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By Dave Eggers, TIME Magazine. Dec. 27, 1999
We dodge more wagons, their drivers frequently asleep, the donkeys as sad as donkeys insist on appearing. There are men in uniform waiting for rides. There are women with groceries and babies waiting for rides. Some of the hitchers raise their hands to a passing car, but most don't. Some express
frustration when they feel that a passing car could fit more people (i.e., them), but most don't. Most just watch you pass, squinting beyond you, for the next slowing car or truck. But when a car stops, never is there competition for the ride. Never is there shoving or even the most mild sort of
disagreement. Each time we pull over, whoever's closest simply walks to the car and gets in. There is no system in place for the rewarding of longest wait, or oldest, or most pregnant. It's both perfectly fair and completely random.
We drop Estelle and Javier in Australia and pick up a family just outside of town. Grandfather, mother, daughter. They had been visiting a friend at the hospital and are going where we're going, to Playa Giron, home of the Cuban monument to the heroes of the Bay of Pigs. Our merengue tape,
bought at a gas station, tinkles quietly from the speakers. We offer them--we offer everyone--water, cookies, crackers. They decline, and like most riders, this family says nothing unless we speak first; they don't even talk to one another. They watch the countryside pass, content. We are surprised,
with them and most riders, that they do not want to know where we're from. Why are they not curious about us, the Americans here to save them? At their house, a bent-over salmon-colored ranch on a brown-dirt street, they ask us if we'd like to come in for a cold drink. We decline, must move. They
scoot out. In the process, the daughter's shoe catches on the seat and loses its heel. She looks up, embarrassed, horrified. "New shoes too," says Mom. We all chuckle and then sigh. Kids.
After Giron, we're headed to Cienfuegos, through more fields of tobacco, then bananas. When night comes again, there are no streetlights, no lights anywhere, and on the winding two-lane roads, the avoidance of donkey carts and tractors and people requires tremendous, arcadelike hand-eye
coordination. All is dark, and then things will suddenly be in front of us, lit as if by a camera's flash; swerving is an essential skill. Up ahead a car is parked, hazards blinking. There is a group of people around the car. Obviously an ambush. We should not stop. In the U.S., we would not stop.
We stop. Four people are standing around a white, early-'70s Volvo. They're out of gas; can we help? Yes, yes, we say, of course. They want to siphon from our tank. They have an actual siphon right there. We don't have enough, we say, noticing that we're almost out ourselves. We'll take them to
the next town. Another man, Esteban, about 19, gets in the back seat, as does Marisa, 24, petite, in silk blouse and black jeans. They hold the gas container on their laps. It's 15 minutes to tiny-town Roda and its one-pump gas station.
As we wait, we talk to Marisa, who we learn is studying English; she wants to get into tourism. She is married to an American, a photographer from Los Angeles. She was just coming back from Havana, as a matter of fact, where she was seeing him off at the airport.
So who are the others in the car?
She doesn't know. It's a taxi.
A taxi? A taxi running out of gas?
Big laughs all around.
The taxi was taking three passengers the three hours from Havana to Cienfuegos; the driver had grossly miscalculated how much fuel that would require. They had left at 3 that afternoon. It was now at least 9. We fill up their container and are ready to go.
But the Subaru won't start. It won't even turn over. In a flash, Esteban is out of the car and pushing. I'm driving, and he's barking orders, which need to be translated instantaneously by T/N. I have no idea what we're doing. We stop. Esteban, sighing loudly, takes my place, and then I'm
pushing. Down the road, and before long we're out of the town and into the dark fields. The road is red from the taillights and slippery and I can't get a grip, but then boom, Esteban pops the clutch and the Subaru whinnies and I get in while it's moving and we're off, Esteban at the wheel. Like a
getaway car! In a minute Esteban's doing 80 m.p.h. He's veering on and off the road. "¡Flojo! ¡Flojo!" Marisa is saying, urging him to slow down, but young Esteban has something to prove to her and to T/N, so 80 it is, the engine hitting high notes with full vibrato.
We get to the taxi. They fill up the Volvo while we wait. We meet the third passenger, Dale, an English-speaking med student from St. Kitts, who decides he's sick of speaking Spanish, so he'll ride to Cienfuegos with us. He's studying Spanish there, the first year of seven he'll spend in Cuba on
his way to a medical degree. We follow the taxi into Cienfuegos, drop off Dale at his barbed wire-surrounded dormitory, check into a hotel with red light bulbs and a lounge singer plowing through the high points of the Billy Joel songbook, and we're done for the night.
In the morning, on the way to the town of Trinidad, it's all rolling hills and farms, and the people have been waiting for us. At an intersection 10 miles out of Cienfuegos we stop at a gathering of 20 or so, mostly young men, some in uniform. One gets in, followed by a woman, running--she's
just jumped out of another car and into ours. Her name is Maela and, like the vast majority of Cuban women, Maela is a devout spandex enthusiast. She's in a black-and-white bodysuit, bisected with belt, and she's laughing like mad at her car-to-car coup, the soldiers tossing her a wide variety of
obscene gestures as we drive away. The soldier we've got is named Jordan; he's doing the mandatory military service--two years--and is heading home for the weekend. Maela was in Cienfuegos with friends and is going home too. He's quiet, but she's bubbly, and through the countryside we roll.
Ten miles and Jordan gets out at a tiny town called Pepito, where Condela gets in. Condela is about 45 and has crumbs all over his mouth and hands--he has been eating a pastry while waiting for a ride, standing just outside a bakery. He's a butcher in Trinidad, so he'll be with us the rest of
the ride, about an hour more. Condela has been visiting friends and is on his way back home. He asks where we're from. Los Estados Unidos, we say. Ah, he says. He has family in Miami. (Everyone has family in Miami.)
We drop off Maela; she giggles thanks, and in comes Belgis, about 40, pregnant, in a white frilly blouse and floral spandex leggings. She was waiting for three hours. She was visiting her family, and is on her way to Playa Yaguardabo to see her in-laws, 10 minutes up the road. We get there, and
she's out. Condela stays put and seems perturbed--the back seat is not so big--when we welcome a young couple, Alexander and Yaineris, who bustle in, exhaling with relief. They have a chicken with them. A live chicken. Condela laughs at our surprise. The chicken is small and in a plastic bag--its
red, confused little head poking out. Alexander and Yaineris are married, and have been visiting her parents; they're headed back home to Trinidad. The ocean is a few hills to our right. Tour buses whip past us doing 75 m.p.h. The tour buses are always empty, always doing 75, and they don't stop for
anyone.
Halfway to Trinidad, while we are passing La Guira, something recklessly symbolic happens. At the bottom of a small valley, there is a split second when a huge, bulbous green army truck passes us, heading in the other direction. At the same instant, we are passing on our right a straw-hatted
farmer on horseback and, to our left, a woman on a bicycle. Symbolism contained: each of our vehicles represents a different element of what makes Cuba Cuba. The bicycle (1) is the Cubans' resourcefulness and symbiosis with their communist brethren (about a million bikes were donated by the Chinese,
decades ago). The army truck (2) is the constant (though relatively sedate and casual, we'd say) military presence. We are the tourists (3), perhaps the future, our dollars feeding into Cuba's increasingly dominant second economy, largely inaccessible to Cuba's proletariat; and the horseback farmer
(4) represents, of course, the country's rural backbone. All caught, for one split second, on a single linear plane.
At Trinidad, a colonial town 400 years old, sun bleached and ravishing, we drop off Condela. He shows us his shop, right on the main cobblestone drag. "If you need anything," he says, pointing to a storefront, "I'm right here." Trinidad is much too perfectly aged and
brilliantly colored to be free of tourists: Germans, Spanish, Italians, even a few Americans drawling Indiana r's.
On to Sancti Spiritus. Carlos, about 30, and Armena, 25, get in just outside Trinidad, where three dozen others are waiting with them. Carlos works in construction now, after a five-year stint as a policeman in Havana. Armena has been in Trinidad looking for work.
"What kind of work?"
"Anything at all," she says.
"Is it hard to find work?"
Eyes are rolled. Yes, yes. These days, yes. We drop off Armena at a little yellow house, clothes hanging in the windows. Carlos gets out soon after. At Banao, a tiny town, there is a crowd of 40 waiting; a dozen or so people wave us down. We can't stop right in the middle--too confusing. (Oh, to
have a bus!) We drive to the end, where the throng thins. We nod to a woman, and she jogs forward and gets in. Dayami is about 30, lipsticked, in tight black jeans with a black mesh shirt over a sports bra. She's a doctor, on her way to pick up her daughter at school. We ask if it's hard to get
medicine. After all, on the way from Havana, a billboard had read: YANKEE EMBARGO: GENOCIDE AGAINST CUBA. She says no, not really.
We pass a barefoot, shirtless boy on the back of a donkey. A mile later, a man on horseback, galloping, beams as we go by, takes his hat off and waves it to us in mid-gallop, even as we're passing him going 65 m.p.h. Is Cuba cinematic? It is.
At a corner outside the city, we grab a tallish, red-haired woman in a white medical jacket. When she gets in, she and Dayami laugh. They used to work together, and begin chatting. She's a dentist, and had loaned her bike to a friend. We drop Dayami off at her daughter's school and park in
Sancti Spiritus' central square. A school band practices in an auditorium above us. Mopeds buzz to and fro, soldiers talk to schoolchildren, and within minutes we see the dentist. She rides by on her bicycle and rings her bell. "I got my bike back!" she sings to us. Cuba has become one
huge Richard Scarry neighborhood.
Then we're off to Santa Clara, too dark to pick up anyone, but the next day it's Santa Clara to Havana, and en route there is Wendy. Wendy is talkative and insists on tapping T/N on the shoulder and saying "¡Mira!" (Look here!) every time she has a question or statement. She's
married, has a three-year-old, works at a peso food market. "Oh, I knew you weren't Cuban," she says. Why? we ask.
"Cuban couples won't pick people up," she says. "People in groups or driving alone but never couples."
(Shoulder poke) "¡Mira!": she has family in New York, New Jersey.
(Shoulder poke) "¡Mira!": she also cleans houses, to make ends meet.
(Shoulder poke) "¡Mira!": "You know how the situation in Cuba is, right?"
She's on her way home. Her husband's in prison, she says--she has just been visiting him. He was convicted, with nine others, of stealing gasoline. He was originally sentenced to four years, but with a lawyer--he is innocent, was set up, she insists--he was able to get the sentence reduced to 20
months. She gets out and is replaced by a cheerful trio--a large blond woman, her sister and her sister's daughter. Havana? they ask. Yes, yes. Oh, they cannot believe their luck. They cannot believe they're getting a ride all the way to Havana. Waiting long? Hours. Are things always like this?
Getting worse every year. Castro, they say, is getting too old, senile maybe. Things are not good. Are we aware of the situation here? Things are getting worse. The past 10 years, they say, much worse. Fidel is obsessed with the U.S., they say, which is fine, but he must start taking care of things
here at home. When we drop them off, at about noon, they're astounded that they're home before nightfall. They are beside themselves. When we're in Cuba again, they tell us, we have a home, we have a family. We take pictures.
And finally, there is Yuricema. About 20, dark brown skin, wide white smile. She gets in on the Malecon, just shy of the Hemingway Marina. She's coming home from school; she's a business and law student. We're in the suburbs of Havana, and the sky is purplish and getting darker as we approach
the city's center. Yuricema claims that her English is bad, but then she speaks it, and it's kind of perfect, at least in terms of the words she does know. The accent sounds more California than Havana. We ask her where she learned English.
"My professor was Michael Bolton," she says.
I almost veer off the road.
"Michael Bolton?" T/N says.
"Yes, yes, he is very good. I love him."
Is it possible? Was Michael Bolton ever a teacher of English in Cuba? We hit the main drag of the Malecon. The ocean is bursting against the wall, spraying the waves up and over the road, 30 ft. high. It's almost dark. T/N wants one more shot at it.
"So, wait, Michael Bolton was your English teacher?"
Yuricema bursts out laughing. We laugh too. She asks T/N the English word for "¡Ojala!" T/N translates, "I wish!"
She had been trying to say "My preference is Michael Bolton" but said instead "My professor is..." She had one of his albums, but she loaned it to a friend, and then he claimed never to have seen it. Yuricema rolls her eyes to underline how stupid her friend is. We offer to
send her a new Michael Bolton tape. I throw in that we'll send her whatever Michael Bolton stuff we can find. Posters, books, everything. "Very easy," I say. So easy to send wonderful things from America! She is beside herself. She gives T/N a pre-emptive gift--a wallet-size plastic
calendar featuring an advertisement for a new kind of Vaseline. We thank her. I picture the sending of the Bolton care package. She will be so happy. She will never forget us. No one will ever forget us. Cuba will not forget us. We will come back, with not only the Michael Bolton stuff but a bigger
car. No, a fleet of cars--and buses. We will sneak into the country from America, this time with legions of drivers--there are more of us coming all the time; it's getting so easy, embargo or no--and with enough buses and cars to get everyone everywhere they need to go. With our dollars and new
tires, we will empty the roadsides and move the people place to place. The cars and buses will be huge and shiny, and we will flood the roads with them, get this place going--faster and faster, no more waiting for anything. Cars for everyone! We'll bring in some trains maybe. Hovercrafts, monorails.
It'll be great. And all we'll ask in return is some hearty thanks and a nice beach to enjoy when we're in the neighborhood.
We wind our way through the dark streets of Old Havana, as Yuricema directs us to her home. When we get there we realize she lives a block from our hotel, the Hambos Mundos, a bargain at $120 a night. She gets out of the car and asks if we'd like to come in. We decline. She smiles.
"Don't forget me," Yuricema says, getting out and backing into her doorway. "Because I will never forget you."
Oh, just you wait, Yuricema. You haven't seen the last of us.
Dave Eggers is editor of the literary magazine McSweeney's. His book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius will be published in February
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