Daisy Valera’s Diary

The wind has started kicking up and pounding on the windows of my interim apartment here in Alamar, on Havana’s far east side. These gusts of cool air always suggest that winter’s on the way, anxiously anticipated but always timid here in the tropics.

This prayer is repeated almost to the point of making us think that a little animal fat and flesh is the solution to all our ills in this country, more and more fraught with problems.

This past weekend, from in my stairwell I could hear the racket of the fumigation machines, which sounded close by. I had clothes hanging on the line and the lunch half done when an exterminator came to my door.

I’ve thrown myself into trying to find solutions to my physical and mental state, but so far I’ve only found one, through a book by the Spanish yoga practitioner Ramiro Calle.

I know that it’s not uncommon for people in other countries around the world to have two or even three jobs. I know that a lot of them only have time to wash, eat, sleep and begin another day that will be the same as the one before.

Since my earliest elementary school experiences, I remember my teachers teaching us love for our homeland, national culture and all those things that were said to be 100 percent Cuban.

A few days ago I went by the Coppelia ice cream parlour, and surprisingly there was no one waiting to go in. I couldn’t resist the temptation to enter that palace of deserts without lining up.

The look of Havana’s Terminal 2 airport is always the same. Throngs of people pressing up against the security tape – all of them nervous, excited and a little worried.

The CDR is the largest mass organization of its kind in the country, though it suffers from a chronic lack of a reason for being.

An interesting point about Decree No. 292 is that in the transaction process, although it requires the buyer to submit a list of the motor vehicles they own, there’s no limit on the number of vehicles that can be purchased.