Food

As anyone that knows me already knows, I love food. I love to eat it, cook it, look at it, and especially, talk about it. Thus, it is only logical that sooner or later I need to write an entry about Cuban food. It was a huge transition for me, since my normal diet is kindof rabbit'like. Well, they don´t have any of that stuff here. Basically, I eat meat and eggs with a bit of bread or rice and beans. Quite a change. That said, the food is GREAT. Like every commodity here, food is bought at different levels: in CUC (money for tourists) or moneda nacional (cuban pesos). The majority of sitdown, indoor restaurants are only in CUC, sonormal cubans don´t really eat there. But there are little shops all over the place that sell food for cubans, REALLY cheap. I´m talking 40 cents for a sandwich and drink. So, here are some of my favorite things to eat here:

1) Mojitos: There´s a bar right across the street from our residence that sells 10 peso mojitos, that´s 40 cents. Dangerous.

2) Cerveza: They have pretty good beer and it tastes even better because it is so damn hot all the time.

3) Pork: They make it awesomely here, never thought I´d say that.

4) Croquetas: These are deep fried balls of I don´t know what mushed up. Scary, but delicious.

5) Batidos: Fruit'ice shakes they sell all over in these little stands.

Shit Goes Down

This past weekend was great, but definitely an eye opener for me. All the bad things about life in Havan decided to rear their ugly heads. One night, we couldn´t find a bus to get home from a party and so walked over 2 hours in the middle of the night to get home. I should´ve been more prepared for this, it can happen all the time because transportation kind of sucks. The buses are all overcrowded, slow, and few and far between. There are also super'expensive taxis that only tourists can afford, and cheaper, slightlly more'sketchy taxis called maquinas. These are just private cars of people that decided to pick you up, but it totally depends on where they´re going as to whether they´ll take you. Anyway, you end up either waiting fora long time or walking a lot. Don´t get me wrong, I love walking, but at 2 in the morning in heels it´s not as pleasant. Then, saturday morning I was reading a book on this wall that borders the sea, called the malecon,. It is such a great place, people are always hanging out there, drinking, playing music, swimming, fishing...it´s beautiful. But this time, a guy was fishing in the sea near me starting masturbating in full view of me!! This weekend was also my first encounter with jineteras, not to be confused with the jineterOs mentioned before. These are young women that are basically prostitutes. The situation is a older, uglier, fatter white man who clearly is not cuban is hanging out with one or two young, beautiful, black or mixed girls, who are all over him. Believe me, I´m all about blind love, but it is a known fact that in Cuba, money is exchanged in this situation. Sunday night at this club and there were tons of jineteras. It was such a creepy thing to watch, ,nowing pretty much exactly what was going on. The worst thing that happened this weekend was I got mugged on Sunday. I was walking in central Havana by this pretty park and all of a sudden, two teenage guys came up behind me and grabbed my purse! Luckily, I managed to hold on immediately . I would´ve thought that after not getting my purse at once, they´d leave, but they put up a really long fight, probably about at minute of tug'of'war. Unfortunately, they weren´t close enough for me to kick them in the balls. In the end, I managed to yank it away from them and they ran off. The good ting about muggings here is they are super'frequent, especially compared to other Latin American countries, and they aren´t very dangerous because no one has weapons more dangerous than fists or feet. Afterwards as I was walking away the people I passed said things like ¨tan fuerte!¨, which means ¨so strong¨. It really shook me up, but more inan exciting, adrenaline kind of way. Anyway, thus ended my crazy weekend.

Cuba has racism too!

For those who aren´t familiar with the stats of Cuba, the cuban population consists of over 50% mestizo, or racially mixed persons. I kindof assumed, even after arriving here, that this enormous percentage indicated a population where race isn´t a separating factor, where people don´t judge even subconciously based on one´s race. THough it´s true that the population where race isn´t nearly as racially segregated as the US, it turnes out I was wrong about the lack of racism. First of all, Cuba has a fairly large amount of institutionalized racism. If an Afrocuban (a black cuban), or sometimes a mestizo cuban, is walking with a group of white foreigners, a police officr will often stop the group to question the cuban. In fact, I heard of an African American who came on business with white associates and he was OFTEN questioned by police. Granted, the police have reasons to be a little wary of cubans hanging around tourists. Apparently there is a problem with ¨jineteros¨, cubans who try to scam tourists out of their money, and one of the major roles of police here is to protect tourists. Of course, this doesn´t excuse the racial targeting. Last night I was with a couple cuban friends who starting speaking in English with my as we passed a police officer. It was really strange to feel like we need to be carely what we say in public. ANother example of this institutionalized racism is in teh tourist industry. THere are virtually no Afrocubans in the tourism. I don´t know what they are afraid of, or even if it´s a conscious decision, but it happens. On a more individual scale, many cubans have the same prejudices that we have in the US. For instance, it is more unusual for Afrocubans to go to University here. THe ones that can go, and decide to further their education in this way have an unofficioal title , a word that likens them to white people. Yet I´ve heard cubans explain the absence of afrocubans as a lack of motivation (sound familiar). As frustrating as this racism is, what´s worse is that no support network exists for Afrocuban rights. In the US, a fair amount of people are talking about racism and fighting for civil rights, but these groups are virtually nonexistent here. And the ones that do exist (I´ve only heard of one) are considered kind of soft and overly intellectual. I can´t really comprehend this stae in Cuba, when mixing of races is 100% normal, MUCH more so than in the US.

I know I just wrote to really serious and heavy entries, but these are the things that are sticking out in my mind right now. I´ll talk about fun stuff too. For instance, I´m taking an aerobics class a this cuban gym down the street from me and one of the teachers wears a fullbody orange spandex suit. Yowzah

The US in Cuba

Even though friendly relations between the US and Cuba are practically nonexistant, the US does have a ¨US interest section¨ building in Havana that basically serves as an embassy. We had to go there last week to register with them, and boy was it creepy. While cubans don´t mind people from the US (as far as I can tell), they DON´T like the US government. In fact, they are kindof paranoid about a US invasion, so the US building is one of the most heavily guarded buildings, by cuban police and military. They surround the area and only allow you to enter from a certain direction. We couldn´t figure out these directions, so we had to walk back and forth for a while. Then, they have you wait for a while, I´m not sure why, perhaps they do a background check. Once you´re inside they kindof encourage you to come back. THis visit, they offered us the use of their computer if we returned the next day. But we are encouraged by the program not to return, becuase once some students 3went back and were subjeted to meetings with cuban dissedents (anti castro cubans, like the ones in miami). Also, our neighbors here will probably start to get suspicious if we visit the US building regularly .
Though the cuban opinion of the US and their interest section seems a little overly paranoid, they do have a reason to worry. Every time a new US ¨ambassador¨ to Cuba is elected or appointed (i don´t know how that works), they do something bold to show they´ll have a tough stance against Cuba and Castro. THe newest guy put up a gigantic news ticker, like the ones in Times Square, on top of the US building that flashed some incendiary messages. In response, the cuban government put up 138 flags in front of the building, one for every Cuban who died fighting for the country (I think against the US). Because of the constant breeze caming from the sea, the flags always block the view of the building from the rest of Havana. It´s pretty funny.

Cuban Keyboards are Difficult

For those who aren´t familiar with the subject of this blog, I am writing it to share my experiences studying in Havana, Cuba for the semester. I came here with SUNY Oswego to enroll as a normal cuban student in the University of Havana, the most¨elite¨ university in Cuba (though ´elite´is never really used as an adjective here). I arrived three days ago and already I´ve learned so much about so many things, my head feels like it´s going to burst! First, let me describe Havana. This is the capital, located on the northwestern part of the island, righ ton the ocean. It´s divided into three parts from west to east= Vedado, Central, and Viejo. I´m living in Havana Vedado, also where the University is located. The whole city is incredibly beautiful. SInce it is a tropical island, it has its fair share of exotic flora, blue skies,, and turquoise sea, but the architecture is also magnificent. Actually, it really remids me of New Orleans, with its brightly colored houses with wooden balconies, coutyards, and collumns. Yet unlike New Orleans, almost all the buildings are like this, though in varying degrees of renovation. That´s another difference= one doesn´t really see abject poverty or extreme wealth here. Everyone lives in grandiose, though old, houses and looks fairly wellfed and fit, but no one has fancy clothes or expensive cars or obese bellies. And one rarely sees a begger or a homeless person. Yet I´ve been told a lot of people don´t have jobs, they just live off the government´s rations. I can´t say yet whether this is a country where communism is ¨working,¨ but it definitely is not the impoverished, decrepit place many americans envision.
One of the aspects I´ve found most intriguing, and most challenging to my preconsieved notions of countries and governments, is the revolutionary spirit that infiltrates everything. The grafiti here reads ¨solidaridad (solidarity)¨and ¨cuba viva libre (cuba live free)!¨, yet these kinds of slogans are in support of the current government, not a form of social protest. Even more revealing is the responsive shouting that often occurs, especially with passionate student orators. The leader with scream ¨patria o muerte (homeland or death)!¨ and the crowd returns ¨venceremos (we will overcome)!¨ This is something that Fidel Castro said in 1960, soon after he successfully led the revolution against American supported dictator, Batista. Another common call and response is ¨viva la revolucion (long live the revolution)!¨ to which the crowd shouts ¨viva!¨ In my experience, this sounds like something dissedents say in protest, not in support, of their government. It seems the people here feel very strongly about their revolutionary spirit, even to this day.
For those who are worried, I´m having a great time so far, learning loads and improving my spanish faster than I imagined. Already I can hold a conversation with a cuban and mostly understand speeches (not to brag).
Hasta luego!