Tag: serendipity

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.

 

My Nanny State

Here in Guatemala all my friends have nannies, niñeras, muchachas or whatever terminology you care to use.  It is par for the course, and a well known advantage of the third world lifestyle – a hangover from a colonial past, or a reality of the present apartheid labour system.  It is also a common pastime for mothers to get together and sit around complaining about their nannies´ incompetence.  Not me ……  no never.  In this one matter I am quite splendidly smug.

My nanny is the BEST.

In my native country, to have a nanny is a status symbol of the super rich or royalty.  It is also something which harks back to another time.  An England of AA Milne and Winne the Pooh and Edwardian nurseries.  Not one of my friends in the UK has one, or had one when they were children.  I didn’t grow up in a house with a nanny, neither did my parents.  And really, I did not expect to live over 6 years with a nanny coming into my house 5 and a half days a week.  But serendipity played me a huge hand when I was introduced to Judith Han, who will always remain one of the most wonderful and amazing people to have come into my life.  I don´t have a nanny, I have Juju.  She has been my support system, my social services, my home grown remedy advisor, comedian and all round superstar.  How will we all manage without her?

Smiling and laughing as usual .......

 

Juju, as she was christened by Paulo, has a Chinese grandfather and comes from a different part of Guatemala out towards the Pacific coast.  She has a strong, happy face that always is a mili-second away from a giggle and we have laughed so much with her that I am seriously worried if I can live without her laughter, never mind anything else.  Just listening to her good natured funny ramblings to my baby girl and my boys over the years is enough to put a smile on your face.  But on top of that huge attribute, she is a person who can grow anything, fix anything, cook anything superbly, clean the house, mend clothes, ……… the list is endless, and all this while playing and chatting with my children.

Right now as I am writing, the rain is pouring down and all I can hear is the sound of Nico laughing with her.  Yesterday she spent the afternoon playing football in the garden with Paulo whilst carrying a smiling Saskia.  A mother of 6, she takes multi-tasking to a whole new dimension.  She helps them with their Spanish homework, plays chess and Monopoly with them and hardly ever has raised her voice to them in 6 years.  I wish I could say the same for myself.

I always thought how weird to have a stranger in your house.  Not used to servants, it took me a while to get used to the concept, but if there was ever a person that I could hang out with peacefully it is Juju.  On Saturday mornings she sneaks into my house so not to wake us up.  Faultlessly thoughtful and incredibly kind, she regularly arrives with a little present from the packa for my children: some clothes, some books, toys, silly bands (the latest craze).  She always knows the name of a plumber or a painter or a mechanic.  She has plastered walls, macheted huge parts of the garden during the rainy season and is always available for more.  She drops Christmas tamales at our house every year around midnight.  She has come on trips with us to San Salvador and Atitlan.  If you have Juju with you, a family holiday almost feels like a holiday!  All my friends love Juju and she likes a lot of them too.  Especially my great friend Felix who makes her laugh even more than usual.

5 of her 6 children on my famous sofa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Guatemalans would warn me about being too close and relaxed with my nanny.  The apartheid rules are hard to shake.  But bollocks I thought.  I will eat lunch with my Juju trust her with my life and share my worries and my secrets. I went to her daughter´s wedding, her oldest son´s graduation ceremony, she received me home with baby Nico in my arms with Sopa de Gallina and so much love, and 4 years later Saskia too.  Her husband helped us move house, has rescued me from flat tyres several mornings, and often plays football with our boys.  All her children adore mine like siblings.  And my children love hanging out in her house and garden with all the animals and friends and family.  They even met the famous tacuazin in the jaula.  Juju caught it while walking the two blocks home one night.  She shared the hunting technique with me if anyone´s interested.  You see there is just no end to her talents.

Juju in days gone by with my boys and her youngest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Husbands are husbands, and mine is a pretty good one most of the time, but over the last few years if you exclude time spent sleeping next to each other, I have easily spent more time with Juju than Rafa.

Juju has been there for me when no-one else has.  She has seen my tears, two panzas, my pain, my laughter.  My children are blessed to have known her and be loved by her.  She has been my rock.  To think that I will no longer have her strong light in my family is the thing that is breaking my heart these last few days.  Juju we love you and we will miss you.  What more can I say ……………..