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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 ………….

boys in viñales — My boys with their Cuban hats in Viñales

The New Regime

There are a few regime changes going on around here and I’m not talking about the capitalists. Apart from the fact that my 8 year old keeps spouting his rights to me, and told me the other day that he was a teenager child, a term he coined. I look like a teenager, I act like a teenager and I talk like a teenager, he announced.

Right now I couldn’t agree with him more, but I can’t say I am enjoying this new development. In addition to this, now all three of them sometimes gang up together against us. It is quite sweet to see their momentary solidarity against parenthood, as opposed to bickering amongst themselves, but it is certainly giving me a taste of things to come and a lot earlier than I was expecting. Last night they all trotted into the room and pulled moonies, giggling hysterically at their own irreverence. (Pulling moonies is the British past time of pulling down your pants and showing your nice white bum to anybody you wish, very childish but undeniably funny).

I have not pulled many moonies lately, but I have let myself fall into the hands of Regina and her new regime of tae bo and pilates, followed by a back massage. It is the first time in my life, and probably the last time I will be able to have my own personal trainer and just about in time. At the age of nearly 44, after giving birth to 3 children and having partied maybe a little bit too much in my youth, I decided the time had come for my first foray into formal exercise. Previously in London cycling and dancing had been enough. Since arriving on this island a few too many Madmanesque parties had welcomed us, but continued at a relentless pace so something had to be done.

You would have to drag me into a gym kicking and screaming; alien places almost as unpleasant as hospitals to me and full of machines, so this is my healthy alternative. Regina arrives at my house twice a week full of positive energy and with a big smile. An Afro-Cubana, Tae Kwan do champion with a degree, who literally does have buns of steel. So no matter what my mood I usually perk up a bit and prepare myself for some more mild torture.

My first couple of sessions were during the film festival, and I literally thought I was going to vomit. I hope I have slightly improved since then as the waves of pure nausea have passed. Anyway its much nicer doing it on my sea front patio than in a windowless gym with a lot of other sweaty people and my back problems have improved; I am no longer reaching for the Ibuprofen bottle at the end of a busy day. Still got a long way to go though ……… as I realise every Monday and Friday morning. Being able to afford this is definitely one of the perks of life in Cuba. I pay $15 for an hour of 1 to 1 exercise and a half an hour back massage. Worth every centavo!

Anyway, onto the real stuff of changing regimes. A Cuban friend invited us to a concert last Saturday night. It was Carlos Varela celebrating his 30 years in the business and the tickets were hot! Carlos Varela is probably one of the more well-known Nueva Trova singers after Silvio Rodriguez. Silvio discovered him and helped the nomo (Gnome) launch his career taking him on tour to Spain. Nowadays Varela’s music is known for its open criticism of the status quo, though it is still considered Nueva Trova, which itself began as a reaction to the unjust conditions that led to the Revolution. And it seems that he does criticise the Cuban status quo quite a lot. Personally, since I have arrived in Cuba (I can’t talk about before) I have found the Cuban people quite willing to openly criticise whatever is going on. Not the repressed people that I suppose some of the world’s media would like to represent, or at least not anymore.

Anyway, so there I was with a great seat in the Teatro Nacional watching the nomo. And he is undisputedly gnome-like : short with skin tight black jeans and little booties. But in my experience, the less pin up the artist the more likely you are to be in for better quality music, and the music, not my first choice of genre but definitely good. He had a whole bunch of famous guests joining him on stage ……from the US, from the Van Vans and Calle 13. I enjoyed most of the music, accept for the unavoidable slide into the occasional slushy romantic number, but it was fascinating to see all the Cubans hanging off his every word. One friend told me that he is wearing black until the regime changes. Which regime I thought, the US one or the Cuban? Radical stuff! Every age group was represented and there was mucho respeto for the little man. What is going to change? Was does the future hold for Cuba? What do we want?

For Christmas I treated myself to a book I have had my eye on for a year now, in English, and grossly over priced called The Mafia in Havana, A Caribbean Mob Story, by Enrique Cirules, a seasoned Cuban journalist. If not the most well written or well-translated book, it was packed with fascinating juicy facts, and it seems that this writer had had access to a lot of information and researched his topic thoroughly.

There is something always fascinating and incredulous about the world of organised crime and when it comes to Cuba I really wanted to know how bad it was. What went before must have been pretty bad to enable the Revolution to happen and remain so strong all these years. What had encouraged this huge regime change amongst the Cuban people? I wanted to be reminded.

Basically, Cuba was already well on its way to being the paradise island of vice in 1959 serving the US but remaining a sort of Cuba. It had a perfect geographical situation to receive everybody and a lot of Colombian cocaine and Jamaican marijuana too. Hotels shooting up everywhere, millionaires being created every week from corruption, everybody involved including the CIA, the US Ambassador, Frank Sinatra, George Raft, Mafia from Corsica and Sicily ………. You name them everybody wanted a piece of the action and they didn’t care how low their moral depths could sink. Sydney Pollack’s film Havana with Robert Redford does portray a little of the Havana life pre-revolution.

Right here, up the road from me in Marina Hemingway, their were plans to build a huge Vegas type complex, the Monte Carlo Hotel with Casinos, accommodation, entertainment and a beautiful marina to ship in whatever drugs or women or reprobates you wanted. Beats being in the middle of the desert! The people who love that kind of bad taste glamour, they rarely see the downside. The killings, the prostitution ruled by pimps, the drug addiction, the poverty for the masses. Cuba had gained independence from Spain and was now ruled by the US in the worst possible way. Nobody really cared about the island or it’s people but you could certainly come on a holiday and have a lot of fun.

Even plans to build a metro and keep the trams were wrecked as they wanted to sell more cheap American cars. Think about public transport here in Cuba and you should think about how many cars were flooding into Cuba, and now ironically the almedrones (name for the big old American cars that operate like makeshift buses) are the only public transport often to be found in many barrios in Havana.

A vibrant picture of the Mafia’s Carribbean empire, a shockingly glamorous and fantastically seedy world of Sinatra and the showgirls, mambo and marijuana, corrupt cops and politicians, run by shady characters like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

We invented Havana, and we can goddamn well move it somewhere else if Batista can’t control it.

Meyer Lansky quoted in the film Havana. I’m not so sure they could move it somewhere else ………. But hey who knows.

Do we want Cuba to return to those days? I suppose not! But things are changing, and changing fast. Maybe as a warning of what could go wrong again, everybody should be reading this book. Also the longer I am here I understand why the people are so protective of their little island because most people who have come here, have come just to take take take, from the Spanish colonists to the Russians using them for their political games.

My next investigation is into the Soviet era, nobody talks about it very much … I wonder why?

Film Check

Cecilia by Humberto Solas

A Cuban classic starring three great Cuban actresses Daisy Granados, Eslinda Nuñez and Raquel Revuelta. Powerful stuff portraying a pre-Independence Cuba with slaves and mulattos uprising and a lot of racial and class tension. A strange mixture of the old fashioned and the raw, dated and radically shocking at the same time. Not sure I could sit through it again. Watch out for the scene when they hack off a slave’s willy with a machete. Paulo had snuck downstairs and I almost did myself an injury diving for the control.

Miscellaneous musings … Union Jacks, Traffic, the Havana film festival.

I know that the Union Jack has a kind of iconic fashion status like the stars and stripes of the US, and the well merchandised Cuban flag along with Che, however the recent appearance of fashion items boasting the Union Jack seems to be a craze here in Cuba. I count at least 10 or 12 a day and if I head up town I see more. When I saw a man wearing a huge Union Jack T shirt and matching espadrilles, I had to go and ask him, what is this obsession in Cuba with the British flag? He said that he just liked it … the colours and the style. His wife was laughing, saying he wants to be English but without any great conviction. I am not sure what is going on but I am sure it is not a sudden and bizarre affection for my country, maybe random knock-off Olympic and Jubilee merchandise is pouring in and the Cubans with their love for bright bold colours and labels are snapping them up. The following day I bumped into a whole family decked out in Union Jack attire, all with matching espadrilles and T-shirts, father, mother and son in pushchair. I wish I’d had my camera with me!

One of the first things you notice about Cuba is the lack of traffic, but it seems that for various reasons to do with importation and good old-fashioned supply and demand, cars are now pouring into Cuba. I am not sure who is importing them and re-selling them but things are changing fast. These last few weeks I have actually been a little irritated by the traffic, which has never happened to me here. Even when people are driving as though they are the only person on the road, you always have plenty of space to get round them, as they usually are the only other car on the road. Now, they are still driving as though they are the only cars on the road, but they are NOT.

Like all transitions, I fear that there will be a rise in accidents, as people are now buying new cars, that can go faster, but they have not learnt the etiquette and safety measures of how to drive in a busier, faster world. In fact yesterday I saw 2 bad accidents on the Malecon, one of them including a bicycle. It made me reassess where I was going to go cycling on my new shiny bike bought at Marina Hemingway the other day. The lack of road markings, pot holes in the road and a general inability to drive in lots of traffic are not helping the situation. After 8 years of driving in Guatemala I am ready for anything and at least nobody is going to pull a gun on me. Or at least not yet!

What I want to know is who are all these people buying cars and where did they get their money? Cars are changing hands at inflated prices. Are they all bureaucrats cashing in on preferential deals while they still can? Are they ordinary people with money wired from Miami or Canada or wherever? I don’t know, but in the last couple of months the cars seem to have doubled on the roads and it does not appear that these cars are being driven by the most polite of Cubans. I was commenting the other day that at least Cubans have to pass their driving tests, unlike in Guatemala where corruption is the usual way to acquire your driving licence. I wouldn’t be so sure of that commented a wise Cuban friend with a knowing smile ……..

After having the UNESCO visit, hosting Cilect (meeting of international film school directors) and various Hollywood types turning up sniffing around Cuba and the film school we went straight into The Havana film festival which is now coming to an end and I shall be writing about it all soon …. as usual I never get to see any films as I have so many receptions and parties to attend with Rafa and juggling the family and all this has not been easy. The children missed a day of school, Paulo got into trouble for forgetting to do his homework, I missed a parents meeting. Never mind, only one week of school left and the Festival finishes tomorrow …..phew. And Paulo came home with a school report that rocked as did Nico a couple of weeks earlier so all is well in their little trilingual world!

Tonight I am off to meet some British directors who made a road movie in Cuba. I have not seen the film so I am hoping that they give me a copy and I can at least say I have managed to see one film!

Danay, Wichy and the new Cuban generation …

I have not had as much opportunity as I would have liked to dip into the underground music scene in Havana but sometimes I find, the good people in life, just come your way …. I am realising that I have been lucky to have already met some major players and maybe 2013 will be my year of going underground.

Sometimes life as the wife of the director of the film school is all-consuming and added to that, three children under 8, who speak 3 languages. They speak Spanish and French better than me so I have to make a stand and make sure their strangely accented English is kept up to date. Needless to say I am kept very busy, and have to remind myself of a few little goals that I have of my own.

So far my experience with the new generation here in Cuba is a good one. Not everything in Cuba is easy but when you meet these people you feel that the future is bright. They are smart, educated, articulate, friendly, open and more than anything unpretentious (the thing I love the most about Cubans). And although I am nearly old enough to be their mother, they don’t make me feel like that, and if I was their mother I would be quite proud of them. Incidently, Danay and Wichy I think both live with their mothers!

I first discovered Danay Suarez last year, not long after we arrived, in a documentary on Cuban TV and was immediately smitten. Her music, her look, her voice and her attitude. I thought this girl is definitely well on her way and THIS is the kind of Cuban music I want to hear more. I had already been lucky enough to hear the incredibly talented keyboard player Roberto Fonseca at a concert at the film school and was not so surprised to hear that Roberto was one of Danay’s mentors, friends and accomplices. On top of everything Danay just has one of those voices that you would recognise anywhere and already I do. She is definitely not just another hip hop artist.

Bumping into Gilles Peterson at the Biennial was another stroke of good fortune and I got to see both Danay and Wichy at the Cultura Habana party. Check out Danay’s video of her track Yo Aprendi. and her interview on Havana Cultura.

“I never said I was a rapper,” Danay points out. “I can rap and sing, but my real desire is to be a jazz singer, to develop that style. I haven’t done it because I don’t have the musical skills, but I’ll get there some day. I’ve got it inside of me.”

The next time I got to see Danay was at an intimate concert in Casa de Las Americas in Vedado thanks to Darsi Fernandez of SGAE who invited us. She is certainly more than getting there in her musical ability. The mixture of her petite frame, pretty dress and undeniable raw talent and soul, it was hard not to compare Danay with the great late Amy Winehouse. But a little bit of me thinks that Amy must have known or heard Danay, rather than the other way round. There was a lot of Cuba in Amy Winehouse. I’m not sure if she visited Cuba, but if she had she would have fitted in just fine, and just maybe, just maybe, the Cuban way of life could have saved her life …….. who knows.

I met a young Cuban photographer Alejandro at the film school a few months back. I liked his work so much that I asked if I could buy one of his photos. Since then we have kept in touch sharing ideas and gossip. Through a contact of mine, Alejandro is now working a lot for Cuba Absolutely (a good English language online magazine) filming and putting together some great interviews for them. One sunny afternoon Alejandro called me and said he was in my neighborhood doing an interview and he could pass by to say hi.

We ended up having a late lunch and coffee and talking until he had to leave. It was only then that I discovered he was on his way to Santa Fe to interview Danay. Santa Fe is a little town on the beach just outside Havana close to my house. I asked if I could tag along. And this was how I found myself sitting on Danay’s bed looking at all her press clippings and chatting about her career. Alejandro spent a couple of hours interviewing Danay in her mother’s little apartment and I was absolutely charmed. As we all got into my car to drive back into town after the interview, my only comment was …. que linda persona. What a lovely person! Later that night I was hosting a party in the house and there was a call for me. It was Danay to apologise for not making the cup of tea she had promised me in her house. Don’t worry I said I hope we will have plenty of time to share a cup of tea in the future.

Wichy de Vedado has an equally friendly reputation. The amount of people in Havana who have told me that Wichy is their friend. I was beginning to think this guy is the most popular man in town! Check out the music and the comments in the Havana Cultura page ……

Wichy de Vedado is a really nice guy. Yes, you expect him to be dangerous or obsessive or at least to have a giant ego, but he isn’t and he doesn’t. Wichy is friendly and open-minded and, yes, he’s modest when it comes to his mixing skills and to the success he has achieved because of them.   Do you see why such information should never be shared? If people knew what Wichy was like they would no longer be content to admire him from a polite distance. They would rush into the DJ booth and attempt to shake his record-spinning hand. Instead of dancing and looking aloof they’d slap him on his back and tell him how much they enjoy his music. And his reputation as one of the sub-zero-cool pillars of Havana’s underground electronic music scene would be damaged beyond repair. And his records might skip.

As I am not very cool. I am the person that ~~jumps~~ dances behind the decks to shake his hand, or at least give him my opinion on his good music and how much I have to share with him. And the thing is about Wichy, I think he actually does want to listen to this seasoned British raver and share a bit of my music. Or maybe he’s just too damn polite 😉

Anyway, we are having a big party in our house on Friday. It’s been a while. The graduation party of the students was the last one in June. So with this party I am hoping to bring together a few new and old friends from the film school, the visiting teachers, my friends in international press, Habana friends and a few musical talents. Rafa has promised me that he is trying to get hold of a new 17 year old Cuban singer called Annie to see if she will sing in our back garden. So lets see. I promise I will report back. In the meantime check out Danay and Wichy with your super fast internet connections …. they’re worth it.

I just called Danay to see if she was coming and she told me she will be in Brixton. So anybody reading this in London. Get your spontaneous selves down to Brixton on Saturday night and think of me when you are dancing!

Myths and Reality ….. in Cuba

I had an adventure last week. I escaped from my domestic life as a mother and wife of the director of the film school and became a student again. And reading over my last few posts. I think I really needed it!!

I had for some time wanted to do a scriptwriting workshop at the film school but had not found the time or the confidence. I was very nervous about it. Rafa was away in Margarita when the workshop began, so I had only my usual chutzpa to rely on. On the Sunday night before, the children all finally in bed, I looked for a little notebook and pen. Am I really going to do this? I thought. Was I being audacious to try to do this course with the boys on holiday? Will the other students accept me? Will they think what the hell is the wife of the director doing here and henceforth to complain? And maybe they would have been in their rights to do that. Abusing my role as I am. Aprovechando, as we say in español. No matter what, I thought this was meant to be, for whatever reason. And there speaks the great believer in serendipity that you know me to be! Anyway, like my own hero, my call to adventure was too strong to refuse.

The morning came and I managed to drop Saskia off at her circulo. Left the boys hanging out with Rey the custodio until their private teacher arrived and headed off down the straight road to San Antonio.

I made it to the school on time and found the head of the script department who showed me to the room. Will I still have anything interesting or intellectual to add after so many years of childcare and food foraging … what could I bring to the table?

I was lucky enough that, for my first adventure into academic life at the film school, I had Ruth Goldberg as my teacher. A New Yorker whose serenity hides a cutting and mischievous intellect and who gently encouraged all of us to slowly open up and share our thoughts and opinions. Also, I think I was supposed to meet Ruth, she was the perfect mentor for my week stepping out of my ordinary life.

We talked about the structure of the Myth, of Joseph Campbell and the Hero with a thousand faces, adventures beyond the ordinary. What is the myth we are living and what does it mean to us as people and writers?

We talked about our favourite films and why they appealed to us. How our hero can be a country or a city. What turns a myth into a tragedy? How we all have our inner journeys and outer jouneys. Where Freud and Jung came into it all. And it all made wonderful perfect sense to me.

By day two I began to think I was a myth junky. I began to see myths everywhere! Cuba is a myth, the revolution is a myth. The myth of Cuba has already put me through a few tests and I still love it.

What about my relationships? The myth of love at first sight. Did I cheat the course of tragedy? And what of my journeys? What will become of my journey away from my homeland? Will I ever return? Or have I gone too far? (Back to the Unbearable Lightness of Being again). What does the rest of my life have in store for me? I know I always wanted to step out of the ordinary world and that I found it hard to refuse adventures but will there come a time that I need to find my road back so I can resurrect myself as a new person in my old world? huh

Then how does all this relate to me as a writer? How can I create my stories and my characters? How can I bring things to life as a writer? What kind of writer do I want to be? I know I love telling stories and maybe sometimes making people laugh or think or perhaps feel a little bit uncomfortable. Yes I like to take people on a journey out of the ordinary.

On Saturday night Wichy, my favourite Cuban DJ played at the film school, it was a perfect end to a wonderful week, as I remembered the journeys DJs have taken me on and wished writing was as easy as dancing.

And as I sit here now looking out at the sea all clear and calm after the storm the children back at school and the house empty I am trying to organize all the stories I have running through my head.

Thank you EICTV, all the script students of the second year for accepting me so graciously, and most of all to Ruth for inspiring me and helping me to remember all the things I knew and all the things I want to know.

Film Check

All the films I got to watch last week ….

Winter’s Bone

El Espiritu de la Colmena

5 Obstructions

Guantanamera

The Exorcist

Pilot of Breaking Bad (TV series)

New Brits ….. rabbits, quails eggs and aubergine gratin

Last night we were invited to a party at the beautiful Vedado residence of the new British Ambassador.

It was my first official invitation to an embassy actually in my name ….. The party was essentially an excuse to meet the new ambassador and his family, who I had already met briefly outside the French school gates and at the reception of the Guatemalan embassy a few weeks before.

Tim Cole and his family appear to be exceptionally down to earth and normal, and the party was fun, the excuse being an Olympic handover to the Brazilians. So a bunch of miscellaneous Brits and Brazilians were hanging out in the gardens with a smattering of Cuban Olympic stars. I already knew most of the Brits but met a very nice teacher from Wolverhampton and the head of Virgin holidays who lives in Varadero (all inclusive beach holiday central). There was a very large Cuban wrestler with an impressive neck measurement, a female Asturian bag pipe player (I was informed), a few friendly journalists and us. After a short speech the Union Jack Umbrella baton was handed over to the Brazilian Ambassador as the Scotch Eggs and mini Roast Beef and Yorkshire puddings were whisked past my nose.

This afternoon, my wonderful chef will arrive to concoct my randomly acquired food into delicious dishes for the rest of the week. So this morning, I had the pleasure of planning menus knowing that I shall not be the one that cooks it. How fantastic is that domestic arrangement? And the fun is that in Cuba you just never know what we will get our hands on. It is a bit like Ready Steady Cook in your kitchen once a week. This week we have a very large rabbit so I have two rabbit recipes one with white wine, thyme, cream and garlic (Jamie) and the other with olives and tomatoes (Delia). I bought some quite expensive baby aubergines a couple of days ago and intend to have them deep fried in olive oil with a yoghurt dip and then make the rest into a parmesan bread crumb gratin.

Recently I have also had an abundant supply of quails eggs, which hard boiled and chopped up on a lettuce based salad … rather delicious, or just dipped into mustard mayonnaise. Saskia eats them likes sweets some days when she gets back from the nursery. And then a few shortbread biscuits that we can eat with Vanilla icecream and a strawberry coulis. The good frozen strawberries appeared again in 70 supermarket last week.

Later I am meeting with Amado my diminutive 80 year old upholsterer as I have finally found some material in Havana Vieja so he can do my art deco chairs and sofa.

Rafa is off to Margerita Film festival tomorrow with strict instructions to find a Zara and buy himself some clothes. I shall be filling the house with friends to keep my children amused and eating lots of rabbit and aubergine ……………….. happy that life is slow and easy in Havana. 🙂

Next week will I get to do a one week workshop on script writing ……………….? Or is that just pushing my proverbial luck!?

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!

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!

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.

Gilles Peterson, the Bienal and the art of dancing

Rafa was in Venezuela signing some important film agreement and the Bienal was in full swing. The biggest art show in town, and its not just about art. There are some crazy performances, lots of good music, a few parties ………. and of course plenty of art to keep everybody happy from the most commercial to the most ridiculous.

I managed to get to La Cabaña, the old fort over-looking Havana Vieja, on Sunday with the boys, where most of the art of the Bienal was being displayed in various interlinking rooms of the huge venue. The boys were more interested in the cannons and climbing the walls of the fort but some of the more impactful visual stuff grabbed their attention. A room of mirrors, a room of wooden boats standing on their sides of varying sizes, some amazing interactive sculptures in the courtyards and various other cositas like the painting of the crying boxer!

Unrelated to the craziness of the Bienal, I bought a photo of the Malecon from a student of ISA. He arrived a little late round to my house where I was waiting with the photo for him to sign and me to pay. He told me that a whole street in Havana Vieja had been closed as naked people sprayed bronze walked up and down. He had been taking photos of the nudes and the faces of the Cuban public, who although used to seeing scantily clad people walking around town, were rather aghast at the nakedness!

I headed out to a party of an artist friend in his beautiful house in Vedado with some friends. We stopped off at the National Hotel to pick up a journalist on the way and had a quick drink on the garden terrace overlooking the bay before heading back into the leafy residential streets of Vedado. When we arrived the beautiful ruined house was already full of people and the music was pretty good out in the garden. I bumped into Havana friends and foreign journalists and people working at Havana Club rum (who seemed to be sponsoring a lot of stuff), lots of artists and random music people.

I was just thinking I should be getting home when I saw a very familiar face across the room. I had this strong feeling that he was British and that I knew him. A friend of a friend from London maybe? I approached him and asked him where he was from. England. What are you doing here? I’m a DJ and I’m playing at the inauguration party tomorrow. Excellent I thought, as he slipped out the door alone, no DJ gang to be seen. That’s Gilles Peterson, said a friend. I knew he looked familiar!

I managed to case the party and find 3 invites for the following night for myself and a couple of friends. With Rafa out of town I set up my young babysitter and her mother in the house so I could dance all night! And it was worth it, I needed to dance.

Gilles is a name in the UK. He has been a bastion of late night Radio 1 for what seems like the last 15 years. His serious of albums titled Worldwide where all about mixing world rhythms with his own take on drum and bass.

He recently visited Cuba and cut a record with some famous musicians and DJs and put his finger on the pulse of new Cuban music. I am still not in a position to say if he got his finger right on the pulse, but I like Gilles. He does his own thing and he appreciates differences. I kept bumping into him at the party and he was always alone. People watching, absorbing the atmosphere. He didn’t need to have a crowd of people around him and was happy to talk to anybody and everybody.

The venue was the Sala Rosada de La Tropical, a huge outside venue with a sweeping staircase going down to the auditorium. It was a hot night and everyone was quite sweaty dancing. I can’t believe I was worried about my hair before I went out because by the end of the night it was a rather attractive sweaty wet mass and for some reason people kept taking my photo. Gilles had introduced the evening ….. Gilles Peterson presenta La Havana Cultura Band, some live music from Danay Suarez, Osdalgia, Roberto Carcasses amongst others. Gilles himself rolled out a pretty good set and the Cuban DJs that followed also kept me dancing. Names to look out for Wichy de Vedado and DJ Simbad.

To wrap up with a quote from Mr Peterson:

“Having spent the last three years travelling regularly to Havana I’ve understandably become more attached to this fascinating, almost otherworldly city. I’m also slowly getting to grips with the relationship music has here with the spirits and its people… the drum goes deep.”
Gilles Peterson

The Drum goes deep …………. I like that!