Cuba, Where You Have to Ask at a Café If They Have Coffee
At the bus terminal, no one knows if the bus will arrive so they can get home and everyone is hungry.
HAVANA TIMES – While Cuban bureaucrats celebrate anniversaries of revolutions and victories with rousing speeches and plenty of patriotic fanfare, bus terminals and bus stops across the island remind everyday people that the truly epic feat is making it home before nightfall. This is evident in the account given by Andy in Sancti Spíritus.
“Yesterday,” he tells 14ymedio, “while waiting for my mother at the old terminal at the exit toward the Jatibonico highway, I experienced firsthand the nightmare that is inter-municipal transport.” Getting around in Cuba has become one of those inglorious epics—full of endurance, sweat, long waits, and of course, scenery covered in threatening slogans.
The terminal looks like it came directly from a clearance catalog of Soviet architecture. In one corner, a group of people huddles in front of a closed door, as if waiting for the ending of a low-budget soap opera: no one knows exactly what they’re waiting for, but they’re all waiting for something. In front of them, some people sit resigned on metal benches—no padding—with expressions that fall somewhere between fatigue and stoicism. Outside, at the roadside bus stop, another human swarm endures the sun, unpredictable schedules, and the complete absence of state-run transport.
One might think this is an exceptional situation—but it’s not. In Cuba, traveling from one municipality to another is a daily test of endurance. “And if you get hungry during the ordeal, you just deal with it,” Andy continues. Cuba is probably the only country in the world where you have to ask at a café if they have coffee. “And this one had nothing: no bread, no pastries, no cold water. Yet up high on the wall, a sign declared: ‘Homeland or death! We shall overcome!’—as if that were the answer to anyone complaining about having to travel on an empty stomach,” Andy says with irony.
The counter, decorated with posters of hot dogs and hamburgers rendered in idealized images, seems like a visual satire. If the “imperialist enemy” were to see those illustrations, they might think Cubans live on fast food. But neither the slogans nor the stickers have anything to do with reality.
“They used to sell fountain soda, and one could doubt the nature of the carbonation, but now it’s just powdered drink mix. And the lack of hygiene is almost as disturbing as the slogans on the walls.”
Outside, to the right, “what used to be a restaurant that sold pizza and spaghetti is now a closed-up place that smells of wood smoke. It’s true the cockroaches were friendlier than the attendants—since they’d at least scurry by and greet you—but at least it used to be an affordable option for hungry travelers.”
“The private trucks, the only ones still daring to drive on those cracked roads, have taken on the task of connecting municipalities.” But they do so as if transporting gold. “From Sancti Spíritus to Jatibonico, the fare is between 300 and 350 pesos. And if you get the idea to go to Trinidad in the afternoon, be ready: the price can go up to 2,500 pesos per person.” For context: that’s the equivalent of many Cubans’ monthly salary, for a trip of just over an hour. “A shared car to Ciego de Ávila, meanwhile, goes for 2,000 pesos per head,” Andy says indignantly.
The bus stop is another chapter in this national tragicomedy. People sitting, standing, sleeping, awake, smoking, eating peanuts, speaking in low voices or loudly, waiting with a mix of Zen-like patience and contained despair. You feel like you’ve entered a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly… or simply stops altogether. Much is said in Cuba about “Chinese patience,” but even in that faraway country, life seems to have picked up the pace. On the Island, time conspires against everything and everyone, testing the limits of waiting every single day. Maybe the regime, so addicted to censorship, should ban watches. Because where no one can manage their own time, there’s nothing more subversive than a watch.