Osmel Almaguer’s Diary

The Bucanero beer had been adulterated. It had no foam, tasted bad and gave my friend a strong headache. I don’t think we’ll be buying anything at the kiosk at the intersection of 23 and G in Havana anymore, what with the lousy service we got and the general lack of cleanliness there.

For a little over a month, a series of thefts have been taking place in the area of Alamar where I live. The things being stolen are bananas. Apparently, the wrongdoers are from different places, as the traces they leave behind, and their modus operandi as a whole, differ significantly from case to case.

Thousands of Cubans are trying their luck in different private businesses in response to the country’s new self-employment laws. For some, the adventure of opening up a cafeteria or offering any type of service is just that: an adventure.

We speak so much about the moral degradation of Cuban society that sometimes it feels we are deep in a quagmire that can’t get any worse. This isn’t exactly true, and we should not deceive ourselves that it is. This trend continues to grow and the “decent” appear to have become immune to it.

We had something of a scene in the farmers market here in Zone 6 of Alamar, Havana. It so happens that the manager of the State run market where root vegetables and other farm products are sold at subsidized prices was “let go” after his partnership with the private vendors across the street was discovered.

Anyone who rides a JAWA-brand motorcycle here in Havana should exercise caution these days, for there are reports of a band of thieves who have been stealing their electrical systems (and the police have not yet been able to capture them).

Living a stone’s throw away from Havana’s Via Blanca highway means being witness to a constant flow of buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, of people who set out in search of their dreams every day. People headed to Havana’s east-laying beaches, workplaces in the city, the arms of a loved one, or the last place you would think of.

With over 2 million mobile phone users, Cuba has around half a million more cell phones than landlines. A number of “competent” authorities often speak of this proudly, as though the reality behind this phenomenon weren’t shameful.

To say that the eleven million Cubans who make up the island’s population are baseball managers is a playful way of stating that all of us know enough about the sport to take a crack at managing any team.

Faced with this situation, small, poor countries have no other alternative than to produce their food through their own efforts, without making large investments in production machinery. Cuba, whose government has recently been pursuing policies that point in this direction, is a case in point.