In Cuba

So, we're in Cuba: and the people look good. I think it's the healthiest collection of working-class people I've yet seen - despite the US embargo, etc. Just consistently healthy looking people - good teeth, good skin, good postures, healthy looking children and old people, everywhere you look. And no poor, or "underclass" people, or not in the way you see them on US and UK and European streets, no homeless in doorways, drunks in parks, no shanty towns that we've seen from the road or the air. Doctors here apparently get paid less than policeman, one guy said less than street cleaners, but they still have so many medical students they export them to the third world - as you may know they have more doctors per head than we do in the UK (and an average school class size, all the way through, of fifteen).

You can see why the US government is worried - something is seriously wrong here! These people have completely failed to have their society be built in the proper protestant/capitalist way, with greed as the primary motivation - despite the dollar-hungry hustlers and the bits of tourist-focused private enterprise. It's immoral!

We're being huevones (lazy people) as usual, hiding from the heat of the day in our air-con rooms, but still gradually picking up on the Cuban Spanish accent (swallow half your words, including almost all the S's - somebody complimented me on my "buen e'pañol" earlier today). Had a real Sunday today - played a family game or two, read books, ate pizza and ice-cream ...

We caught up with Tracie and Anna yesterday, who we met in Mérida, and they introduced me to Cuban theatre (agit-prop/Brechtian kinda flavour - probably pretty funny, if my Spanish was a little better), and cheap ice-cream (agit-prop/Brechtian kinda flavour - but all they had in was pineapple with orange: strawberry and chocolate is supposed to be better).

Tomorrow we will exchange some of our pesos convertibles for pesos cubanos, and start buying our own ice-cream and more at ordinary Cuban prices.

That's it for today. Photos will eventually follow, once we take a few more, but probably not until we get to somewhere with faster internet access - Jamaica or even the UK.

- Mark