INIFAT - Main Driveway
A busy morning followed by a quiet afternoon.
As we were going to the botanical gardens the next day I had the afternoon off to revise the work that I had already done and to do some more reading. After rice and beans for lunch I decided to see if I could email Jo – a task that isn’t as straightforward as I am used to in the UK. The first thing that I did was to ask in the international office if I would be able to email from there however, there was already a problem with this… Although many staff at INIFAT had internet access for work most did not have access via a computer terminal in their own office. To go online they had to go over to the main INIFAT building where there was a small room containing three computers with internet access that were shared between the whole organization (there are around 400 people working for INIFAT at present!). The next challenge was that although these computers had internet access you could not use internet email services such as Gmail or Yahoo. You could only use INIFAT’s own email accounts. Fortunately one of the ladies in the international department was kind enough to let me gatecrash her account to send an email to Jo.
INIFAT - Entrance Hallway
The American embargo of Cuba has played a big part in challenges in communication that the island faces. Until recently Cubans only had access to the internet via one Italian satellite that they were able to use. This issue of internet access is made worse by the fact that computer equipment is extremely difficult for Cuban’s to import, and therefore also extremely expensive meaning that many people simply don’t have the access to the hardware necessary to get online. These different factors contributed to the fact that Cuba has had among the slowest internet speeds in the world.
In 2011 the island welcomed the arrival of an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to Venezuela, and representing a new blow to the US economic embargo. It was hoped that this cable would transform communications in Cuba making download speeds 3,000 times faster for the small minority of Cubans who have internet access. It was also hoped that it would make international phone calls much cheaper, which have been prohibitively high due in Cuba to lack of communication resources. But for now, as I was learning, online communcation still remained frustratingly slow for most Cuban's who has access to it. And those with access still only reflects a tiny proportion of the whole population.
The Beautiful Hotel at INIFAT
After the adventure of sending an email my next decision was how to spend the rest of my afternoon. I didn’t fancy walking out into Santiago in the rain so decided to spend some time talking with two of the ladies who work in the hotel where I was staying at the ministry. Both were similar age to me and it was fascinating to get a feeling of how they viewed life in contemporary Cuba. Similar to Marisol’s son who I had met the day before it was revealing to see how much lack of access to information, for a variety of different reasons, makes people crave knowledge to ridiculous levels. And also how lack of knowledge gives people an unrealistic perception of life in the Western world. For example, it means that many people have an opinion of life in countries like the UK that is unrealistically positive. They know very little, so automatically assume that everything in the UK must be better than life in Cuba. Of course, in reality this understanding is very far from the truth. For example, although material poverty and lack of access to resources is very striking in Cuba by average British standards, the country has a social identity, wealth and cohesion that’s value far exceeds material wealth that is generally used as the marker of personal and community success in Britain. Admittedly there is no denying that materially and financially life is currently very difficult for people in Cuba. However, there is a social coherence and strength that exists as a foundation to life that money cannot buy; a sense of civic responsibility and pride that Cuba has every right to be greatly proud of.
We spoke for a long time about what life was like in Manchester and the shared conclusion seemed to be that in reality there could be a lot of answers to the Western social challenges to be found in the Cuban system, if only the West would be sensible enough to acknowledge it. And that many problems that Cubans face on a day to day basis could easily be resolved if they had access even to the most basic resources that we are now used to in the UK. Obviously this conclusion is no consolation to the hardship that Cubans have to contend with oin everyday life, but their physical and intellectual isolation means that they are not allowed to have a realistically positive view of their own social achievements and the great aspects of their own culture that shine as models of excellence internationally.
We also spoke a lot about how proud they were of their country and how sad they were about how difficult life was as well as the reasons that their country needed to change as a result of these difficulties. But this was not a “down with the system” sense of change, more a “our country has been great but now it is so isolated that it is making it almost impossible for that greatness to carry on.” A sense that the general populace was proud of Cuba and felt sad at the personal and social compromises that were now having to be made in order simply to survive. What was most striking for me though, was the insidious capacity that the Western consumerist ideal has to put people under unreasonable pressure and to make them really, really unhappy. Even there in socialist Cuba, this ideal was making people really, really unhappy;
“If only I could have x my children would be happy.”
“If only I had y the relationship I have with my husband would be better.”
Nonsense of course, because that sense of identity, community and family that everybody is desperately trying to buy themselves in the Western world has never gone away in Cuba. It may be rough around the edges and bloody hard work for everybody involved to maintain but it definitely exists as strong as anything. And its simple existence is something that Cuba and her people have every right to be absolutely, hugely proud of. And it is something that people in the West should look to for answers as we try to right the wrongs that now exist so prominently in many aspects of our own society.
Other things that I experienced today and wanted to remember:
- The tastiest, freshest banana I had ever eaten.
- The lovely old gentlemen working their gardens.
- A breakfast room filled with Cubana cabin crew on a break from the airport.
- Tropical morning rain.
- The rooftop garden with grapes and rabbits.
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