(Playing Canastas) |
The director’s office is on the second floor of the mansion and often we held our classes on a balcony outside his office. After finishing an afternoon session fueled by the Cuban soft drink, Tu Kola, I sought a bathroom. After my Donde Esta prompted the secretary to offer the director’s bathroom, I found the place where Cuba lives between two worlds. I had traveled and lived enough in the Third World and used NYC park bathrooms, so I knew to have paper handy. I was ushered into a bathroom where there was a real toilet, a marble bath filled with water, there was a metal drum holding gasoline and next to the tub were the remains of arroz and black beans waiting on a hot plate, by the tub was an orange bucket. After using the toilet and taking in the room, I flushed. Nothing happened. I eyed the bucket, filled it from the tub and physics did the rest. Now all I had to figure out was cooking in the bathroom. The gas I understood. |
Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1962 the Special Period began. Since 1993, Cuba has rationed gas as well as food and electricity. On a joint Cuban American writers outing to the beach outside Havana one Sunday, we passed many people driving next to the highway in horse drawn carts. One man had two oxen, larger than car beasts, pulling him in a wooden carriage. He called them by name and they stopped on a dime and waited untethered until he returned. The companero went into a roadside stand and bought a made-in-Mexico Coca Cola. He took the signature, shapely bottle back to the cart and with a word to the oxen he continued on his journey. No marketing maven or advertising guru could conjure an image so perfect to describe this country bracketed by time.
(Medical School Graduates)
Cuba has a power and a draw like a wonderful faded beauty. Her streets house buildings that recall a time when flourish, detail and color dotted the landscape. Beaches hug every angle of Cuba’s coast. On occasion I locked gazes with old woman, probably themselves great beauties in their heyday. These Women were in search of illusive tomatoes, or waiting in line for rationed round brown rolls. They found my gaze and seemed to inquire if their entire struggle was worth the full population in school, the high number of doctors educated and working in crumbling hospitals without medicines to prescribe because pharmaceuticals and building supplies are embargoed.
And although the official position of the United States government is that travel to Cuba is illegal, there are tours from the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico allow Americans to glimpse this secret place. For me it was a space between winter and summer, between taking care and looking.
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about author wickham boyle
Wickham Boyle, known as Wicki, is a free lance journalist who has lived in TriBeCa since 1976. She is formerly the executive director of LaMaMa theater and produced over 60 shows during her tenure there. She has an M.B.A. from Yale University and worked as a Wall Street stock broker. She has written numerous articles on parenting, finance, the arts, and travel for The New York Times, Savoy, National Geographic, Gotham, Grace and the Downtown Express. She was also one of the founders of CODE Magazine. Her recent book, A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero has garnered excellent reviews and as raised over $20,000 for schools closed in downtown Manhattan. She is the mother of two teenagers and wife to Zachary Minor who is a life skills coach for professional athletes. |
about photographer ana miyares
Even as a child, photography was always her passion... her camera was an extension of her body. Ana taught herself the basic techniques, exposed many miles of film and spent endless hours in her darkrooms. She has taken various workshops and seminars in Europe, NY and Santa Fe from some of the industries most respected and talented photographers.
In 2001, Ms. Miyares started exhibiting her photography in various spaces of Chicago's juried fine art festivals and has won numerous awards from juried art festivals. Aside from fine art photography, Ana specializes in portrait and lifestyle photography, capturing the moments, expressions and feelings that shape peoples lives. Ms. Miyares' work has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Today's Chicago Woman, The Chicago Reader, Pioneer Press, Crain's Chicago Business, The New York Times and Adoptive Families Magazine. www.anamiyares.com
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