Eating Every Day

Ripe bruised guavas.

By Nike

HAVANA TIMES – If you want to put a plate of food on your family’s table in Cuba, you have to go to a stand or agro-market to look for some vegetables every day and, if you find them, they are very expensive and not the quality they should be.

When I went out today to look for our daily sustenance, there were some carrots that made you sad because they were going off and at the same price as yesterday, even though they were half rotten.

I wanted to buy some guavas but seeing them green and abused as if they had been thrown to the floor, (others were more ripe, but with the same amount of bruising), I asked the seller if he could give me a discount. 

He answered: “What do you think? If they were good, I would have sold them a long time ago, they cost the same.”

This really annoyed me because we need the little money we have, but this human misery and this Cuban was more rotten than his guavas.

Read more from Nike’s diary here.

Nike

I was born in Havana, Cuba. All my life I have had the sea as a landscape. I like being close to it, feeling its breeze, its smell, as well as swimming and enjoying the wonders it gives us. Thanks to the manual skill that I inherited from my parents, I have been able to live off crafts. I work primarily papier-mâché, making puppets for children. I write for Havana Times for the possibility of sharing with the world the life of my country and my people.