Hide and seek in Cuba Ever since 4th grade, I have wanted to go to Cuba. When a friend in my class came back from a vacation, he told us stories about what they had seen. He told stories about places he went to, sights he saw and smells he discovered. He told stories about about a country where they have sugarcanes. Ever since I heard about his stories, I have wanted to see sugarcanes.Leaving for Cuba, was a spontanious act. When asking the airline company for the cheapest flight possible, I actually didn’t think that their concept of cheap, would satisfy my needs. I was a bit resistant to pay too much for the trip, because I’ve heard, that Cuba is not a country where you encounter low prices on food and accommodation. To my surprise, the price of a return ticket was US $590, taxes included, and for that price, I would get to Cuba and back as fast as possible. Leaving Cartagena allready the next day at 10 in the morning, I would arrive at Cuba 4,5 hours later. I did not expect this and I had allready set my mind on leaving Cartagena for another Colombian destination.

Why Cuba? Why not?

My best friend from childhood, Trond, is on a vacation to South America and Cuba. After spending 2 weeks in Brazil, he and his friend is going to spend the last 2 weeks on Cuba - arriving Tuesday 24th of july. We have been talking loosely about meeting up somewhere and sometime, but have never made specific plans. When he was in Brazil and I was in Venezuela, he seemed too far away. When I arrived to Cartagena and realised that Cuba is available as a destination from the Cartagena Airport, he seemed too close to ignore. I had the option on going with 2 Dutch people that I had been hangning out with for some time, but the shortest straw was a trip to Cuba. As the first days go by here in Cuba, I find myself searching.

Cuba is a country, where they have an enourmous amount of various items to search for. I had never thought, though, that the thing to test the talent of tactical, thorough, tedious and technical tracing, turned out to be - Trond. I have not yet found him, not yet heard from him, not yet seen him and not yet recieved a mail from him letting me know where he is at. To my knowledge, he should have arrived 2 hours ahead of me and he promised to read his mail before leaving Brazil. When I arrived in Panama City, for a quick stop waiting for my connecting flight to Cuba, I borrowed a computer from another traveller to check my mail. No mail from Trond. Strange - he should have read my mail by then. Wandering the airport of Panama, wondering whether Trond has read my mail or not, took up must of my waiting time. To the other travellers at the airport, I must have seemed a bit parapatetic.

I intend to investigate if improvements on inaccessible individual is impossible, and I inquire for instructions on yet a thing to search for - Internet. Coming to Cuba, cables carries no capacity, in comparison to capitalistic countries, to commercialize commodities currently known as - Computers. When you travel, and do not plan anything, you get a few surprises along the way. Little did I know, that Internet is under control here in Cuba and trying to locate an internetcafé in this country, is actually impossible. They do have internet, though, but getting access to it, is a struggle. The biggest hotels seem to have computers with internet access, but there is one public Internetcafé, that most Cubans use. It must be the most fashionable internetcafé in the world, as it is located in El Capitolio. A magnificent building from greater days, where a massive statue greets you welcome and where a 25 carat diamond is moulded into the hallway floor - and somewhere in this complex, a small room with 4-6 functional computers. I have, during my 2 days here in Havana, counted 16 computers, half of them not working or without connection to internet, and when you concider tourism in Cuba and locals demand for internet, you can imagine that the price is not right. For the first time in my life, I have experienced that internet is sold out. How strange it may seem for the non-Cuban citizen, it is very much a reality here. I haven’t really asked about it, but it seems, that a central agency controls the usage of internet and sells internettime to the hotels and the official internetcafé. When a hotel runs out of time, they have to go and by more time and us, the consumers, have to wait. As in most internetcafés I know, it is not possible to just sit down by a computer and use it for at long as you need - you have to buy certain amount of time. This is why my visits to internet will be brief, infrequent and costly while I am here in Cuba and photos have to wait until I arrive in Colombia.

Even if visits to internet are normally so short, that the real name of it here in Cuba should be intronet, I have spend considerable amount of time around it. I almost feel like a intronet-groupie - hanging around the known internet places in search for the next computer to hook up with. Constantly refilling internettime, nervously chewing gum and drinking loads of water. But I still haven’t found, what I’m looking for.

Terribly tall, temporarily teasing me, topping the tension throughout this thriller of this toaster town - Trond tragically and truly transmits trouble. Is he trustworthy, has he told me the truth, was it not Tuesday two days ago, is this just typical and has he got me trapped? I really hope something just happened to him - cause then I could relax. But I hope nothing has happened to him, and that he is doing the exact same thing as I was doing in my first hours: searching for computers and internet.

Cuba is a country where new meets old. Where you can look in one direction, and by a slight twist of your head witness the absolute opposite of what you saw a splitsecond ago. Where you can get the impression of that the houses are build by and for ghosts yet where the streets are clean.

Cuba is a country where familiarity walks hand in hand with the unknown. Almost like an ultrasound image of a little baby inside a womb. It’s black, triangular and with a number of white and grey spots. Everyone knows what it really is a picture of, but still a vast number of soon to be parents, fail to recognise the shapes and patterns of the small being. As scary and joyful it must be to become a parent, walking the streets of Havana at night must be a similar experience. Locating my bed at night, happy to still be alive - it makes me think that the result of the ultrasound image can’t be any different. To me, everything with babies seems scary, but when you see it come to life, how hard can it be? It can’t even hurt you as the Colombians and Venezuelans can. Some scumbags of these countries are dangerous and do not have high thoughts about life. But as long as the small baby does not grow up to be any of these thugs of crime, what other than sheer excitement and joy can it bring? How would I know? I’m not a parent. In Cuba, the familiarity is all the stories that I have heard and the unknown is how everything really works down here. In Cuba, the familiarity is the old cars driving in the streets and the unknown is all the historical bygones that everyone contains. Here - the unknown urges to become familiar and the familiar urges to become a part of you.

Parents here in Cuba, and other places in South America, shows me something else, that I have only heard about in Hollywood movies. So many times have I heard about people growing up on the streets and people that misses the streets. Honestly - I have never really understood what that really is all about, until I came to Cuba. I have been exposed to my revelation in both Venezuela and Colombia, but it has not been as pronounced as here. Seeing and listening to the desperate cry of an infant, at 22:30 at night, in the middle of an unlit street where cars and hordes of people passed by, made me realise what growing up on the streets really means. In my world, babies go to bed early. That is what they do. They eat, sleep, shit, cry and go to bed early. In this world, babies go to bed when their parents go to bed - or so it seems. That must be why I can see large groups of small kids running around the streets late at night and that must be why I can see and hear infants in busy urban streets at the same time. I don’t think they were homeless. They were just not sleeping.

Something sad scatter my schedule, scanning scarce streets for something so central to my social strata - Shops. There doesn’t seem to be any shops. There are buildings with doors and handmade signs written in spanish stating that a shop is hiding behind the door, but inside - a selection of the absolute minimum necessary for basic survival, springs to your eyes with the same force as a stone would use to catapult you into space. Anyone knowing the basics of physics, would clearly deduct that this cannot be done. A stone does not know how to build a catapult and if a stone should be mentioned in the same sentence as a catapult, is should be mentioned as the item that the catapult uses to bombard a random enemy. I spent 2 hours trying to locate a shop that had toiletpaper. I am not sure of what kind of shop it really was, but it was in a basement and the shop had the absolute minimum necessary for building a bathroom: sink, toilet, concrete. Thinking about it, it might seem logical that they sell toiletpaper in a "build your own toilet" shop, but there must be supermarkeds around. But my problem is, that I cannot find a supermarket, or even a corner shop, or just any kind of shop. People here seem to live of cigars, beer and food sold from small restaurants. There must be some streets I have missed and these streets I need to find, but right now - I need to find Trond.

In my search for Trond, I have found myself wandering the areas of tourism and I must honestly admit, that I am feeling a bit repulsed by it. I have seen tourist with clean hair and pressed shirts. I have seen the famous tourist tan: skin, red as a lobster. I have seen the very same red tan covered with newly purchased linen shirts, straw hats, fake jewlery, cotton trousers and socalled leather shoes. I have seen people thriving around big hotels - hotels that raises from the streets as gems in a bowl of jelly beans. Hotels are not the real Havana. The real Havana seems everywhere but the hotels. I have eaten with heavy and polished silverware, but I lost my apetite by using it, and ate with my fingers instead. I am glad I didn’t eat soup. I want to find Trond so I can get away from suitcases on wheels, strong scent of parfume, tourist with neatly packed day-packs and middleaged women with comfortable, brand new, white sneakers and the miniature umbrella hanging from a string around their wrist. I need to find Trond so I can stop hanging around people who think it is rude that the Cubans don’t speak english, who just absorbs and don’t question the things they see and who for sure, will return to their home country and reply "the hotel was fabulous" as the first respons, when their friends ask how was Cuba.

I need to find Trond so I can be everything else than this. I will search for Cuban cigars and I will search for sugar canes. I will search for the spirit of Havana and the spanish language. I will search for streetvendors and bottles of water. I may search for another hotel, but not for sure. My hotel actually is fabulous and I would disagree with anyone telling me otherwise. I am renting a room in a family apartment, having my own doublebed, bathroom, TV with 4 channels, air conditioning and a fan in the attic. For the first time on my trip, I have encountered true hospitality. The woman of the house smiles with the entire face, speaking nothing but spanish - this is the atmosphere I have been searching for. She sits with me through her homemade breakfast, talking with me and she helps me out with everything I need help with. She is patient with my spanish, a good teacher and a joyful person. Ironically - I find the correct spanish-learning atmosphere here in Cuba, in a country where searching is a full-time occupation. And ironically - the hotel actually is fabulous. I’m just glad that it is not really a hotel.