We took off from Tofino Harbour flying to downtown Vancouver harbour in a float plane, 8 passengers and one pilot. About 20 minutes into the flight the pilot scrambled from the left seat to the right one and peered out the window. Scrambled back to the first seat and starts shifting the rudder pedals to make the plane yaw. After doing that for a while he announced those interesting words “ I don’t want you to be concerned, it is nothing serious but we have a cover that is open and I am going to land in Nanaimo and have it closed. We landed and it was a cover on the the right hand float, they put the suitcases, wrapped in big plastic bags in the floats. He then told us he had heard the noise of the flapping float and tried to close it by yawing but without success. We flew on to Vancouver with the lady in front of me, the one who asked in Tofino “ we only have one pilot” no longer grasping her husband’s hand.
Maybe 50 years when I left Belfast for Canada and was living in Vancouver, or was it Montreal, Cuba became the winter vacation place for many Canadians and I planned to visit one day. One path led to another, Baffin Island in the Arctic, Danang and Saigon in Vietnam, Cameroon in NW Africa and Washington DC and some other places and I never made it to Havana.
Six months ago I met Aurelia, a Spanish lady whose father and his 5 brothers and sisters were born in Manzanillo in the south of Cuba, oddly not far from Guantanamo. Her grandfather had been assigned there as an officer in the Spanish colonial army. Her grandmother had died in Manzanillo and when her grandfather returned to Spain with his 6 children he remarried but in the family photos there was always an empty chair, front and center, with a bouquet of flowers in memory of the departed grandmother. That was all anyone knew of the lady and no one has a picture of her. Aurelia told me she was determined to return to Manzanillo one day to see what she could discover about her grandmother.
In January President Obama announced the easing of the US embargo against Cuba and we decided it was time to make the trip before a few million Cuban Americans arrived from Florida. We were in Malaga at the time and we tried to book the trip using the two largest Spanish travel agencies but were told the hotels in Havana were fully booked. We tried a small agency and after some research Guillermo found us a tour with Guama, the government tour operator, providing hotels and flights, albeit flying on Air Cubana, from Madrid to Santiago de Cuba and then later an internal flight to Havana and finally back to Madrid.
When we were boarding the plane in Madrid, a Russian Ilyushin 96-300, I suggested Aurelia not look at the rust around the entrance door. The plane like the crew had seen many miles, the former showing years of hard use and the latter mostly portly very long term government employees. For those considering a flight on this aircraft note that the 6 bathrooms, shared by 300 plus passengers, are located in a block at the rear of the plane, which after 5 hours of a 10 hour journey argues in favour of the seats at the front.
We were safely delivered to Santiago and then to our misfortune to the Rex, the small hotel provided by Guama. Some of the outstanding features of the Rex, still fresh in my mind, were a day, 24 hours without water of any kind and staff who communicated with each other by shouting loudly, once the sun was up.
After some negotiation and a furtive illegal exchange of monies, for our 200 km trip from Santiago to Manzanillo we hired a car, a 1952 Chrysler, that to our surprise on the morning of departure came with not only a driver but the owner and his wife. When we broke down on the first leg repairs were quickly accomplished with a pair of pliers and some wire.
The rooms we had rented in the government approved private house in Manzanillo were clean, air-conditioned and owned by a very friendly couple. Like many other travellers I recommend staying in these “casa particular” rather than the government operated hotels. The lady of the house knew the local historian and took us to visit the Archivo Historico. Aurelia had no luck finding information about her grandmother but they did escort us to the local Cathedral and the tiny office of Tito the gentleman responsible for the parish records, detailed in dusty books in two large floor to ceiling cabinets. We gave him what information we had and after an initial search again there was no luck. But after some discussion we agreed to return that afternoon and to Aurelia’s surprise and delight he had located the entries listing the baptism and at 40 years of age the death of her grandmother from puerperal fever subsequent to delivering her sixth child.
When the Plymouth broke down on the return trip it was more serious, Aurelia claims she saw the departing component rolling along the road behind us just before the car started lurching to the left, we were after all in Cuba. She went looking, with no luck for the piece that deserted the Plymouth.
But the local AAA / RAC in the form of a red truck, you stop and help someone today because you will be at the side of the road tomorrow, soon came to our rescue. The Plymouth was jacked up, a wheel was removed, the truck driver had a box of bits and pieces, a replacement bolt was installed and in 28 degree heat everything put back together by the young driver and the two truckers.
Then it was back to the comforts of the Rex Hotel for a couple of nights and after a 3 hour delay a flight from Santiago to Havana. The Guama provided taxi from the Rex to the airport was one of a kind.
We arrived at the hotel Havana Libre after midnight, the former Hilton until liberated and temporarily occupied by Fidel, Che and friends after the revolution, to stand in line and then be told by the one receptionist that there were no more rooms available. We requested, strongly that the manager be summoned and showed him our booking and he proposed putting us in a car and sending us to yet another hotel. At this Aurelia’s Spanish melt down point had been reached and employing strong words and ample gestures she assured the manager we were staying in the hotel even if in his room. They put is a room that they assured us had recently suffered only some minor water damage. The strong smell confirmed this but I hate to think what they would consider severe damage. Aurelia forcefully persuaded them to give us another room next morning.
The twist at the end of Aurelia’s search for information concerning her grandmother was that at first Tito could find nothing in his dusty books but, and he put this to Aurelia very delicately, in the late 1800s the records were classified as Spanish, Mestizos, Pardos and Morenos and that he had chosen to search further in the Pardos / Coloured records and there he had located her grandmother. Aurelia assured him that it concerned her not a whit that her grandmother had been classified as coloured, though it did explain the physical characteristics of a few of her many cousins, and it might provide some explanation and maybe even a handy excuse for the appearance of children not yet conceived of, and that she was delighted and very grateful that Tito had located the records.
We met many warm friendly and welcoming Cubans, including a Boston Red Sox fan, Cubans love baseball, who barely manage to survive, even with government ration cards for a minimum of essential foodstuffs, on for example a salary of €20 a month for a degreed engineer. We never felt fearful or intimidated even walking in old Havana or the length of the Malecon at night.
Cubans evidently love their crippled pets.
Like us they love their grandchildren
And as you know Cubans have great musicians and music and they love to dance.
I do not believe they deserve to endure the grinding daily poverty, brought about by politicians settling political scores way over their heads, of the 50 years of the US embargo.
Sometimes when I am on the terrace in the evenings I look up and there are the 3 rabbits sitting on the lawn again, and we sit there quietly looking at each other for a long while. I am not sure what exactly they are thinking but my thoughts, depending how close we are to 7 PM, veer between Brer Rabbit and Lapin a La Cocotte. Then as dusk starts hiding the chestnut trees and the first bats swoop around, the rabbits retire to their blackberry patch for the night and I go inside, leaving the bats to dine on the bugs that were snacking on me.
With my children and my visitors all gone back to the USA my life has moved closer to the intended routine. A bicycle ride three days a week to keep the heart functional, up along the least hilly stretch I can find along the road to my friend Joseph’s farm. The roads are narrow and there was one particular corner where drivers seemed to be coming around more in the middle of the road than on their side. After a couple of trips I figured out that on the terrace of a summer home, just before the corner from Joseph’s house, an evidently impoverished Dutch lady and her daughter were attempting to stay warm by lying in the sun naked. Alas the alabaster Hollandaise have gone home and we are all back on our own side of the road.
A few weeks ago as I rolled down the hill before the bridge and the old mill I would see a young couple working on, and clearly living in, an old van set up in the front garden of a house that was closed up for the season. Being winded and needing an excuse to stop on the way back up the hill, and being curious I went in and said a big Bonjour. The kids looked a bit nervous so I said Hello and they started speaking Scottish, or maybe English with a very strong accent. They had finished school and were driving around Europe for a year. So my question, after offering them showers, phone calls home etc. was why overhaul the van in rural Saint Denis in the south of France. Their answer, their first stop after purchasing the van in Scotland was Saint Denis to see some friends staying there for the summer. By the time they reached Saint Denis they realised the true condition of the van and started overhauling it. Now with weeks gone by and their friends returned home they were finishing up and leaving in a couple of days.
So next spin down the hill the gates were closed, the garden tidy and the kids were on the road. You would wish them well, bon voyage, true love, a wedding, children and lots of warm memories for the long rainy Scottish nights when the sun sets at 4 PM and kids do not want to go to bed or to sleep. I did recommend they consider immigration to Australia, one does what one can.
In fact most of the summer visitors and tourists are now gone and we have the roads and countryside pretty much back to ourselves with the sun still shining and the weather still warm. But I do miss walking along the little rural paths that the farm workers used to get to the fields in years gone by, and meeting tourists who stop speaking Dutch, German or English to respond to my ringing Bonjour with their Bonjour in return. Thus enabling them to continue on with their constitutional enjoying a warm feeling of experiencing la France profonde, never suspecting my Irish origins.
A few days ago I was taking a stroll down one of these paths listening to a podcast from an Australian university, two teams were debating the question can capitalism have a soul. So apropos of who knows what one of the debaters threw in a vignette from the 1960s when a young liberated Australian university student was bringing her new baby to school and breast feeding it in class. The professor newly arrived from England, and with a military bearing and moustache said nothing the first two times but on the third occasion said young lady do you know that breast feeding is a form of masturbation. There was a horrified silence, the young lady blushed deeply and after a pause said, no I didn’t but you do it your way and I’ll do it mine. So I was bent over laughing out loud when a couple from my village came around a bend, said Bonjour and were gone before I could come up with anything plausible. Thus do you earn a reputation in a small village.
However it will take time and effort to surpass the older gentleman up the road. I am told he is a Russian who has lived in the village for many many years. About 40 years ago he first became of note for wearing a luxurious full length fur coat in the winter time. But he moved from note to lore when he was observed early on a cold New Years morning at the edge of the small lake that provides the local drinking water, shedding his fur coat to reveal a naked Russian who plunged into the water for a ritual swim. He evidently repeated it for a sufficient number of years that people stopped waking up early on New Years day to watch, so no one knows if and when he stopped.
A few weeks ago I was returning from my bicycle ride, coming down the narrow road to my house when I met my next door neighbour’s sister, her car parked in the middle of the path gathering blackberries from the drywalls enclosing the fields. Since I had to get off the bike to pass I offered to help with the blackberry gathering and after a while and some scratches she told me she had just told her brother that I was invited for lunch at her home the next Saturday. I thanked her and made my way home. The next day, Friday her brother Jean Noel told me about the invitation and I asked what we were having for lunch so I could bring a few bottles of wine. He told me that the main course was 300 snails. So I asked what wine went with snails and he told me red. Who knew.
On Saturday I showed up about 1230 with my wine and there were about a dozen people present, some of whom I had met before when eating on Jean Noel’s terrace. We started in with snacks and the wines that go with snacks. Then a big wok like pan was put on the table with I would guess at least 300 snails and a sauce that added a certain je ne sais quoi. We worked our way through that with baguettes and red wine. Then they lit the barbecue and proceed to grill portions of a wild pig someone had shot just recently. Wild pig also goes with red wine. Next of course came cheese, desert including a blackberry pie that I had contributed to, coffee and a little glass of Armagnac digestive. All this took place on the terrace outside and about 5 PM Jean Noel’s niece asked her Dad if she should dance for us, and he said sure and everybody else cheered.
This is a child about 10 years old wearing what I think we used to call pedal pushers, runners on her feet and a simple top and with her hair pulled back in a pony tail. So blasé John thought this will at least bring the day to an end before I fall asleep here in my chair. The kid went inside to pick out some music and gave it to her cousin to put on the stereo, we all turned our chairs to the front and she stood still waiting for the music. Then when the music started, she stood totally erect, put her right arm in the air, turned her hand over her head, put her left hand behind her back parallel to her waist, turned her head slowly to look over our heads and with a look of pride and a poise dating from hundred of years started to dance a flamenco. After about 5 minutes her audience began to shout encouragement asking for more fire, more blood and she danced with a passion a 10 year old couldn’t possibly have known.
When she was finished I was completely flabbergasted about what, if you are lucky, you can tumble into in a small French village on a sunny afternoon after some food and wine. I thanked the young girl and complimented her father, asking him how long she had studied dance. He told me only a few months. But I persisted asking how could she have that look, that poise and he told me that everyone present, with the exception of two of the ladies, were originally from Andalusia in Spain and what I saw was a natural part of their heritage. Remember over 300,00 Spanish refugees, many Catalan escaped to France during the Franco dictatorship.
It was getting on for 6 PM and I started making my excuses again and they cleaned the table and brought out the aperitifs. The ladies said they were going to make two simple omelettes with locally picked mushrooms, one drier for those that preferred that and the other baveuse, such an evocative word, for those that preferred runny. They also lit the barbecue again and started grilling portions of a deer that a boyfriend of one of the girls had recently hunted and a 3 litre bottle of wine, red, appeared on the table. As a guest I got one of the fresh deer kidneys soaked in vinegar and placed on the barbecue for not a long time. When we reached the coffee for the second time one of the guests came out of he house playing a local set of bagpipes, it actually is a small sheep turned inside out with the legs stoppered with wooden plugs and a drone and chanter stuck in one end, or the other.
At 1130 I again started to say thanks and tried to go home and then it was announced we were going to a larger village to hear some live music and have a last beer. So I got home at 1 AM, turned around a few times and finally laid down and thus ended another weekend in a quiet rural French village.
So now here it is another weekend and time to end this and take a walk to my friend Joseph’s and if I time it right on the return the sun will be going down and shining west to east along the Pyrenees, which roll back into the distance from low to high like broken waves. I like to walk along that road when as winter comes on the snow starts creeping down the mountains and the setting sun reflects off it like snow on fire.
Last note. I got to the farm yesterday and Jeannot , Joseph’s brother in law was sitting outside on a bench in the shade. Jeannot was taken by the fact that I had walked to his place from the village, about a 30 minute effort and told me that at 82 he does not walk anywhere near as much as he used to. Jeannot is a widower with a ribald sense of humour, and he and Joseph live together in their old farm house. Joseph and their dog joined us at the bench. Joseph and Jeannot are about the same age, and if like today neither one has their hearing aids installed, and they both have very pronounced rural accents, the conversation gets loud and frequently confused. I asked Jeannot how long their neighbors the Dutch ladies had been gone and he told me three days. I told him he could still walk a fair distance if he knew that, or was he sneaking across the fields, which got Joseph laughing. Joseph only has one leg, he lost the other years ago in an accident with a farm machine, so cannot cover much distance at all. Actually Joseph has 3 legs, his good one, the prosthesis he was wearing, and his spare prothesis which he had washed and was drying in the sun outside the front door. Jeannot using lots of colourful patois told me that even at his age, if he could not walk far his eyes were still working, for example he could see that the widow Hugette was back home up the hill because her laundry was outside. So I complimented him on his continuing youth as evidenced by his interest in the widow’s underwear and there was a lot more patois and three old guys laughing on a bench with a dog with its head on one side looking at us.
On the way home I walked down the lane past the Russian gentleman’s home and he was in his vegetable garden leaning heavily on his walking stick modernising the system everyone uses here to try to scare off the birds. You cut plastic bottles in half and put them inverted on a stick and when the wind blows they rattle and spin around. Today he was installing a new system with string and shiny CDs which were spinning in the breeze. I wondered if the CDs were of Russian choral music, Gretchaninov for the birds of Saint Denis .
I hope this finds you well, and all things considered, in good spirits.
