On freedom to roam

cuba libre-2

“Libre de que?”, I wonder, looking at the intimidatingly pale cocktail standing before me. The ratio of rum to coke seems to be inversed, as in Cuba rum is the cheaper ingredient. At least that’s what I want to think. Ordered to provide respite from oppressive heat and thirst, my Cuba Libre provides also food for thought. The legends surrounding the origins of the cocktail connect it to the Cuban independence movement, dating back to times when Spain was an oppressor, America a friend.

As will be explained to us later, over another rum concoction, by Pedro, a local musician, Cuba no es libre. Not quite. Not in a sense that someone from a Western democratic country takes for granted. This is something that’s easier to relate to for someone coming from a country with a similar history of abusive relationships with alpha players in the region. Cuba had its brutal marriage with Spain and an unhealthy affair with America. Poland’s neighbours were known for similarly imperialistic streaks.

And then there are freedoms that can be taken from within. From the top, but without any foreign influence. Ah, you see, my Eastern European gloom got better of me. Here I am – drinking an exotic cocktail, sitting in the shade infused with sounds of mambo and scents of fresh mint, thinking about historical slights and wicked dead empires. I mean—just look around—isn’t all going well? American tourists are off guard, walking around in their flip flops and baseball caps, buying overpriced souvenirs from boutique shops set up by entrepreneurial locals. Commerce and tourism – peace and love 2.0 – rebranded for the globalised times.

It could be argued that Cuba is in fact freer than ever; free from the colonial yoke, free from slavery, America, and the strict Leninist-Marxist doctrine. Slowly, the people are gaining new liberties; access to international communication – internet and mobile phones, the right to run a small private business, sell a house and travel abroad. It seems then that Cubans are catching up with Western freedoms.

But the right to come and go as you please and cross the borders with ease is not something that can be simply bestowed with a presidential signature. Granted, the legal and political barrier has been somewhat removed in Cuba. But from talking to those who go and those who stay, I know there is more than the government and closed borders holding one back from travelling. I think of the freedom to roam as tethered threefold:

Travelling as something one is not allowed to do.
Travelling as something one can’t afford to do.
Travelling as something one can’t imagine doing.

I come from a stock of those who stayed for all the above reasons. My family roots can be traced to generations of farmers who all settled in neighbouring villages in one region of south-east Poland. My cousins from both sides are still there and still farming. My ancestors weren’t like the gypsies who were always on the go, periodically setting up their caravans on the borders of my grandfather’s farm or the Ukrainian labourers who came and went with the seasons, following the crops. They were farmers who only sometimes and always begrudgingly went to the nearest town or to send off potatoes on their international journeys. They themselves would never go that far, very rarely even staying one night outside the house.

Travelling was not what we did, not only due to the lack of imagination. It’s hard to leave a house that houses the young and the old that need to be taken care of. It’s hard to go away when there are humans and beasts to feed, bread to make, hay to turn, wild dogs to fend off, calves and foals to deliver. True, there are many cultures and peoples who have been doing that on the go for thousands of years; dwelling in movement. Well, we just do the dwelling part.

My ancestors stayed in the same villages and watched the tectonic shifts of empires, advancing and receding, moving over their lands. In the late 18^th century the Prussia[1], Habsburgs and Russia came, imposing new administrative barriers, visas, permits and suspicions that those who crossed the borders were likely to be involved in insurgency movements. And there were no roads anyway, so even the trips between major cities were a huge undertaking.

Then the Austro-Hungarian empire in the 19^th century, then the German Reich in the 20^th, subsequently replaced by the Soviets who frowned at passports and ideas, especially if they were to be used to mingle with the West. While people still travelled and emigrated and, with a bit of creative gumption, conducted international business back then, my parents only managed to migrate from their neighbouring villages to the nearest city. And they stayed there for the rest of their lives. When we move, we move to settle, not to roam.

In the 80s and 90s, the Russian influence ebbed East again and my generation grew up in a post-soviet capitalist frontier, in the Wild West of democracy. Suddenly, Poland had independent borders with a sovereign bit in the middle. But then the opt-in empire of European Union came, and the borders were thrown wide open. That was 15 years ago but I’m still the only one in my family for whom international travel, and transnational living, is an obvious thing to do.

Perhaps that still sits uneasily with me; makes me wriggle on my bar stool while my friends and colleagues compare Toronto, New York and Sydney over a glass of wine, simultaneously planning to vacation in Thailand in a few months, complaining about the drudgery of an incoming business trip to Chicago, and musing on a temporary career relocation to Singapore. Perhaps it will take another decade for me to feel that I truly belong to such a global class of citizens. It might take another uprooting and repotting myself in a foreign soil to dismiss the suspicion that freedom to roam is merely a temporary privilege rather than an irrevocable right. It doesn’t help that the world seems to confirm this suspicion; that such rights can be snatched by those in power. Borders can close, quotas be imposed, the free flow of dreams reduced to a trickle of luck. The freedom to roam is likely to be frowned upon by those who derive their identity and the little of power they have from forgetting the settling of their own families. Enough of you have come, they say. Or enough of you have left, depending on whether the river of human movement looks like a drain or a deluge from their perspective.

It’s either a bout of Eastern European negativity or this fixed farming genotype of mine that makes me dwell on those who dwell; especially on their juxtaposition to my newly acquired political, economic and mental freedom to travel.

So, over a bottle of Cristal, I think of how we get whizzed from a champagne bar at Heathrow to a coffee lounge in Mexico to the family-run restaurant in Havana, where we eat a meal that costs roughly the annual salary of our young and talkative waiter. When we head back to our air-conditioned condo in Havana Vieja, our neighbour roasts a whole pig right on the street, preparing for the new year eve fiesta. Next day more air-conditioned restaurants, airy galleries and secluded cafes in cul de sacs await us, while our neighbour boils the pig’s head with some corn right on the street. The following day I begin to grow weary of the kaleidoscope of places to taste, of thoughts running ahead of schedule to new destinations from the catalogue of possibilities. But we keep moving on to see more of the dissimilar before the procession of sights, scents and sounds takes us back to the airport, to the air and across the earth while our neighbour will proceed to bake some yams from his vegetable stand. Every day he places his makeshift barbecue on the same street corner and guards it late into the night, sometimes poking gently at a baking yam. He’ll put on some salsa CD to pass the long day of anyone buying hardly any of the guavas arranged from the greenest on the left to the reddest and ripest on the right. But by the time the green ones ripen exposed to the heat and sun, we’ll be on another continent.

cuba libre

El.

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Inspired by a trip to Cuba in 2018/19

On the last day of holiday and returning to the everyday

The last day of holiday. A time of reckoning and reflection about how all good times come to an end. This liminal moment is as good as any, or perhaps better than most, to provide a vantage point from where to look at my life as I left it.

a vantage point from where to look at my life back in London

Is there anyone who on the last day of holidays doesn’t at least fleetingly entertain the idea of not going back at all? Wondering how much we would miss – or be missed – if we never returned but continued indefinitely a lifestyle of slowly nurturing skin cancer. Few of us can do it. It’s better not to even think that more of us could actually do it if only we put our minds to it and came up with a plan. There is something terrifying in a thought of everyday life being lived among palms and mojitos. How then can someone complain about everyday drudgery? Isn’t it more fitting for everyday drudgery to be contained to grey skies, congested commuter belts and glass office cages? At least then, we can dream of going away to search for languorous days filled with local liquors and uncensored sun, safe in the certainty that the perfection of the dream will be neither matched by reality nor threatened by permanence.

What does one dream of in paradise? Well, I can tell you, as I’m in a place that could easily pass for one. I’ve just watched my last sunset over the Caribbean Sea. I missed most of it as this town is yet to embrace the idea of a beach-facing bar. So instead I’ve been dreaming of my sock drawer. Not as it is now; all tangled into random heaps. I’ve been dreaming of the ideal version of my sock drawer. Marie Kondo style; with each pair of socks folded together into neat little packets, stored vertically, arranged into rows, put in little boxes. And dreaming of the ideal version of me who does such things and who will surely manifest the second I’m released from the plane to face everyday life with post-holiday vigour and refreshed sense of purpose.

But not yet. I still have rum and tobacco in my system, and it’ll be some time before I’m returned to the fifty shades of grey of London in January. Next morning, we’ll face 29 hours of transition between the holiday reality and everyday reality. But my mind has already started the journey. I can’t help but think forensically about my cocoon of obligations; emails, tasks, emails, colleagues, emails, social media, emails, family, emails, work, and work emails, calendar remainders, constructors to be chased, taxes to be calculated, meetings rescheduled, postponed projects, leaking taps. And urgent emails.

In this liminal process of going to and fro and through airports, of sitting on a plane, literally above any mundane concerns, it’s almost, almost possible to believe we can free ourselves from the layers of amber of our life that envelop us day by day. But as we’re preparing for landing, the routine is already waiting in the arrivals hall. And as we lose the altitude, we grow more comfortable with immersing ourselves into what we’ve left behind and what awaits us now.

What other choice do we have, after all? To radically rethink our life and make bold choices and big changes so that maybe we can get closer to our holiday selves every day? Well, perhaps we can muse about our next short break instead, to scratch this reckoning itch. Just about.

Inspired by the trip to Cuba in 2018-19, written while being eaten by mosquitoes on a patio in Varadero.

On familiar smells in exotic places

Perhaps one of the main allures of travel is to put oneself in places we have no memories of. In places untouched by our everyday existence and disentangled from our identity. Cuba was supposed to be such a place; exotic, distant, with still only one eye open to the ubiquitous capitalism. I expected Cuba to jolt my senses with its unique sensations; rhythmic beats of salsa, moreish sweetness of pineapple, fresh scent of bashed mint. I was ready for the heady kick of generous measures of the Havana Club finest, for the walls and cars putting Pantone shades to shame, for the curvaceous shapes of tropical plants with their huge leaves resembling intricate paper-cuts.

I wasn’t ready for how much Cuba reminded me of my childhood.

lada

First of all, it hit us with the hard to describe feeling of the communist-era purgatory; where insignificant individuals queue in brown-beige spaces to get a stamp of approval from the all-seeing but uncaring eye of the system. I almost lost my visa right after crossing the Cuban border control. It is a dangerous thing to be without those little slips of paper that justify your existence in the eyes of the almighty bureaucracy. I experienced that first-hand when crossing the Ukrainian border, where our paperwork, and thus existence, was found lacking. And then again at Odessa airport, trying to explain to a glaring border control official why I had entered Ukraine twice on one day but never left. Long story for another day, for another post. Fortunately, this time the patron saint of idiots was smiling on me; a middle-aged Argentinian couple noticed the visa slipping from my passport and handed it back to me.

So. I had all the inconspicuous but terribly important slips of paper in order and I wasn’t smuggling any firearms or pornography. But still I felt inadequate when I finally faced the judgement of the Valkyries of socialism – the clerk ladies, looking at you from their counters without a shred of sympathy. Always middle-aged, always with their hair permed or bleached, or both, with heavy make-up or heavy jewellery, or both, always with a frown or bored expression, or both. There is even a unique name for them in Polish – pani w okienku, which translates as ‘the lady in the window’, referring to the glass pane that shields her from queuing supplicants.

But this time the Valkyrie, well, not exactly smiled, but stamped my passport and waved me through. The almighty bureaucratic system of the Republic of Cuba opened her sweaty arms to welcome me in.

Our flight had been delayed and we arrived later than expected. The sun was already setting. The arrival lounge of the airport was full of middle-aged taxi drivers holding placards with international surnames. Eduardo was not there, so we wandered off to find a currency exchange. And another oddly familiar detail disrupted the Caribbean exoticism. The second level of the arrival lounge, quiet and empty, turned out to be a perfect example of the soviet approach to interior design that always somehow manages to look both grandiose and shabby. There were acres of polished floors and mosaic ceilings crisscrossed with elegant stone pillars. But there were also ugly concrete installations and cheap plastic fittings showing signature signs of the creativity of amateur plumbers and electricians that will look instantly familiar to anyone who grew up in the blocks of flats designed with a soviet flair and executed with blasé nonchalance. Even the smell was right. The trademark scent of Lizol that was used to disinfect the floors of public buildings. As in Poland, the wind of change might sound like the rustle of green American dollars, but it smelled of disinfected terrazzo.

We finally found the right Eduardo, and Eduardo, after a false start of putting another tourist into his car, found us. We were ready to be whisked away to our exotic destination in a candy-pink retired Chevrolet. But the Soviet goddess of lacklustre charm once again asserted her dominance over the American demigod of grandiose glamour. It turned out Eduardo was a proud owner of a beige Lada Sputnik[1] that looked like it remembered better days, and frankly, better decades. The feel of faux-leather upholstery sticking to my bare legs, the sounds of an engine with tuberculosis, the whiff of leaded petrol from open windows were all familiar. As a child I spent many summers with my dad’s side of the family and made many a trip in a similar beige Lada owned by my uncle, watching him navigate the potholes of rural roads, breathing in the clouds of petrol dust through open windows; a fair price to pay for the cool breeze that lifted the oppressive heat from the confines of that metal tin.

On our way from the airport to Havana, I was trying to revive the contentment of those childhood rides and my blissful lack of awareness of the need for seat belts for passengers. And I was trying to ignore the fact that Eduardo seemed to have to rely on the eyesight of his brother Antonio who was sitting shotgun and doing his best to point out lanes, cars and pedestrians in near total darkness that had fallen over us. I desperately tried to catch any glimpses of the scenery, but it was too dark; only the unfamiliar shapes of palms and cacti flickering in the headlights. For now, the tropical green and Caribbean blue were to be left to my imagination, and at the moment my imagination couldn’t help but paint this initial glimpse of Cuba in fifty shades of soviet beige.

Inspired by a trip to Cuba in 2018/19

El.

On coming from somewhere

There are just four rooms in our casa particulares in Varadero. At the moment one of them is occupied by a Russian family with two girls and another by an Australian couple on their honeymoon. At breakfast, the head of the Russian family, being Russian, was teaching the Australian couple how to eat caviar. He brought the caviar with him, apparently not being completely satisfied with the Cuban approach to breakfast, which relies heavily on fresh fruit, coffee and eggs. The Australians, being Australian, or maybe newlywed, were super excited and super friendly. Before they disappeared in their taxi colectivo, which will take them to Havana (and then they’ll be off to Bahamas and Miami to continue the grandest trip of their lives) we talked about snorkelling, salsa, Crocodiles, and the weather. As one does. The conversation, however, started with a ritual greeting of ‘where are you from?’

On the road everyone is expected to be from somewhere. Everyone whose appearance screams ‘a tourist’ at least. The question is asked by the locals who try to sell you something, by fellow travellers, by hosts and by guides, and by more locals who try to sell you something entirely different this time.

On the road we seem to be quite literally defined by where we come from (Poland), where we’ve been to (Havana then Viñales) and where we’re going (from Varadero to Havana and then flying back to London). On the road our human condition is stripped from other layers of identity and reduced to the archetype of a nomad. Our life, with its achievements, goals and accumulated things left in the distant everyday, reduced to the motif of journey.

Where are you from? Being a migrant, I got used to this probing enquiry following any utterance I make in my clearly non-British British English. But this is not a usual opening line that those who do not look or sound as being from somewhere else hear. Those who appear to have always belonged rather than have recently come are usually greeted by more static questions. It could be:

What’s your name? – a label, which tends to stay the same as we go through life.

How are you? – which is all about being in the present moment.

Or, in London at least, one is likely to be faced with: What do you do? – the account of where we’ve got to in life, a label describing our place in the structure of things.

I am yet to discover what those who give all the right signs of being Cubanos are asked by the strangers from their own country. I like to think this greeting, which no gringo will receive, entails a recognition of shared hardship, a promise of a better tomorrow and an invitation that smells like tobacco and roasted pig and sounds like laughter punctuated by the arrhythmic heartbeat of salsa.

Inspired by: a trip to Cuba in 2018/19