Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

Hitching in Cuba is regulated by the state. Pick-up points were established near some bus stops where inspectors (known as azules, or “blues,” which is the color of their uniforms) have been positioned to stop any government-owned car and fill extra seats with passengers who need a lift.

The crackers we bought to “liven up” the end of the year ended up hurting my tongue and gums. They’re so hard that they snap off and break if you bite them, and though they’re sold as “saltines” they have no flavor whatsoever.

I discovered him sitting next to a garbage can on a street in the Vedado district. He was chewing something that he seemed to have pulled out of that grimy overflowing container, with the filth was almost surrounding him.

Sometimes a problem that’s very simple to solve problem can turn into a persistent nuisance. This is the case of water hoses, the ones that connect supply lines to sinks and toilet tanks.

With the money I’ll receive for my journalistic collaborations, I was planning to take care of some of my most pressing problems.

Several times a year the Cuban Telecommunications Company makes tempting offers to increase their number of cellphone subscribers. Typically, this is at the end of the year, when they offer a phone card balance of 30 CUCs (about $33 USD) to whoever buys a line for that same amount.

The government says that if Cuba’s companies aren’t profitable, then it won’t have the money to pay the workers a decent wage; while the workers say that if they’re not paid more, it doesn’t make sense to work hard all day.

Though private food services in Cuba haven’t succeeded in outstripping state-run food services, in the sale of day-to-day consumer articles this isn’t the case. This is due in large part to a strange solidarity between private vendors.

After several years of Cuba’s great “energy revolution,” the debts shouldered by the Cuban people to the government for the purchase the energy-efficient appliances are beginning to take their toll.

My mother’s scooter is red not only in color, but also because it belongs to the socialist state, that being an abstraction of what we are all supposed to be a part. That’s why the scooter doesn’t belong to her.