Guabanos
This is not an uplifting one so feel free to skip it if you have heard enough darkness lately!
We had the wind at our back today as we made our way back towards Havana. We are staying 15 miles outside the city in a third floor apartment looking over the sea. The same breeze that propelled us here, now blows in the window and out the door cooling is and reminding us, yet again how lucky we are.
I am beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable telling our hosts and the people that we meet that we are going home in two days. Eyes go wide when we say we are flying home with our bikes, disbelieving that it can be so easy. For all the great things about this country, it is still a prison of sorts and we are the chosen few that get to slip in and out of the bars.
It seems so unfair, and as many times as I make apologies for our president and our policies, I still feel ridiculous privileged just because of the circumstances in to which I was born. Many people here will never have the opportunity to leave, not without huge sacrifice.
The water out our window is turquoise blue, the sand is white, there is music and dancing and passion, but the feeling of being trapped shows in many people’s eyes.
Tonight, as Weezie and sat in a small restaurant on the side of the road, eating our customary fried fish and pizza, we watched as four foreign, old, white, men picked up some beautiful teenage girls to engage in some sex trade. There was a dance of requested and shared cigarettes, shoulder rubs, lewd, ogling stares and then a joining of the two groups. I felt nothing but compassion for the girls. There had to be such extreme desperation for them to engage with these nasty men and they were so young. For the men, I just felt hatred. Hate is not something I feel very often, and when I do it is seering and painful.
When we stood to leave, we had to walk closely by their table and as I looked at the men, with their baggy eyes and fleshy jowls something in me uncapped. With out any forethought, I began giving them the thumbs down over and over and repeatedly told them that they were fucked up. I don’t know where they were from, not Cuba that was for sure, and I thought that in my fury these were two universal messages that were easily understood. My heart pounded and my cheeks flamed. These men were disgusting. Who could prey on desperate teenagers like this?
There is so much pain here, so much loss, but the only evil I have witnessed has been from these visitors.