Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

Concerning the recently concluded Olympic Games in the British capital, I’d like to point out some trends that characterized Cuba’s performance. This time, though, I’ll refrain from making judgments, drawing conclusions or proposing solutions; I’ll just be an observer.

An intelligent initiative has begun to bear fruit for the ill-treated bus passenger from the Alamar neighborhood. This involves a bus route, formerly known as the cuarentiñas (“forty little ones,” because the fare used to be forty centavos, or about two cents USD).

“What I’ve achieved in life I owe to my being a dreamer,” said Rodrigo. This was during one of those afternoons when it’s better to daydream than to deal with the harsh reality of a bus that never shows up or an empty refrigerator waiting for you at home.

Near my house there’s a woman who rents her eight-month-old daughter to people willing to pay in order to prevent them from having to stand in lines. Both sides — the mother and the customers — are acting in ways that are eroding the little bit of courtesy that still remains among people in Cuba.

In a country of utopias and paradoxes like Cuba, we dream about what we can’t have, and we reject what would allow us to advance. As for the much-discussed issue of transportation, it’s the same situation, and its effects on our lives are as follows…

No one complains. It seems like it doesn’t bother them – but it does me. Still, I won’t say anything. I’m too indifferent to involve myself in what could even turn physical.

The Lazaro Pena Polytechnic School in Guanabacoa where I teach has gained the reputation for being one of the high schools with the most violence among students and teachers alike, and this refers to physical as well as verbal violence.

When the Training Program for Chinese Youth was taken over by the Ministry of Higher Education, the Chinese students studying Spanish in Cuba began to experience the concrete effects of the project’s decline.

In 2007, at the initiative of Fidel Castro, it was decided to create a program to teach Spanish to Chinese young people who in their homeland were less likely to attend college. This would not only reorient the lives of those foreign students, but would also provide China with the personnel needed for penetrating the Spanish-speaking market in the Americas.

Yesterday we gave the final exam in Spanish literature for seniors at the high school where I teach. For them, this was the last step before graduation. Giving the test was a complicated process as there were nearly 200 pupils that had to take it though there are only three teachers of the course in the entire school.