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Location: Pinar del Rio, Cuba
Fifty-seven miles per hour was our tour bus driver’s
speed of choice as we fell down the stunted mountains of western
Cuba, racing past signs advising for speeds half that on narrow
roads with no more than a foot of treacherous crumbling asphalt
leeway on either side. I was grabbing as many pictures as
I could through the forehead-grease smudged windows, a scene
so unlike Havana was revealing itself shamelessly and proclaiming;
“This is Pinar del Rio…rural Cuba!” |
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These homes were not houses but shacks, and comparatively,
awarded Havana’s slums Beverly Hills status. Once we
fully submerged into the valley I was able to look closer,
and imagined I knew what it meant to experience the toil of
the Cuban farmer. As I sat on my overly-padded seat in the
climate-controlled bus, I observed people going about their
daily lives in absolute poverty. I saw children playing in
and with the dirt and nothing more, while a father looked
on from his ox-driven plow that surely was surplus from the
Middle Ages. I saw old men sitting together on porches made
with rusty pipes and corrugated plastic sheets smoking cigars
stolen for them by their grandchildren, (who roll them for
a living) as mothers with great tubs washed clothes that were
the hottest style in the U.S. in 1985. |
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As we raced by these people I noticed they all had one distinguishable
characteristic I’d never experienced in my travels; every
rural Cuban was smiling. Through the glass, these people appeared
as satisfied in their shacks and fields as any human could
possibly be. I adjusted myself in my seat to alleviate the
discomfort I was feeling from my wallet, stuffed fat with
bills, and marvelled at how these people could radiate such
content in a region so apparently destitute.
I gazed down at my camera and wondered how these people could
be happy without one. I tried to grasp a reality where I didn’t
have a camera, a tour bus, or a wallet with American twenties,
and was probably on the fringe of the old “money isn’t
everything” lesson. Perhaps an epiphany that would influence
the rest of the trip and even my life was about to reveal
itself and free me from the burdens of commercial consumerism.
Fortunately, before my ignorant suburban mind could conjure
it up, I saw a little boy laughing and playing with a dog,
so I just took a picture instead. Maybe in a few years I’ll
look at that face in the photo and try to find the secret,
that everlasting truth I needed in that excessively luxurious
tour bus, gazing out at poor people. That time will come of
course only if I’m not too busy making a run to the mall.
Text and images © Nicholas Linder, All Rights Reserved
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Travel Writers: A Cultural Economy by Nicholas
Lindner
