Finding a Wallet Full of Money

Rosa Martinez

HAVANA TIMES — When we saw the news at home a few days ago about the children from Pinar del Rio who returned a wallet they found with 3,300 Euros inside, my daughters and I looked at each other knowingly and we burst out laughing.

We didn’t laugh about the children’s honesty – although the truth is that seeing cases like these are becoming rarer in our country – but about something similar that happened to us about two years ago.

We were in the La Lupe villa, on the outskirts of Guantanamo city. We had been invited by some of my relatives to spend the weekend there.

In the beginning, I hesitated about going because, like always, I didn’t have any money not even for a 10 peso soda, but it was an invitation nonetheless, I wouldn’t have to pay anything.

I didn’t think about it too much, or rather, I thought about my daughters, who would only be able to visit a place like this if it was an invitation, and I agreed to spend Saturday afternoon and some of Sunday with my cousins.

The first day was great, my daughters had so much fun, they swam in the swimming pool, they played and ate everything they wanted, and, I’m not going to deny it, but I had a few beers, which tasted different, more delicious… I don’t know whether that was because I hadn’t paid for them out of my own pocket.

On Sunday morning, my two little ones were the first to wake up, and without losing a single second, they ran all over the place from really early in the morning, so as to make the most of the time they had left there.

Walking around the swimming pool, they had a great surprise when they found a wallet, full of notes.

Without looking it at twice, and putting what they had learned at home into practice, they handed it into an employee at the villa so that they could return it to its rightful owner.

Then, they came running to our room to tell me what had happened, I was left speechless…

“Bubuut, did it have a lot of money?” I asked them.

“Oh, a lot,” they both said in unison. “And they were all dollars, mami,” the eldest added.

It seems that they noticed some strange expression on my face, because then they both immediately asked: “What happened? Were we wrong to give it back?”

I quickly answered, like our popular comedian Panfilo would say: “No, no way!”