Dead Time in Cuba

By Jesus Jank Curbelo (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – For about three months medicines hadn’t come, but yesterday supplies arrived. So this morning there is a big crowd outside the pharmacy. The sun enters the portal from all sides and leaves a shadow behind the columns. The first ones in the queue lined up there; the others, stood in line from the trees across the street.

It’s almost ten in the morning. The street is sad and empty. The landscape is broken and militarized. There are only cops on the corners and people standing in line. I arrived at eight to buy ciprofloxacin for my mother, who has a kidney problem. It was prescribed two weeks ago. She went to innumerable pharmacies and found nothing. She put it on Facebook in case anyone had it. But nothing.

I was told yesterday the ciprofloxacin would be sold starting today. Except for me, the entire line is over 60 years old. A man in his 70s has been on the public phone for hours. He repeats the list of medicines glued to the glass and writes down the response he´s given. There’s another phone on the wall, but when a woman tried to use it, it swallowed the coin. She is an overweight lady with varicose legs. You can see more pain in her eyes than in the average Cuban. She’s in two queues at the same time: the pharmacy and the telephone. When her turn to call comes, she dials in a hurry.

–There is omeprazole. I don’t have enough money. Can you bring me 50 pesos?

– …

“Ah, no, okay don’t.”

She hangs up. She covers her face with her hands. I wish I could give her the money, but I just brought the exact amount.

Two women:

-I bought the enalapril on Monday. And now there’s omeprazole.

-Look at my medicines card. Since June I couldn’t get anything.

– Is the dipyrone Mexican? How many bottles of sodium picosulphate can you buy?

I get really bored and the process is very slow. The clerks dispatching medicines have to fill out tons of forms, double-check recipes and many other things. A man slowly opens a pack of Criollos brand cigarettes. A couple leaves the pharmacy and walks down the avenue to the park where they do tai chi. They’re wearing their “Grandparents” T-shirts to the club they belong to. Others go over the list of medicines over and over again for hours. They don’t know what to do with so much dead time.

-“When I get out of here, I’ll check where I can buy bread.”

-The day before yesterday I stood in a line and bought as much bread as I could. God knows when it is sold again. In two or three days I will make toast out of it.

-I like hard bread, but just imagine, it costs ten Cuban pesos (CUP).

Now I was thinking that my grandmother has never eaten tacos, sushi or been in an airplane. Neither has my mother. Two generations. They work hard and can barely buy food. Nope, they haven’t seen anything. They know nothing. Their world is summarized in four blocks: the buildings, the bakery, the school, the gas cylinders selling point, the bus stop, the ration food store. The cupet (gas station) and the shopping center seem like capitalist oases.

They were born there and have always lived there, like my childhood friends’ mothers and grandmothers. Their world borders are the same dividing the CDRs (Revolution Defense Committees) – mass organization existing in every block. The houses that are two kilometers away are called “back there”, as if they were distant regions. From time to time they go out to Vedado like going on vacation. They will die without knowing what France is like or a building taller than the Focsa.

At some point the Revolution stopped Cuba’s history. Those who were 20 at that time, kept on living the same way day after day in a loop. Time went by through the world, but all those people like my mother and grandmother grew old here, if they could not escape. Cuba deceived them and now their lives are gone.

I was also thinking about my 60-year-old aunt. She lived in a country house falling apart, in Artemisa province, until my cousin took her to Miami. I imagine her face on the plane during the landing. Miami from the sky looks like another galaxy, a new world, an amazing thing. She hasn’t got used to the number of lights or the speed of the expressway. She is still a country person.

Her house is big, with a lake and stuff, but she keeps longing for the other one. My aunt saves money from time to time and goes to Colombia or New York for a weekend. She doesn’t know France, but already knows what tacos taste like. She has learned to buy without cash and knows what Rabanne smells like. For years now she hasn’t waited in a line. My aunt is taking advantage of the time. My mother and grandmother won’t be able to do that if I don’t hurry.

The woman with the varicose legs looks in through the door of the pharmacy and asks for medicinal soap. She buys nothing and goes up the street. Then it is my turn. There are two clerks. The one assisting me takes a long time to find the cipro on the shelves. The other one is on the phone all the time. There is rock and roll on the radio Iguess. I get the two blisters and pay.

“Do you know when the ciprofloxacin will be supplied again?”

-No idea.

On my way home, in the Wi-Fi park, the “Grandparents club” practices Tai Chi, formed in a square. They move slowly, at the pace indicated by the trainer. My grandmother doesn’t have time for those things. At 80 years old she gets up every day to wash clothes for money. She cannot live at that slow pace. Her pension or the little money we can give her are not enough to make ends meet. She doesn’t have any guarantees or security. Not a single penny saved. She has been working since she was a child, but her work wasn’t worth anything.

It is scary to think of growing old in this country.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.