Good time girls

Tony Uniting with Some of the Workers of the World

After meeting the official teachers in the official setting in Baracoa, I set myself upon a quest to have an unofficial conversation with some young Cuban women. This is difficult because so many people are out to extract a couple of dollars from tourists that girls who are not after that are at pains to explain that they don't want a free meal or whatever.
In Sandiago de Cuba you learn to say "No necessitato" (I don't need any) and "No gracias". Any girl in the company of tourists, even just chatting or walking in close proximity around the tourist centre is in trouble.

All that being said, we managed it. We came across four women aged between 22 and 28: a beautician, a literature teacher, a computer programmer and a salsa teacher. Quite a combination eh? They immediately identified Tony, Charles and Josh as complete dancing retards and seemed to think it would be funny to get them up dancing in order to laugh at them... and the night was away.

They wanted to show us where to go for dinner. They repeatedly insisted that they would not join us because that is not what they were after. It was sad. To get to this little private restaurant, we had to walk at least 25 metres behind them and act like we had nothing to do with them. Sure enough, the place was terrific and true to their word they just disappeared.

We had arranged to meet later and go to their favourite club. Again we had to follow at great distance. We had to enter first and pay $2. They can usually enter for about 5 cents. But the guy on the door decided that to get into the club they had to have a Cuban man accompanying them. Off they went to get one. Then the guy at the door decided that they had to pay $2 each to get in. Given that their monthly wage is probably about $20, this is ridiculous. After much ado, we managed to get them in. They were fuming. One went in to a silent rage, another talked and explained, another sat a stared at the guy on the door. Eventually they decribed a little about the difficulties of daily life as a Cuban women.


I had asked lots of people, and by that I mean male people, why I had not seen women driving or women tour guides and each time I was given an explanation that did not make a great deal of sense. eg "You don't see women driving because there are not many cars in Cuba", this completely missed the point and when I most gently asked if Cuba still has a touch of machismo, the men looked quite surprised. The four women, of course, had a different answer. Interestingly, they did not describe the situation in terms of sexism or machismo, but they did articulate how much harder life is for women. Tony was having a great time and being silly, at one point I gave him a mock slap up the back of the head. They laughed and cheered and said that it is how life should be. Tony played up to this claiming that I have him under the thumb and they thought this was just great. They did explain though that families are often matriachal, but I was not sure exactly what this meant in reality.

We asked them to come back to the hotel, so we could give them some pencils for their children, all the shampoo and conditioner from the hotel bathrooms etc. They had to really hang back and said that they did not want to be in the hotel area, first because the police would grab them and second because there were too many drunk men around. They were delighted with the gifts and the computer programmer was thrilled to bits with a lanyon that Tony gave her. She said that she had wanted one for ages so she could put her memory stick on it, but she had never seen one for sale in Cuba. The whole night was an exercise in seeing first hand what they go through. It was sobering.

The beautician particularly was interested in life outside Cuba, especially Mexico. (most Cubans I had met up til then were only interested in the west). When I described the poverty and illiteracy she was truely horrified. She had heard it all before, from Granma (the official Cuban daily paper) but she had not heard many real stories from someone outside the Cuban government machine. The literature teacher took a particular shine to Charles, but was frustrated but his poor Spanish.
All of this conversation was alternated with dancing, drinking a listening to the band. The band at the place they took us to was wonderful, the musicians seemed to be just old guys paying their instruments, rather than musicians trying to live up the the tourisits expectations of what a Cuban musician should look like.
I asked the women where their husbands and boyfriends were. It turned out that 3 of the 4 of them have children, but none of them feel the need to catch a man on any permanent basis. Every encounter is "just for the moment, and just for them memories". Like the vast majority, they live with their parents, which means they have no space, no privacy, but lots of babysitting available.