Travel Tips

Friday morning in Baracoa
It is already 1400 in Paris

I felt very content after our conversation last night. Hope you slept well as I did. I was able to rest well. After sending you two emails. Now I am neither anxious nor expectant. I have two days here, in which I will try to see my closest friends of the group whom we call Grupo Club Sultan
Yehuda Director
Castro Vice Director, historian of the city but often his lovely character is hidden by the mists of alcohol. He had been invited to give talks in mallorca but for some reason it has been postponed
Author of a book on Baracoa
Beatriz a young mother of two, the youngest of the two being integrated into the group now. She works at the museum and quite intelligent and very realistic about the cuban situation.
Clarita who also works at the museum, nursing the wounds of a failed relationship with another member of our group Juan Carlos affectionately called the Barber because he is a vascular surgeon, now in exile in Mexico with his mexican lover
Romanowsky who dreams to have a local tomato named after him, like we have a tomato bolivar, he is castro’s son and now ready for his military service before entering medical studies.
Ingridtsky, a young doctor
Her brother Paquistan, who is a student at the university
El Haitiano, so called because he is very fair skinned
Luisito a dark handome negro very much into movies
His brother Ernesto who is a local rap artist
Yamina the ever helpful Lady Friday, but she does not participate in our activities to a great extent
Daughter No 1 Tatiuska so called because her mother is russian
Claudia Daughter no 2
Mari delicate at 11, waiting on the wings to be a young member of our group
Chinita aged 8
Madre Teresa a mother figure
Her daughter Pocahontas who is a dancer and a singer with the airs of an artist
Then there is Mario Luis a cabaret singer and a make up artist who with his lover from france is a local presence and adds to its ambience
He does the favour of cutting my hair and last night I told him, important that I look good on Bastile Day!
Pimienta husband faithful of Madre Teresa is in Venezuela
And there are many who would like to be members but the circle is self protective.

This is a story written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez , this Macondo of a city, hiding behind its history so that it does not have to face the century which dawned few years ago.
Jesus a much married spaniard with a deep voice who could talk for hours for the revolution to which is very faithful and his wife Walkyria
Elena who fell in love with a cuban student while still in school in some fertile valley of the Don, here with her huband of 20 years, Angel and their daughter Tatiuska.

the morning goes very quickly indeed. As I was about to leave someone came for a check up: fatty liver, small kidneys, blood pressure among other things. Medicine at its starkest and the purest.

What shall I do? If you diagnose something you should be prepared to treat it as well.

What about this little girl who is eleven and has something in the thyroid?
Someone asks. Okay I will check her thyroid

So many things happen during the day…
Walking along the street is like a festival of affections
People are genuinely affectionate. Especially this time after a very long absence.
I am enveloped in their embraces. Sweetness of children who hold you so dear to their hearts.

I walked to the house where I keep my clothes and my books and my music. In the very same room, Che had slept when he visited Baracoa to open the chocolate factory.
When these girls whom I had known since their first vision of a foreigner, came swarming to greet me with wild exclamations about their joy. To me this was the best moment, to be in their life at a time, the purest of the pure and its most innocent moments.

they were full of questions of the world, and the life I had lead without them in the past one year. I went with them to each of their houses and greeted their family. At one the father of Idaliana on the right wanted advice about Diabetes and how to prevent its complications, in another I was talking about the time when Che Guevara had come to that house and in the third, it was the one of Daniela on the left whose parents had been my friends from way back when I had come to these parts in search of obscure palms.

The hair cut
Mario along with Idlama in Buenos Aires are the only two hairdressers who have helped me maintain my hair. Idalma is from matanzas in cuba. So it is a pleasure and honour this artist comes over to the house
Mario Luis and my new hair cut. I did explain to him that I have to look my best for Bastille Day! Mario luis is an artist singer and works as a maquillage in movie sets especially franco cuban co productions…this is yet another side of Mario Luis
it is 10 pm and the visitors have all left. I am hungry so I am going to walk over to the house of Yamina so that I can eat something and also drink a local herbal concoction called Pru

As I was walking towards the house of Yamina, I thought about you, the person who shares these things with me. Morgan. I thought about reality for a while, not in terms of ourselves but for my friends. Fairly depressing indeed. In our countries, we bring upon ourselves problems by being petty and not seeing the big picture, here they bring the problems because they cannot see the big picture and thus suffer.

Just before going to Yamina’s house I had two lovely visitors. My heart really wept when I saw them, I could only hold them close to me to let them know that I had missed them and tell them I love them very very much. They responded in kind, I realized that however inconvenient it is for me, it is not fair for them not to have seen me, I was being selfish by not coming, by telling myself unnecessary excuses. I am poor because I have missed these contacts

I missed them. I miss you. A life lost in magic and longings, saudade. Feeling that nothing can be real because everything feel so good. Lifes bounty is shared freely with me. I am humble to accept it.

What claudia said tonight resonant with this. She said, everything sounds like a dream, that she would get to go to havana to spend one week and perhaps even I could meet her there. She would get a computer so that she would be able to send me emails from her home. That I might leave a mobilephone here so that I can send her text messages. She said she has fear that her dream will break and reality will come in.

That is how I feel now. I wished her good night and sleep with angels, as we say here to wish someone a pleasant night.

Life has given me greatest of all gifts. The past 17 days have been nothing short of a dream. Now in short seven days I will be with you, immerse myself completely in you and be lost in your mind and soul and body.

If I were to look for reasons not to come to Baracoa as often as I used to do before, I can come up with hundreds of reason.
It is expensive, it is emotionally very taxing, the time consumed is a lot, the intellectual returns are small. That I miss you very much when I am here

But who would tell Marie the older, when she asked her father, why isnt yehuda coming to our city?

But when Marie the elder who is 11 year old came to see me with Mari the younger aged 6, my heart began weeping the same tears as it did for you. I was so lost in the innocence of their love for me. Just to recollect those moments makes me want to cry. My mind is very sensitized by you at this moment and anything tender that happens to me makes me weep.

Other things that happened to day include
Discussion about an article on archeology with the local investigator
Spending time with Castro my closest friend who is now with a spanish mutual friend who is visiting. Tomorrow night I am sure we will get to spend some time together.