My Social Experiment on Public Transport in Cuba
based on real events
Article and photos by Nester Nuñez (La Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – I’m traveling from Varadero to Matanzas on a bus for tourism workers; but I might as well be on an urban or rural truck, full of noise and smoke. It also doesn’t matter if it’s drizzling or 40 degrees (104 F) outside. The only thing you need to do is imagine this kind of collective transport full of people going home, after a really long day at work.
For most of them, working means spending many hours doing something boring for a wage that isn’t enough to live off. Let’s say, just to set the scene, that they are all Cubans. For some strange reason (we Cubans are a happy and extroverted race), the passengers on this bus have long faces, not to say annoyed, concerned, distressed, anxious or exhausted.
Anyway, that might just be my mistaken view coming from pain. The pain that the handrail bar is causing me, that is digging into my ribs and almost doesn’t let me breathe. The bus suddenly comes to a brake, and one of the exhausted people shouts out for no reason: “Driver, we aren’t cattle”, and that’s when I manage to adapt my slim body to a corner between a window and a seat, and I breathe in a gulp of contaminated air, which saves me.
Over the years and the troubles (and bars in the ribs and knives to the throat) Life has given me, I’ve developed, certain and effective survival strategies. I always keep my camera, phone, and wallet right at the bottom of my backpack, for example. I’ve also learned to “make the most of the historic moment” and to “change everything that should – and can – be changed,” starting with my own mood. At times like these, of pure stress, I escape.
Even though my body is still there in the hostile atmosphere of failed public transport in Cuba at 6 PM, my mind first flies to a Ceiba tree on the hill, and then to a small cove with blue water and pink rocks. The sound of waves, the smell of the sea, the light and company are magical. Right there and where happiness can exist, I smile. Then, I go back to the bus a little more optimistic than I normally am, and I tell myself a phrase out of faith or reaffirmation that I’ve been saying recently: “It’s going to happen.”
Passengers’ faces are now tucked away, concentrating on their cellphones, which I still find sad. The smoke, oppression and exhaustion are the same as before, but on the screens of hundreds of pixels, all kinds of funny, interesting, and corny stories are happening… They are like short Brazilian or Turkish telenovelas, like Hollywood movies that help you to avoid thinking about what you’re doing with the time that you’ve been given, which we call life. It’s also a form of escape, with the small difference of these being fictitious stories or, in the best of cases, other people’s life experiences.
In real life, the driver brakes hard again and hurls insults at a passer-by who is crossing the road while looking at their phone. An insult like: “You shit, look where you’re going!” After recovering from the impact against a young woman who is sat in front of me and apologizing, I think it’s good to get people who go through life lost to think, but the way to do this is almost as, if not more, important than the content.
The young woman sitting looks at me for the first time and she gestures for me to give her my backpack, probably so she doesn’t get hit in the head again with the camera and everything else I have inside. I tell her not to worry and I put the bag on the floor, under her seat. For some unknown reason, I take out my cellphone before. She goes back to her business, to those fragments of another person’s life that are depicted in HD quality or more, and I’m still clinging to the blue of her eyes, that take me back to the sky and sea at the cove.
Maybe that was why, or it was my optimism and my crazy desire to change what needs to be changed, to become part of the solution and not the problem, that I overcame my inherent shyness and began to write her a text in the Notes app. It might also have been because I was bored on that journey or because “nothing has ever been written about cowards” or because I saw, sensed, or convinced myself that this young woman in particular, had a hidden joy inside, and that it would be beautiful for it to come out.
I wrote in haste, nervously repeating to myself my kind of self-help prayer: “It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.”
Hello, muchacha. Do you have any reason to accept a photographer’s phone number? A reason might be pets, children, parents, nephews and nieces or friends who want to do a photoshoot. I’m the photographer. My name is NN. I’m not bad at what I do. I at least try and enjoy it.
If you think you’ll never need a photographer’s phone number, you might need the number of a plumber, builder or taxi driver or the number of someone you can call one evening to talk and have a nice conversation…
Well, anyway. Sorry for bothering you. My number is: 537×68993 NN, photgrapher. 537×68993 NN plumber. 537×68993 NN builder, carpenter, taxi driver, gardener…
I won’t ask you for your number because I have no idea how you could help me. Obviously, I don’t know you and I don’t even know your name. Now, I’m going to be honest: I know nothing about building, plumbing or the other professions. Ah, and I don’t have a car, that’s obvious.
But I’m being honest about everything else. Remember: photos or we sit and chat a little. I’m quite good at both. 537×68993 NN.
Write it down, go on, in case. Or write me your number here below. And that’s it. Sorry again.
She handed me back the phone and got off the bus at that very stop. I can still hear her bursting out laughing as she walks down the aisle. In my head, for days, the same: her laugh and “It’s going to happen.” But she never wrote me a message or called. I wanted to go back to the same bus at the same time to try and find her and hear her outburst of laughter again, like in a Hollywood movie. Serendipity. However, my proper notion of the historic moment made me change my mind.
I already told you I’ve developed some effective survival strategies. In this case, I decided not to go back to the place where I was once happy. That is to say, I repeated the experiment but with other girls I didn’t know. Their race, size, age, eye color… physique, definitely didn’t matter. I just took a couple of variables into account. The first, that it always happened on public transport full of people going home after a long day at work. Secondly, the young woman had to be engrossed in her phone. We all have some joy locked away.
The results were the following:
- Seven of them expressed sudden happiness: they smiled or burst out laughing.
- Two of them gave me their phone numbers.
- Three of them wrote down my phone number (none of them called me on a rainy afternoon).
- Five of them were angry: they pushed the phone back to me in my chest or had similar reactions.
Despite the results being generally more positive, with twelve happy reactions and five against, the experiment came to an end by accident. The last young woman (it doesn’t matter her size, race, age, or eye color) let my phone fall with a sharp brake and they both disappeared in the confusion: my phone and her (who was wearing boots, black socks and a brown leather mini skirt).
I have an old mp3 that I use now. I watch people’s tired and fed up or bored faces and I choose the song that I feel fits best. Surviving means cutting risks. After the last killer look I got, I no longer put my earphones in my ear directly. I just put them close by, the volume not too high, and I let the music work its magic. I haven’t been counting, but I’ve seen how my social experiment on public transport has been a great success: before the journey ends, people’s faces lighten up, they change.
