….where I meet interesting and open minded people every week, of every shade of beautiful brown, suntanned or born like that!

 

 

More school holidays and a new puppy!

This is the worst time of year for a mother at the French school.  They seem to go holiday crazy.  I have only just recovered from a 2 week break; remember our jaunt to Viñales?  And then I had to take the boys out of school when it actually was Easter so we could go to a wedding in Guatemala, and then I get back for another 2 weeks holiday.

All these holidays without Papa.  But the man has a big job to do I know, and I have a lot of help available to me but the bottom line is there are only 2 parents and parenting can only be done by the parents. Sometimes too many helpers can cloud the already tricky area of getting the discipline and love balance right.  There are some aspects of being a Mum or a parent that are the same no matter where you are in the world, or how rich or poor you are.

Right now I have two boys who no matter what I ask them their response is …Who cares? or just plain brazen NO.  I am feeling worn down, useless, ineffective, negotiation skills failing ridiculously.

On top of all that I am always under pressure to think about where I am going to get my next packet of nappies.  Saskia is beginning to show signs of wanting to use her potty but still you just can’t rush these milestones, rites of passage, whatever you want to call them!  I believe in celebrating every little achievement and at the moment when she ‘achieves’ anything in the potty, the whole family jumps around as though she has just scored a goal against Germany in the world cup.  However I am not looking forward to the sleepless nights of sheet and pyjama changing and the inevitable accidents when you find yourself scraping poo off the most unimaginable places.  Maybe our recently acquired puppy will be helping out with a bit of poo cleaning??!

Yes, it is day 2 of the holiday and we have inadvertently acquired a puppy.  A very small one, called Lila.  We headed up to Habana Vieja yesterday for some adventures, just me and the boys.  Saskia is still in her nursery and has her sleep after she gets home so we headed off late morning leaving Saskia in good hands.  We had lunch in Plaza Vieja, 2 very good hamburgers for the boys and half a pint of lager, brewed on the premises for me.  I also had the mother’s pleasure of eating up their left over salad and bread.  I enjoyed chatting with some British tourists whilst the boys chased the pigeons around the square.  Then we pottered around looking at art, going to the mini model Habana Vieja museum, the Natural History Museum where we played drafts in the children’s room.  At some stage in the afternoon Paulo came to give me a hug and tell me that he and Nico had decided that they were going to be really good during these holidays.  Really I said, nervously waiting for the punchline or negotiation that never came.

The boys bought funny postcards, some Cuban chocolates and spent a few minutes looking at the rather over priced collection of tie pins in Plaza de las Armas.  As I was dragging them tired through the streets back to the car, I stopped for some flowers as I saw some beautiful lilies.  Arms full of flowers and bags of popcorn I noticed that there was a photography exhibition in the gardens of San Francisco church.  Just one last adventure I thought.  Next thing I knew we were in possession of a ridiculously small and cute little puppy, named Lila after the flowers Mummy was carrying.  It seems people come and leave their unwanted animals in this church and this one had been living in the churchyard for 2 weeks.  Apparently after two weeks they are booted back onto the streets again.  I am not sure how true this all was, but it did not make much difference, there was no refusing the boys pleading faces.  Arms full of flowers and exhausted they had an easy target and it didn’t take much before we were driving down the malecon with a new puppy.  Anyway, nothing wrong with a bit of serendipity when it comes to acquiring children and pets! 😉  Now just got to get rid of all the other unwelcome guests that have come along with street puppy ……. flees, parasites and worms ……. and Saskia just wants to kiss her all the time.  hmmm hmm.

Today a neighbour came to give the boys some extra Maths classes and then they escaped to my nannies house to ride their bikes in the park and go to the Aquarium whilst I hang out with Saskia and try to write during her siesta ………..  I will try to escape with the boys for another adventure outside Havana next week.  Have managed to line up some extra French classes too so things are panning out!

 

The EICTV graduates ……. my first three films.

My first 3 films of many ………..

I began with one of the better-known directors/writers who is now pretty famous in Spain and Europe Benito Zambrano.  We actually bumped into him on the dance floor in Guadalajara so I got to put a face to the name.

Havana Blues was the first one that caught my eye as the poster looked fun and I needed something a little lighter.  I actually ended up shedding a tear at the end of the film but not before a wonderful romp through the lives of two musicians and their families and friends and music.

Benito was actually a student at EICTV during the special period, so he knew the hardest times in Cuba and I think he portrays them really well: from the poverty and frustration of no electricity, to families torn apart by economic desires.  But even throughout the worst times, the Cubans still had pride and style.  I think these two things have always kept them going.

The actors are all exceptional and the music a great introduction to some modern Cuban sounds.  The story revolves around two main characters, musicians being seduced by Spanish producers into signing a contract which seems to include selling their Cuban souls, changing their Cuban lyrics and cancelling their first Cuban performance so they can be marketed in Spain as a new politically-repressed act.

The mulatto Ruy, considers this a betrayal to his country and his art, Tito just recognises the financial necessity and his desire to escape the trap.  Throughout all this their families are dealing with breaks ups and heartaches.  A boat full of illegal immigrants in the middle of the night leaving behind fathers and families hit me hard and just writing about it again brings tears to my eyes.  Seeing the mother pull her daughter from the arms of Ruy wading out in the sea as the boats is leaving is about as tough as it gets.  I had hard times in Guatemala when I wanted out of there so badly, but I stayed as I could never have done that to my children or my husband.  Separating families is a constant theme here in Cuba, but not just Cuba.  How many men leave poor Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico to work in minimum wage jobs in the US and never come come back to their families?

After that I moved swiftly on to Benito’s first film, his opera prima which was shot in Seville on a budget of around $750, 000.  His script was selected by the Spanish Ministry of Culture for funding.  In this film I see Benito going back to his Spanish roots.  The pace is slow but never boring, the economy of language makes the script more powerful and allows for steady but beautiful characterisations.  All the people in this film are incredibly believable and all of us have spent lonely times, especially in big anonymous cities even if it is something that is not cool to admit.  In the words of Claire Norton-Smith

Solas is a brave film that’s able to address the broader political concerns of poverty, isolation and physical decline from within the concerns of ‘the family’. It stands as a work of immense maturity and warmth and delivers its message without triteness or sentimentality: “Defeat is not the enemy’s triumph,” as Maria’s aged neighbour declares, “Admitting the defeat is”.

I enjoyed Solas and watching the two films one after the other, I appreciated Benito’s ability to make two such different films describing two very different worlds but at the same time exploring humanity regardless of new world, old world differences.  If you had watched those two films blind I doubt you would have guessed they were the same director.

Next stop …….

I met Tania Hermida at this years Havana film festival, I think I had met her previously at other festivals but never enough to get to know this bright, funny, kind film maker that even throughout the craziness of the festival and the parties, remembered me and brought me a lovely little gift when she came to my house.  Sometimes those little thoughtful things touch you most.  She also knows how to tell a good story!  Ask her about her first personal encounter with the great Garcia Marquez. ………

I loved her first feature film Que tan lejos, (literally translated how really far ….so something like It’s a long way) which I have just noticed is available to buy on Amazon (so get online and buy it now in the name of supporting great independent film making).  Her film could also have the title serendipity or madness just like this blog.  It captures beautifully those journeys you make in your life without realizing you are at some kind of crossroad.  Or maybe those journeys introduce a crossroad, who knows, just like when I travelled to Guatemala all those years ago.  If I ever write my film script, I would love Tania to direct it!

Que tan lejos is a great road movie, a chick flick up there with Thelma and Louise, and a stunning photographical tribute to Ecuador.  It tells a story of spontaneous friendships, broken hearts, dead grandmothers and the fun and unexpectedness of travel.  You can see Ecuador through the eyes of the two female protagonists one from Madrid, Esperanza who innocently loves to explore new worlds with a fresh openness that you can’t help but like and the cynically self named Ecuadorian literature student, Tristeza who is tired of the tourist cliché of picturesque South America and can’t shake her feeling that she needs to escape to something else.   Jesus is a peaceful easy-going lovable character who they meet as he is taking the ashes of his dearly departed grandmother back home.  It is a film that flies past fast and all this with a big sense of humour.  Buy it watch it and lend it to your friends and then book that flight to Ecuador.

This is just my beginning and I hope in the next few years I will get to watch many more films of the graduates.  Poco a poco

PS: This week I saw the Iranian film that won best foreign film at the Oscars.  Separation.  Powerful stuff.  Haven’t felt like that since I saw Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.

 

 

 

 

 

Cuban cinema, my first forages …….

I am so lucky to have access to a wonderful film library, reputedly one of the best in Latin America.  My husband is the director of one of the most unique film schools in the world and this has some benefits!  Luciano who heads up the library is a wise man of Latin cinema, who gives me tips and opinions along with the lovely chatty women who work there and know the films and the gossip.

My progress through the library is slow but sure.  Having 3 children and quite an active social life means that I cannot race.  I began by educating myself with some Cuban classics and it was a good way of learning a few of the important names in Cuban cinema.  I don’t have the internet power or ability to put links to all these films but you all do so ……….

Memorias de Subdesarollo directed by Tomas Gutierrez Alea is set in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident.  Sergio is a bourgeois aspiring writer who decides to stay in Cuba even though his wife and many friends have fled to Miami. Sergio reflects in his voiceovers on the changes happening in Cuba from the revolution to the missile crisis.  He feels alone in a brave new world and continues chasing beautiful women all over Havana.  The cool style of the film for me was really reminiscent of the nouvelle vague films of the 60s that I watched in Paris 20 years ago.  Jean Luc-Godard being my favourite.  The way the two main characters meet and the farcical relationship that ensues reminded me a little of A Bout de Souffle (Breathless).  But there are many things that are quintessentially Cuban and very atmospheric.  As a socially historical document it is well worth a watch.

I followed this with Lucia, a Cuban classic but without subtitles and Rafa I could not do justice to this great film.  I need to watch it again in a year or so and with a Cuban.  The images of the nuns being raped in the early part of the film, took my breath away.  Just be warned.  Its hard hitting stuff!

Solas created one of the most important works in the nascent feminist cinema of the period.  Told in three segments, set in 1895, 1932, and in the heady years just after the Revolution,Lucia is an epic of Cuban history. The three Lucias are literally, different women, each of their stories combining into a larger narrative of slow, painful progress for Cuba, less as a nation than as a society. The three Lucias each offer different visions of class; Solas deftly links concern with economic materialism to character growth and change, in the process transforming that often very bourgeois cinematic genre, the family melodrama, into a platform for social investigation.

I was lucky enough to meet one of the Lucia’s in my early days in Havana, Eslinda Nuñez.  I did not realise I was chatting with a Cuban icon on a night out at the Mexican embassy, I was just impressed by a beautiful and elegant woman, so easy to talk to and unpretentious.  I hope to meet her again soon.

De Cierta Manera (One way or Another) is the only feature film of the late great Sara Gomez.  It is set in the residential district of Miraflores built by the Revolution for the inhabitants of the shantytown on the outskirts of Havana known as Las Yaguas.  What I loved about this film was how the director mixed real documentary footage with actors and fiction.  This authentic technique was way before its time and a brilliant social document.  The film attempts to reveal the new reality that the Revolution has placed within the reach of a previously marginalized sector of the Cuban population.  The director mixes shots of the demolition of dilapidated tenements with the building of new houses and apartment blocks.

A metaphor for replacing an old socio-economic order with a new value system and the aspirations of a new society in construction.  Through the three protagonists she explores the evolution within the social environment looking at the old capitalist hangovers of individualism, false values and friendships and chauvinism.

I was chatting away with a friend, who has been living in Cuba nearly 12 years, at my sons rugby match a few weeks ago and he mentioned a film that was made famous as it was banned by Fidel in the 60s and prompted Fidel’s famous line: Within the revolution everything; against the revolution, nothing.  A strange line, and I am still trying to grasp exactly what he meant other than: stay faithful to the Revolution but that seems a bit obvious and nothing to do with the subject matter of this film.  Anyway the copy of the film that I got from the film school opened with this line.  PM is only 14 minutes long; Rafa and I watched it together and loved it.  It captures beautifully in black and white, fly on the wall photography, one night out in Havana over 50 years ago.  And well, some things just don’t change.  The music, the drunks, the food vendors, the prostitutes, the bars, the musicians, the lovers.  It was screened on Cuban TV at the time but never made it to cinema.

The makers of PM, Orlando Jiménez Leal and Sabá Cabrera Infante (brother of writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante) later went into exile and the film became, bizarrely, the most controversial and invisible film in the history of Cuban cinema.  Recently it was screened without any comment or fuss in a Cuban cinema and I am told that you can find it on YouTube in two parts.

I got another Cuban classic but thinking more of my boys who have had a poster on their wall since pretty much Paulo was born:  Vampiros en la Habana.  For anyone who doesn’t know, Cuban film posters are wonderful.  They have their own inimitable style and make great art.  A perfect present from Havana where there is not always too many nice things to buy as gifts unless you are in the know and can get away from the people hawking tired cliché Cuban rubbish and cigars.

Vampiros en Habana is an animation classic but without subtitles and a very fast storyline I was struggling and left it to my bilingual sons, who enjoyed it after feeling initially uncomfortable that it wasn’t a cartoon that resembled Disney or Pixar.  Other great Cuban films for children include Cannes prize winner Viva Cuba by our friend Cremata and the recently successful Habanastation.

After this I decided to have a break from Cuban films as I had been walking down the corridor at the film school and looking at all the posters of the graduates.  I had already seen 2 or 3 but couldn’t wait to get started on the others.  So read the next post to find out more ……..

 

Cuba blogging

I am not sure who reads my blog.  I never check the statistics, not even sure if I know how.  I don’t do all the right things to promote it to the blogging community.  I don’t read many other blogs and put my address, even less so now I am in Cuba.  In fact I am always quite amazed when I meet someone who reads my blog who I don’t know, especially if they tell me that they enjoy it!

I am also quite surprised about some friends and family who are quite evidently not interested enough to read my news either. Busy lives soaked with too much information maybe ……… But I know that most people in the rest of the world can access their emails and read them on the move …… at the bus stop or in bed or waiting in a queue.  I however have to be sitting at my desk when the children are at school, slowly dialing up for a connection that sometimes does not come!  Most of you can’t remember what that is like, so you have to at least admire my tenacity to persevere and get this blog written, when sometimes I get bounced out and lose everything and have to start all over again.

I know I do have some faithful readers since the beginning, like Selena and Bass who often make interesting comments.  I know people read me in Ghana, Dominican Republic, Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica, Scotland, Spain, Hong Kong and a few other places.  A Guatemalan living in the US translated one of my posts, the great US journalist Robert Parry published one.  So the quality of my readership not the quantity is my mission.  I want people to discover me through serendipity and an invisible network of good people.

So all you blog friends out there old and new, please tell the good people about my blog. People who are interested in someone with a different life and perspective who tries to blog with a positive tone and not just moaning and griping like many ex pat bloggers living abroad.

Somebody asked me the other day why I bother to write a blog.  It is not because I arrogantly think I am a great writer, it was others who encouraged me in this.  From my uncle Al who always admired my postcard writing, to Marina who pushed me into it and got me sorted with a man in India to do my website.  Also, it disciplines me to sit down and record my thoughts and experiences.  I realise that my life for the average girl from Co Durham in the north of England is not typical.  I want my children to have a record to read, to go along with all the photos to explain who they are and how they got there.  Not many British Guatemalan families living in Cuba …. or haven’t met any so far!

With a lack of Internet time and capacity, I want to keep in touch with friends and family and maybe just a little bit of the rest of the world.  Also, I admit I do want to educate people in the first world to step outside their own smug security and realise that there are other worlds out there and not everything in your life should be parochial.  We are all humans, whether we are in Africa, China, Lyon or Milton Keynes.  Some of us are rich and some of us are poor, some of us don’t realise we are rich and just want more.  Also I do want to bust a few myths about the countries where I live.   And although, where I sit in all this madness with my family and Rafa, his job and his history, it means that I have to show a modicum of diplomacy.  But I always try to be as honest as I can.

I had lunch with a wise and energetic British film teacher and his wife visiting the film school this week.  His wife is from Yorkshire (a county in Northern England).  He said to my husband, these northern women don’t mince their words.  They shoot from the hip!  Well maybe we do, but at least you know exactly where you are with us.

Anyway I cannot write about what is really on my mind in these last few days or the next few days for political reasons with a small p and a capital P so I have decided to take you through my unreal world of entertainment since I have arrived here in Cuba.  When I can, I will fill in the gaps of my real world …

My next 3 posts will be about Cuban TV and entertainment, Cuban films and independent films from other parts of the world available to me through the wonderful library at the film school.

 

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).

 

School holidays, Viñales ……… and not Bin Laden!

I have just survived 2 weeks of the boy’s school holidays and on top of that, an ailing little sister Saskia.  Who dictates to all of us in her sweet but firm way!  Terrible twos just round the corner.

I feel as though I deserve a medal!  I did recruit a teacher from the French school to do some extra French classes for a couple of hours on three mornings in the first week but as Saskia was at home grumpy and contrary Mary, I did not feel as though there was any let up.  I know I have a nanny and people helping me, but the bottom line is that I am their Mum and only I can do that job.  At times I don’t feel as though I am doing it very well but hey, I do my best …….  They can read this blog when they grow up and tell me where I was going wrong.

On Tuesday and Thursday I took them to the Film school for the day with their bicycles but mealtimes were fraught and public and the constant whining for sweets and icecream every time they saw me, wore me down.  I began to think that if anything they were acting as good condom adverts for the students.  Do you remember that Swedish condom advert of a child having a huge tantrum in a supermarket?

By week 2, I decided to escape with the boys and leave Saskia with the nanny and Rafa.  Not something I could do too easily in Guatemala so I decided to remember that I could be independent.  We headed west to the beautiful valley of Viñales, which I have to say lived up to my expectations.  The name is pronounced a little bit like Bin Laden and in fact would have made a good hide out for him before he was murdered.  Or maybe the real Bin Laden still hides there, chortling under his beard at the opposite end of the island to Guantanamo.

We didn’t actually do that much but this was designed to be a reccy trip.  Check out the lay of the land and find a good place to stay and a swimming pool maybe.  It took us around 2 hours to get there.  The motorway was empty and very straight until we turned off to wind our way up towards the amazing scenery that we had been promised.  For a moment we felt as though we were back in Guatemala ……… but no …. No volcanoes and no guns!  But the patchwork hillsides had some similarities.

Said to be one of Cuba’s greatest natural attractions the Viñales valley is a UNESCO site.  The lay of the land …….. It is the finest example of a karst valley (?) where mogotes (great word!), knolls with rounded tops and steep slopes contrast harmoniously with the flat surface of the valley where they stand.  It has even been described as Cuba’s Yosemite valley.  Tobacco is cultivated along with taro and bananas and the countryside is peppered with the wooden tobacco houses where the leaves are dried (I suppose).

Looking around at all this beauty a little too much, I stopped to check I had taken a correct turn and was persuaded to give a lift to a young man who was headed to Viñales.  He was a smiley chirpy chap and the boys liked the look of him so I broke my rule of only picking up women and let him escort us all the way to Viñales town.  As we approached, he of course, had a recommendation for a Casa Particular (B&B) and we agreed to check it out.

The place was an emporium of bad taste and so kitsch that in the gold lamé  room you really needed to keep your shades on.  This was of course the room that the boys wanted.  I said that we would go for lunch and think about it, not sure if I could last a whole night in that room, even if the boys thought it was the coolest thing ever.

We bought some tourist tat in the plazuela and found somewhere to eat amongst the European tourists and backpackers.  There were trips to caves, horseriding, trekking, bicycle tours, trips to the famous mural …………..  The thought of doing all this with a 6 and 7 year old was enough but Paulo had absolutely no brakes on his bike even if I had managed to get a good deal on a bicycle hire.  The thought of him spinning off down one of those steep hills with me trying to stop him …

They cycled up and down the mainstreet for a while before I decided we should go and check out the hotel with the view, 5 minutes back up the road we had come down.  Los Jasminas did have a knock out view and a fairly decent swimming pool, which was surrounded by ever so slightly too sunburnt tourists.

I started chatting to one of the guests as the boys tore around the premises putting chewing gum in each other’s hair.  Christine was part of a big possy of Danish and Cubans who all spent their time between Cuba and Copenhagen with their beautiful mulatto children and god children like a large extended family of friends.  The sun was going down and we headed back to claim the gold room as ours!

When I produced my resident card at the Casa Particular, they were not impressed at all.  In fact they told me that without my passport I could not stay there (not even in the gold room!).  Surely being a resident meant that I was more legit, I thought.  But no, they wanted my visa number and passport number.  I felt as though they were not being very helpful with their intakes of breath and clucking and headshaking, and decided to try my luck somewhere else.

As we scorched away from the gold room we bumped into hitchhiker friend who told us that he would help us find somewhere and hopped in again.  We tried two more places who told us that they did not dare have me stay as they may get a fine and they may lose their licence to be a Casa Particular.  Just as I was thinking we would have to head back to Havana chirpy chappy sorted us out with his mate down the road.

We still had to spend around 20 minutes hanging around in the street as they whole issue of my status was discussed amongst various people and phonecalls were made to immigration.  In the meantime a little mulatto boy around the same age as Paulo appeared with a very snazzy looking piece of Cars Lego.  Where on earth did he get that from I thought?  His Afro Cuban Mum was not far behind him telling me that his father was English and sitting in the house across the road.

There are only 200 resident Brits here in Cuba so this was quite a coincidence.  Within half an hour I was cleared to stay the night, had met the whole neighbourhood and was sipping a beer on the patio, whilst the boys raced around on their bicycles with half the street.  Tony (the Brit, known as Antonio) was a retired teacher from the North West originally but more recently living in Essex.  He had met his present wife whilst he was recovering from his divorce from his first wife.  Why did he choose to live in the crazy world of Cuba?  One day in Essex his next door neighbours had a birthday party in their back garden just over from where they were sitting in their garden.  There was no attempt to invite them round and Tony remembered what he liked about Cuba.  How long will he stay, he doesn’t know ……….

The main problems for tourists in Viñales are the roosters waking everyone up at the crack of dawn, so I was expecting not to have a very long night.  I woke up at my usual hour but it was so peaceful and the boys were kept quiet watching Garfield 2 on their DVD player so I managed to doze until 9am, quite a result for me.  Aaahhhh sleep, that rare commodity.

We were served up a rather tasty breakfast of omelette, toast, ham, tropical fruits, coffee and fresh guava juice before heading off back to the pool and the knockout view and possibly to chat with our new Danish friends.

The mirador (viewpoint) of the hotel had a few people plying their wares.  I managed to keep the boys happy with a couple of post-it pads and bookmarks of Viñales before heading home after lunch.

So Viñales, we will be back to either sit looking at the view from Los Jasminas or to get active on bikes, horses or feet and maybe bump into Bin Laden hiding in one of those tobacco houses.