Wednesday, 10 March 2010, Chizirico
Five days in Santiago de Cuba, in the nearby barrio (village) of mella. Where to begin to share our impressions; our observations? It would take pages and pages...so very briefly (we don't have live internet today, anyway):
Cuba is incredibly rich and at the same time, unbelievably poor. The Cubanas are rich in music, dance and art; rich in the style and manner in which they present themselves and their humble homes; rich in health and education; rich in the peace and love in their hearts; free in spirit and in the way they express themselves; rich in the intermixing of race and ethic groups; rich in their relationships with family and friends; rich in their kindness and generosity amid such poverty!
The poverty is evident in the vistas of crumbling houses, there are no materials to patch them; the crumbling roads, there is no concrete to patch them; indoor plumbing runs to the kitchen, but the water is not potable; outhouses are common; working the fields and hauling the harvest with horses and oxen. Perhaps worst of all, the Cubanas are poor in their ability to change their situation. They can not organize dissent without fear of being thrown in jail, and they can not freely leave the island.
Today we are in an anchorage near Chizirico, but we are not allowed to go ashore because there is no state-run marina to keep a watch on us. Despite our camera being lifted, we managed to get a few photos on our Mac laptop, but only out of site of the Guarda and any members of the Cartivo (sp?).
Posted from our SAT phone.
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Comments [2]
Glad you made it! Have fun and Charlie is thriving! So far he has been shared with two other friends. We are back in George Town and can't wait to get out. You know how it is.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010, Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba
Riding home after a night out. The Lada struggles up the hills on the 15 kilometer ride back to our Marina from downtown Santiago. The headlights are both broken, and as we drive out of the ciudad, the streetlights become less frequent until they end altogether and the Lada lurches over gullies in the highway, between demolished guardrails. We had Mojitos at the Hotel Casa Grande, then some more at Taberna Dolores on the Plaza Dolores. That's where we met Yuri who took us to the night clubs, friends houses, and finally the barrio in Mella to eat puerco asado with his family and friends. Club 300, early evening. They close at 2000 and open again to live music at 2200. The early crowd grinds to the tunes that the DJ pumps out, the girls dressed to kill, sex oozing out of the speakers, the couples. A man takes the stage and starts to rap, another joins him, both are smooth and skillful. They pull some girls out of the crowd to get them to dance on stage, blushing, they move their hips in erotic frenzy to the song that the dj sings. The club spills out into the street at closing time, still high on testosterone and estrogen they shout and mill about while cars and motos try vainly to slip by. Yuri took us to dinner (er, actually we took him) in a rooftop restaurant, no sign out front, up two flights of stains, a little illegal restaurant with half a dozen tables. The puerco assado is divine, Annie and Yuri have pescado and Yuri takes care of leftovers. The Casa Tradiciones is a few blocks down and the Salsa pumps out the open door. Two trumpets, drums, bell, guitar, bass in the corner of the living room, chairs and tables spread around the three front rooms and a little bar in back, rum for 2 CUC, touristas dance with the local men, all of whom can Salsa with grace.
Yuri has a degree in economics, he spends 2 days a week doing his practicum, the rest of the time he hustles. It's the national pastime. He went to school to avoid ending up on the collective farm with a hoe and machete. If he gets a job, he'll make 10 CUC a month. Pretty much the same as everyone else here. If he meets some adventurous touristas, he can make 10 CUC in an evening. The illegal restaurant stays busy serving food to touristas because guys like Yuri bring them there, and usually get a cut of the bill. Yuri claims he didn't take a cut of the food, but I'm pretty sure he got some of the cab fare. Mostly, he got to go out, drink rum, eat delicious food and dance all night for free. He's a sweet kid, 24, we adopted him, our illegal tour guide, even though we refused to meet him at the Morro where he wanted to swim out and catch a ride off this island.
Sunday morning we met Yuri again and grabbed a couple bottles of rum and went to Adriano's house. Actually his brothers temporary apartment, for his birthday celebration. His brother lives in Martinique and is here in Santiago through June, exhibiting his amazing artwork. Adriano has dreads down to the floor, his son has them to his shoulders, his father has none but stopped by for a few minutes and slipped a CD into the player and sang traditional Cuban songs of love. Dios mio what an amazing voice. Adriano makes gourd drinking cups and writes poetry of Jah and Rastafariah on his bedroom walls, he walks the streets of this barrio, a mystic, brother to all, peace and love. So much artistic skill and so many people willing to share their talents and gifts, it's a generosity the likes of which I've never seen, a wealth transcending the lack of plumbing, the crumbling concrete walls, leaky roofs, and ruined streets. The people here are not only buried in poverty, many people around this ocean are, they are stifled by a government that cannot handle dissent, won't allow people to travel, even in their own land, and tries to control every aspect of life on this island. The reaction of these people is to create beauty, to sing and dance, eat when they can, to give generously anything they have to give, to welcome strangers, foreigners, us, the enemy, with open arms, open doors, open hearts, and often times open hands.
We ate dinner and bought some cigars from Pacho. His heart has withered, his generosity is forced, his needs are evident and poverty has stolen his self-esteem. Thanks a lot Castro, you fuck. The tortuga and pulpo were truly amazing. He brought us vegetables, huge quantities of them, then begged for more money, our last encounter when I gave him and his sobrino 5 lbs of puerco asado I'd as soon forget.
Yuri offered to take us to his family's home in Mella, in the barrio. His father lives in one half of the house, his brother and wife and baby in the other half, cousins and aunts and sisters all live nearby. I bought the pig from his brother, 40 CUC, which was used to feed his own family. A transaction that still mystifies me. Yuri had said before that it would be 30 CUC but his brother, a grade A asshole said it weighed so much that he had to have more money to kill it and feed his own damn family with it. And he truly would have let them all eat beans and rice yet again if I hadn't coughed up mas dinero. His home has no doors. Three beds for the children, two chairs, a wardrobe divides the room where a rickety table with a scrap metal top stands next to the kitchen. The kitchen sink drains out through a pipe through the wall, the water comes straight out of the river. The neighbors have a shower house out back, scrap sheet metal and scraps of wood. Same with the outhouse. The cab of an old trackhoe sits incongruously in the midst of the scratched dirt of the back yard. An old truck axle for a sledge hammer, an old hammer with pipe welded on the head, a three wheeled cart with rubber bolted to the rims made from misc. scrap iron. Yuri's padre, (not a talker, at least not with us) pulled out a huge old cast iron pot, put it over the fire on a steel frame and filled it from the hose that feeds his Lettuce irrigation system. The pig got a knife in the heart, they have no guns here, it's companion crying and bouncing around the scrap iron enclosure, alone for the first time after all their lives together. We drank rum and turned the pig on his 15' pole over a fire of home-made charcoal. Damn, that was some tasty chicharrones.
My thoughts wander through all we've seen in the past 5 days, so much in so little time, it's difficult to process the inundation of experiences. The Aduana pulling the boat apart looking for drugs, not understanding what we were doing here, but pretty suspicious that it wasn't anything good. La doctora, barefoot on board, kind and respectful, patiently communicating with us. Santiago on a Saturday afternoon, people all over the streets, packed into the backs of hundreds of ancient American trucks, belching black smoke as they wound through the maze of little streets in el centro. A detour on the way to Mella, one policia blocking the road for the construction crews, no sign to indicate an alternate route to get the last mile to the highway, Freddie asking for directions from the crowds of people in the street and we end up driving down the side of a hill, a semi trying without any luck to get up, and down a cart track through fields of plantain and cane, cultivated by hand by men with hoes.
On the hook, on our little boat, Chivirrico, in the middle of a tranquil lagoon, the sounds of chickens and trucks, horse-drawn taxis and children, but we can't go ashore here, in fact we can only get off the boat at 4 different places on the south coast, I have no idea why. It's as incomprehensible to me as the language, more so actually, no idea what is legal, illegal, tolerated or prosecuted.
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Friday, 05 March 2010, Marlin Marina - Santiago de Cuba
Breakfast at 3AM and then departed Great Inagua 4am. Arrived Santiago de Cuba sixty hours later. Southwest through the Windward Passage then west along the south coast of Cuba, passing Guantonomo Bay well clear of the American territory. Emma loves sailing in the big blue ocean, the long and deep wave trains and we love her more with each passage. Her crew is getting better at dealing with the unpredictable weather patterns. Underway we had everything from a fair breeze to squalls to flat calm to gales. "Weather, weather! Weather is #1 and weather is #2!" Words of wisdom from an old salt we met in Annapolis and we really learned the meaning of this the past few days.
Cleared in at the marina, a long and tedious process but mostly amiable... about fifteen visitors on board throughout the day, the doctora, the veterinarian, the agrarian, the Guarda Frontera (several, and just kids really), two customs officers, and two (rather adorable but nervous) drug sniffing dogs. "Negativo" the customs official said with pride (meaning, no drugs or other contraband found) - and finally we could decompress, exhausted after the passage and the clear in. Tapas and rum drinks in the cockpit then sweet sleep.
Today (Sunday) internet for 6 CUCs ("kooks") per hour at the Casa Grande Hotel de Santiago de Cuba. No photos as our camera seems to have been lifted somewhere somehow by someone.
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Wednesday, 03 March 2010, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
The history of US involvement in the Caribbean reads much like our conduct throughout the world. Hypocrisy on a grand scale, rhetoric about democratic ideals and the rights of man matched with a flagrant disregard for the human rights of all foreigners, racism, and self-interested profiteering.
In June of 1965 Lyndon Johnson stated in a news conference "some 1500 innocent people were murdered and shot and their heads cut off" in the Dominican Republic. It was one of a number of justifications (safeguarding American lives, supporting democracy) put forward by the administration as to why they were invading the DR (again), bankrolling a military dictatorship, and ensuring the continuation of the Trujillo regime under Balaguer, the chancellor under Trujillo in 1937 when 17,000 Haitians were slaughtered by the army. Finding 1500 headless bodies became a top priority for the administration, but much as they scoured the country, they only ever found 2. It was simply a blatant lie, as were the other reasons to go to war, but by the time that was confirmed, the deal was done. Balaguer was elected president while the US kept the previous president, Juan Bosch, ousted a year earlier in a coup we bankrolled, locked up in his house, for his own safety, of course. Here we are, 45 years later, stuck yet again, for an indefinite amount of time in a country we invaded illegally based on lies. WMD and sponsoring al-Qaeda this time .A million Iraqis dead, millions more displaced through our cavalier attitude, we know what government is best, what economic system is best.
We have spent the last century and more, stomping from one part of the globe to another in the name of Freedom and Democracy, containing the virulent spread of evil Communism, Fascism, (other countries') Colonialism, Drugs and of course, Terror. To aid us in this struggle we have cultivated relationships with and sent military support to Great Leaders throughout the world like Francisco Franco, the Duvaliers, Mobutu Sese Seko, Sani Abacha, Idi Amin, Fulgencio Batista, Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, Anastasio Somoza, Rafael Trujillo, and Suharto, among others. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html These relationships of convenience are not a part of ancient history. Consider the military aid and intelligence given to Saddam Hussein, Pervez Musharraf, and Islam Karimov. Our foreign policy is still based strictly upon expediency with large dollops of hypocritical rhetoric about human rights and Freedom. Short term expediency and long term amnesia are the root causes of how Haiti became the poorest country in this hemisphere, how bin Laudin became a well armed and highly trained lunatic, how Congo became a blood soaked nightmare, yet again, and why Pakistan is about to become another. Luckily, most inhabitants of the countries we have spent the last century screwing are poorly educated and don't know how badly we fucked them. Unfortunately, I have very little knowledge myself as to what our government has been up to around the world over the last century either. We can't afford to repeat the same mistakes, the same wars and the same lies for another century though. It's time to base our foreign policy on helping people in other countries, not their governments, to realize their goals, whatever those might be (other than killing each other, naturally) instead of hopping in bed with the first asshole to offer us help in the war on ________ (whatever we're fighting this month).
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Good writing.
Paul B
SV KellyNicole
Wednesday, 24 February 2010, Salina Point Settlement, Acklins Island
Sailing at night
Half a moon for half the night. Only after it's gone and I'm back on watch, can the phosphorescence be seen, little nodules of it bumping along in the wake and washed over the waves by the bow as she cuts through the sea. Her wake is not like the wake of a power boat, with creamy foam streaming out in a long triple burst, turning into waves that roll across the water to crash into the shore, her wake is like a wiggly scar, hastily sutured. The water gurgles excitedly back together off the transom, filling back in the space she so recently occupied. Looking further north, our wake leaves only a trail of bubbles where the waves were surprised to find something in their path, and beyond the bubbles, just water, no sign of our recent passage remains. We're a cutter tonight. Not sure why I wanted the double headsails as the wind is pretty light, has been since we left Rum Cay after lunch, I just like the way they cut the air. I think of it as much like our wake, the initial surprise of the wind to find an obstacle way out here, separating around her sails and reuniting in turbulence after pushing the little boat out of her way. Then no turbulence, nothing but wind again, steady, traveling to wherever it goes. It seems like a good metaphor for the life of a man, a slight turbulence, a wake of memories, stretching out behind, but soon, nothing, no trace of our passing at all and I wonder if it has any value or just sounds deep because I'm tired. The tricolor light at the masthead scratches at the stars. The compass sloshes around in it's private ocean, it's mystical connection to the earth telling me that as usual, I let her come up too high. I could ease the main and maybe she'd steer herself without wanting to head up, but I'd rather have the drive right now. We're making five and a half knots with this little twelve knot breeze, Acklins Bight to windward has smoothed out the seas and we'll make Jamaica Bay mid-morning if this keeps up. The sky over the Bight is starting to show gray at the edges, the clouds gaining definition and soon the stars begin to extinguish, until I look up and where there were thousands just minutes ago, now I have to search hard for just a few. Annie gets up with the sun after a few hours sleep and now we can have the coffee and fried egg sandwiches that I've been thinking about since I came on watch.
Cuba is so close, I can almost smell it from here. We have about eighty miles to Great Inagua where we can stop for diesel and water, or not, then one hundred fifty or so to Santiago de Cuba. Santiago to clear in, then Chivirico, our destination. After Chivirico, no idea. This passage is Hampton VA to Cuba and I have no agenda for Cuba. But we have two low pressure systems rolling through right over us. One is directly overhead right now, the next will roll in just as soon as the wind completes a full circle and ends up back at NE. If the chop isn't too crazy tomorrow, maybe we can visit Salina Point Settlement...
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Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Here we are!
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We have made two trips back and forth to the Exumas,, Today we are back in Nassau..
Keep in touch.
Cheers
Friday, 19 February 2010, Rum Cay
Caught up with Anastasia in Georgetown, picked up some wine and fresh veggies, and got the heck out of there next morning. So many people! Nice sail from there to Rum Cay, on a beam reach all day. Possibly heading out tomorrow, winds look nice for a sail to Great Inagua, the southern most island in the chain of Bahamian Islands.
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Tuesday, 16 February 2010
We're leaving Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park today with a pocket full of cash and two bottles of wine in exchange for repairing the mainsail cover on Intermezzo II, this (giant!) 60 foot sailboat (that's our Emma next to her) and for repairing the bimini top on another sailboat Las Sirenas. When we arrived here last week Tom asked about volunteering as he read that we could exchange a day of labor for a day's mooring fee. This worked out brilliantly, Tom has worked most every day -- splicing 2" line for mooring balls, hauling stuff, looking for poachers and delivering frozen bait fish, motoring up and down the cays with Andrew the park administrator. For those of you who know Tom you know he was just having fun while some people call it work.
Breaking news; It was a very big day for Charley (our sourdough culture) as he is now living aboard Las Sirenas also. He boarded Las Sirenas as a bit of starter to help feed their crew, a family of four - mom, dad, and two girls. Starter today, daily bread tomorrow, and then watch out, someday he'll be taking over the world!
Next destination: Georgetown, where we hope to catch up with the crew of Anastasia.
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Meeting the Hulmes in St Lucia 2/27/10 - any chance you can make it down there by then?
Emma sure looks content and beautiful in the turquoise water
Friday, 12 February 2010, Warderick Wells
We walked down to the south end of the island yesterday to take a break from splicing, give my hands a rest. Standing atop the little hills we gaze out over the Exuma Sound and north and south toward the little cays stretching out to the horizon. A mooring became available closer in to the dinghy dock so we moved in yesterday morning. Andrew, who works here, towed us out to Emma the other night as the wind and waves were a little much to row into. Today i'm hoping to finish up the mooring line i started and maybe make another one. We're going to stick around here until the front blows through. There aren't many protected anchorages with good holding near here where we can comfortably sleep through the 30 knot south wind that's coming tomorrow. Most of the protected places in the Exumas have strong tidal currents that shift back and forth every 6 hours, sometimes holding the boat beam on to the wind which makes for some exciting sleeping, not to mention you have to hold on tight to your rum drink at all times or lose it. The trails we walked yesterday varied from forest to beaches, mangrove swamps to honeycombed limestone. The one constant on the east side of the island that faces the Sound, is plastic trash. Shoes, fenders, milk crates, dock lines, motor oil cans, and hundreds of plastic water bottles. Styrofoam packaging in all its glory and tiny little chunks of plastic of all colors and sources all washed up at the high tide line, on every beach. This is just one little island of thousands that dot this corner of the ocean. People come here and regularly pick up all the crap that washes ashore as we did yesterday. Living on board, without access to garbage services concentrates your mind a little more about the garbage we generate. Glass bottles and tin cans sink to the bottom of the ocean when we are off-shore, leaving no trace of their existence, causing no harm to the birds and whales who often mistake plastic garbage for food. But the plastic that we buy stays with us, we carry it around until we get to a place where they can dispose of it. But the only thing to do with all that shit is bury it. It never goes away. I'd hate to live without it. I live in a plastic boat, write this on a plastic computer, navigate with the same, listen to music on my plastic radio, make breakfast on a plastic countertop. There's no easy fix for the tons of garbage that floats around the world, but a great place to start is those ubiquitous water bottles. Just don't buy them. Ten years ago, they didn't exist. Laundry used to come powdered in cardboard, Pringles in cardboard and mayonnaise in glass. Just keep in mind that once you buy it, you are responsible for it forever, is it worth it? Is there something else that won't wash up on an island somewhere, or end the life of a turtle or bird, or join the tons of trash stuck in the middle of the ocean that would work just as well? Time to go to work and quit playing on the computer.
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Wednesday, 10 February 2010
We're making our way down the Exumas; island hopping; we've moored in Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park for a couple of days to wait out high winds (gusts to 30 knots). Beautiful pristine waters, lovely people, and these little soldier crabs are all over the place, pretty cute.
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