Wednesday 3 July 2013

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

Early morning, beginning of January, 1988, Mariana Grajales, Park. Across from it the Saúl Delgado College stretches along the pavement. This low-rise, long, rectangular, sprawling building has been my stomping grounds for more than a year now. There’s excitement in the crispy morning air amongst the hundreds of youngsters gathered here. The temperature is fresh, but not chilly. Never chilly. This is Havana after all. Soon my coach will depart to Pinar del Río, Cuba’s westernmost province, where we hear the temperature has dipped to 15 degrees. Now, that’s chilly.
 
Gaggles of fifteen-, sixteen- and seventeen-year olds hang around on different corners of the park according to our year groups. Our clothes betray our mission: we are just about to embark on our work experience. For some of us it will be the first time we will be away from home for so long. Forty-five days officially. Although the veterans (those who went last year) claim it is never that long. You usually come back after thirty-five or thirty-six days, they say. Boys and girls are dressed alike: ugly brown shirts and khaki trousers. On my feet a pair of Russian boots makes their debut. Commonly known as “canberras” in the Cuban argot, this is the type of shoewear that any self-respecting rocker must be seen in nowadays. My shirt is two sizes bigger; my trousers have been adapted to resemble the skinny jeans seen on the likes of Bonjovi, Poison and Mötley Crüe, my musical diet these days. I usually watch clips of these bands at Cynthia’s, a girl from my Year 11 class who claims to be a close cousin of Tico Torres’, Bonjovi’s drummer.
 
Lined up on the road are about half a dozen coaches, their drivers puffing lazily on their Populares ciggies. Coaches? I am being benevolent. Our mode of transport is widely known as aspirinas (aspirins) because they are apparently good at ridding people of headaches despite the fact that they also cause them. I never did find out about the former, just the latter. The aspirinas are small minibuses in which you pile an endless amount of children, youngsters and adults with more extra space seeming to magic itself out of thin air.
 
Trepidation takes over me. This is my first time at the “escuela al campo”. The idea behind the project is noble but the delivery is flawed. You take a group of students to the countryside once a year in the coldest month in the Cuban winter calendar. You start them off at 12 years old, when they have just begun their Year 7 in secondary school. They first go for thirty days. Visits from parents are allowed but only weekly. They have to learn how to live independently. They will hopefully find out where food comes from, what nature provides us with, especially “city boys” like me. You sit back and hope your plan works. It does, but not in the way you think.
 
In reality twelve-year-olds are mixed with fourteen-year-olds. Bullying ensues almost as soon as the students climb on board the aspirinas. There is a lot of drinking and smoking. Sex is everywhere, consensual or not. Some male teachers zero in on vulnerable girls and...
 
I have heard enough about la escuela al campo from other people, but I want to build my own edifice of memories. Inside my mind there is a gallimaufry of feelings, yet one towers above all the others: joy. I feel unbridled joy. In about an hour I will be leaving Havana in the company of classmates who have become friends over the last twelve months. Together we will bunk off work, swim in rivers, get drunk and lose our voices whilst a guitar that’s seen better days is played (“assaulted” would be a better word)  incessantly by a wannabe Silvio Rodriguez or Bob Dylan. My joy is not of the rational type, the kind we manufacture out of special moments. It is the other type of joy. It is the unintentional one which you don’t expect. It will arrive in the arms of a girlfriend, a deep, philosophical conversation with one of my mates, or the sight of a breath-taking sunset as I stand outside the public showers and wonder whether to put myself at the mercy of the cold water in the chilly, pinareño winter or wait until tomorrow. Again.
 
The joy I feel on this day comes from changing my urban landscape for a rural one I have yet to discover but which, on this early morning, I am looking forward to experiencing.
 
© 2013
 
Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 7th July at 10am (GMT)

24 comments:

  1. Such joy found in the rural landscape, can't be found in the friggin annoying cities, sadly that is where the jobs are though around here, hmph.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Those unexpected joys are the kind to cherish...

    ReplyDelete
  3. In honesty, those school camps were my worst nightmare, so my only unbridled feelings were "this is hell"!

    But this piece of writing evoked such exquisitely accurate memories - although the music was a decade (and a half!) earlier, the scents and sounds were those of the African bush and the place wasn't Cuba, but the Kruger Park (and thank heavens we were only away from home for a week!)

    ReplyDelete
  4. PS I love the Rumi quote you've put in your blog header. So true, so much wisdom in Rumi's work.

    PPS I've banned myself from all social media until my new story is finished so (except for the occasional breakout like this one), I'll be absent from the blogosphere until January (unless by some miracle I finish earlier!) :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting theory behind the camps... Reminded me of the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" in which two Chinese men from the city are sent into the countryside during the cultural revolution to learn the ways of the peasants.

    ReplyDelete
  6. i find a healthy balance in the urban and rural...they are different paces appreciated each for what they are worth you know....there is a certain joy of just being with your mates....smiles...but not skinny jeans...ha....

    ReplyDelete
  7. Conozco se podría decir muy bien Cuba con lo cual he comprendido muy bien tu escrito lleno de recuerdos.
    Un abrazo

    ReplyDelete
  8. First, this is a superb piece of personal narrative, capturing the times, places, sensitive issues of the situation through the eyes of a young man without much interference from the adult he has become.

    Second, the historical context is fascinating to me, as I think of how little I knew/know about Cuba's life then and now. The piece stands tall and proud as an eye-witness piece as good or better than any diary we have read.

    Third, I do hope you gather all of your personal narratives about Cuba and get them published. We are hungry for this!

    ReplyDelete
  9. it is cool to have that common experience...times you never forget..

    ReplyDelete
  10. Many thanks for your kind comments.

    The memory of that morning has stayed with me almost twenty-seven years later. I loved my work experience, even if I would be the first one to acknowledge that the amount of "work" we got done was close to zero. "Escuelas al campo" are no more. The government stopped doing them many years ago. They were expensive to maintain and the benefit was negligible. When I was in Cuba last April I had a lovely conversation with my brother-in-law who happened to go to one of the first "escuelas al campo" and had a totally different experience. He had to work really hard. By the time it was my turn, the initial ethos had completely lost its way and the whole thing was about getting legless, lazy and laid. The three "Ls" as I began to call it. Still, the whole experience taught me a lot about socialism and the reason(s) behind its failure, about the value of friendship and who my real friends were and about life and priorities.

    Have a very nice weekend.

    Greetings from London.

    ReplyDelete
  11. You're a wonderfully talented writer. So glad you commented on my blog so I could find yours!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I can't wait to hear the next installment. I really enjoy 'taking trips' with you. I can almost see Cuba in my mind's eye.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love that freedom found in joy... the rural is important - but without the sex and bullying.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Lovely piece! Thanks for sharing Mario...

    ReplyDelete
  15. do go on...it's a story you just don't want to leave!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. There is such freedom in joy, such simplicity in rural living.
    I intensely dislike city living. It is too noisy and crowded for a sensitive like me...I tend to unconsciously pick up on the thoughts and emotions of those around me, and they become unbearably suffocating.
    Yes, give me the quiet, rural life any day!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Brilliant take CIL! The richness of growing up experience. You were thrown on the deep side of the pool and exposed to life's challenges in a nutshell. And it stayed on in memory!
    Not many are that lucky! Thanks for sharing!

    Hank

    ReplyDelete
  18. Really beautiful imagery. I can feel the emotions of those memories.

    ReplyDelete
  19. The group feeling in your beautiful piece of writing is felt so strongly.
    I smile, because it was so different for me, a small town girl at that age, and raised to think individualistically, which I was, fiercely so.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Good emotional palette presented here. I have urban moods & then at other times rural moods.

    This was vividly rendered. Some people experience little riots of Joy without really seeming to know what they are. ~Mary

    ReplyDelete
  21. Early adolescence is a time when dramatic changes occur, a challenging time for children and parents alike. In the "escuela al campo" we experienced together as youngsters that kind of new freedom, one of the few that we could have in the Island, the freedom from interference of our parents.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1AEMzYVsKk

    ReplyDelete
  22. have fun :-) fun to look back on fun childhood memories

    ReplyDelete
  23. It's interesting getting these glimpses of your past, your time as a Cuban in Cuba. Like you, I have been revisiting my adolescent and teen years recently. It is an emotional journey.

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...