The wait for the turtles became unbearable. A jittery mood took hold of us when a hurricane approached on the horizon. Pinar del Río is a Cuban province with a special magnet for hurricanes and other harsh weather conditions.
We had heard the slogan “Resist and Overcome” again and again and again for many years. We have resisted hurricanes, enemy aggressions, torrential rains, droughts, threats, and financial crisis, both international and national.
The Rapid Response Brigades were created from worker “volunteers” to put down “malicious” expressions by people. Be it with words, or if necessary with blows, their role is to convince people of their mistaken actions.
Ricardo is a neighborhood hero. One time he brought home two jars of olives for an old woman who complained about how she hadn’t tasted them in ages, and another time a bottle of rum for the farewell of a friend who was leaving for Europe.
Our work with the turtles was carried out at night. We would wait for them to come up onto the beach, where we would leave them alone until they begin laying their eggs. We would then count the eggs, mark the nest and put a tag on its right flipper to be able to identify it at another time.
Since I was little, I’ve always heard the expression ‘There’s strength in unity’, but sincerely, I hadn’t seen it practiced for many years. We Cubans are so accustomed to negligence that it seems something normal, something we need not complain about.
Children were pulling up plants: “death to the weeds,” they were saying, even though it was chamomile, aloe and oregano. I explained to them that what they were doing was wrong because those plants have curative properties. They didn’t listen.
During the day we dedicated ourselves to hiking, making camp, swimming in the sea, inventing a way to cook with firewood (at times we had to gather the firewood from far away) and relaxing a little. At night came the work with the turtles.
A neighbor cut up an old bra that she had in storage and used one cup for a homemade surgical mask; she forced her nephew to put on the other one. Apparently the kid got upset with her dimwitted behavior. “Adolescents don’t understand epidemics,” I told her when she recounted the incident to me.
At lunchtime we found the La Terraza Restaurant, visited by Hemingway in his time. It was decorated with stuffed swordfish, fish tanks set into the wall, and fishing nets. At certain tables you felt as if you were eating on the sea. The menu: fish and shellfish, of course.