By Alicia
Roca
Researcher: Nichole Griswold
It's six. Rosa fumbles
with the light switch, roosters crow somewhere in the darkness. She pulls a
chair by its back and climbs on it. She jiggles the light bulb; a little to
the left, then to the right. At last, it hums, flickers and emits a dim orange
glow.
"Hay que inventar."
You have to invent, she says with a slight smile.
It is a phrase often
used in Manzanillo, a parched, sweltering city of about 100,000 in Cuba's poorest
province, Granma.
"No es facil."
It's not easy.
Rosa explains that
since the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, everything is in short
supply, particularly light bulbs. Those available cost $4, one-third the average
Cuban's monthly salary. For Rosa, a 78 year-old widow who does not receive money
from Miami relatives, light bulbs are a luxury. So are toilet paper (for which
she substitutes newspaper), toothpaste, deodorant, and shampoo.
The first thing Rosa
does every morning is clean. She wraps a damp cotton rag around a wooden stick
and drags it across the concrete floor. Her back is hunched causing her spine
to protrude. Her thin arms sweep slowly back and forth.
"I can't live
in a dirty house. My husband always wanted a clean house."
But chores weren't
always a priority. In 1956, Manzanillo was alive with revolution. Late that
year the Granma, a boat carrying Fidel Castro and 82 men from Mexico landed
60 miles from Manzanillo. Waiting for them was Celia Sanchez, the daughter of
a provincial doctor, and the woman who organized the underground network, based
in Manzanillo, that would support them for the next two years. For months, Sanchez
moved from house to house depending on the residents on Manzanillo to evade
Fulgencio Batista's men. In exchange for the promise of a better future, the
locals fed, housed and shielded her from government inquiries. With their support,
Sanchez funneled guns, supplies, soldiers, nurses and even reporters such as
Herbert Matthews of The New York Times to rebels in the nearby Sierras. Rosa
remembers when Sanchez stayed in a house across the street from her. And she
remembers the other women who became models for the modern Cuban woman.
Haydee Santamaria and
Melba Hernandez were nurses in the attack on the Moncada barracks in nearby
Santiago. The Mariana Grajales, an all-woman platoon, fought alongside men.
Violeta Casel was the first female announcer on Radio Rebelde. Some, including
Lidia Doce and Clodomira Acosta, Manzanilleras and mountain messengers, became
martyrs after being tortured to death by Batista's men. The Giralt sisters,
members of the underground, were gunned down at their apartment. Countless others,
now forgotten, exploited stereotypes of women as naïve and incompetent
when working as gunrunners or smuggling subversive pamphlets beneath their skirts.
Manzanillo was their
base and if peasants here suffered most during Batista's reign, they gained
most in the early years of the revolution. The province was renamed for the
boat, the Granma, that landed in 1956. A hospital that bears Celia Sanchez's
name went up, schools opened and doctors arrived, but 45 years later, the revolution
and its gains seem like ancient history. Manzanilleras are at the bottom of
Cuba's reemerging dollar-based social strata. Gone are the fervent guerilla
warriors and in their place are everyday women with everyday struggles. Like
making a lightbulb come to life.
After Rosa cleans,
she starts breakfast. The process takes an hour although she is making coffee
and toasting bread. She drips liquid fuel into a spoon. Her hand shakes. She
tips the fluid into a small bowl. She turns the iron burner on and places the
bowl beneath it. She lights a match. Nothing.
"Le hechan mucha
agua al combustible." The fuel is too watered down.
She smiles and tries
again. It takes her fifteen minutes. The smell of gas is thick, making it difficult
to breathe in the cramped kitchen, but Rosa won't open a window. She's afraid.
A year ago a young boy broke in and stole Rosa's towels and iron.
"They weren't
even towels. They were more like rags."
She still doesn't have
any towels, and her only iron must be heated over an open flame. She irons her
clothes every morning.
"My mother always
told me a woman has to look her best."
Since the burglary,
Rosa stays locked indoors. She always isolated herself, neighbors say, but now
she only leaves to buy food and see doctors.
When she was young,
life was different. This is Rosa's litany: people had morals then. Today, the
young don't want to work. They look for easy ways to make money. They are sexually
promiscuous. They are struggling because they do not try to better their lives.
Before the revolution,
poverty and illiteracy were rampant in the countryside. Over half the population
couldn't read. Women turned to prostitution to survive. Today there are other
options, Rosa says. Education is available to everyone. How far they go with
school depends on how hard they are willing to work.
Rosa lugs water in
pails from metal barrels so she can bathe. The task is difficult for Rosa who
suffers from arthritis, cataracts, and weighs eighty pounds. As she flips the
bathroom light switch, cockroaches scatter. They are the size of small rodents,
with wings.
Today the milk arrives
and Rosa is happy. She loves milk. She would drink it three times a day if she
could.
Every month Rosa and other Cubans are entitled to four rolls of bread, one pound of salt, four cans of fish, five pounds of rice, six pounds of sugar, ten ounces of beans, one pound of coffee and ten eggs. All this food can be purchased for about four pesos, or twenty cents and it adds up to 298 calories a day.
The elderly, pregnant
women, and children under age seven also receive two liters of milk a month.
But complications arise. Sometimes not all items are available; people tend
to run out of food toward the end of the month. Additional food must be bought
at higher prices, so the poor, like Rosa, stretch their rations by having one
meal a day instead of three.
After bathing, Rosa
finishes the coffee. She dips a teaspoon into a jar filled with sugar and swarming
with ants. She pours the milk through a strainer and splits the curd between
her dog and cat. The dog takes the cat's share. The cat meows and scratches
Rosa's leg.
Rosa mixes the milk,
coffee and sugar with a small metal spoon.
"A morning without
coffee is like a dark, dark night," she says.
There is a knock at
the door. She cocks her head.
"Voy." I'm
on my way, Rosa yells.
She hooks a chain on
the door, opens it a crack and peers out with one eye. In a sliver of light,
a boy, about five-years-old, holds a golden peso in his hand. He reaches into
the darkness and lays the coin in her palm.
"Who are these
for?" asks Rosa.
"For my Mom."
"How many does
she want?"
"Two," he
says
Rosa takes a clay bowl
from her cabinet, drops the coin in it, and removes change. She slides a tattered
brown box across the table, pulls its lid off and lifts out two cigarettes.
She gives the boy the cigarettes, the change, and shuts the door.
All Cubans over the age of forty-four are entitled to two boxes of cigarettes.
They pay four pesos per box. Like Rosa, many sell their cigarettes to buy other
goods.
Rosa puts the money
bowl on the cabinet shelf and dribbles oil into a pan without a handle. She
rotates the pan with pliers. She places her breakfast, a white roll, in the
pan and browns it.
She opens the cabinet
and cradles a beige, intricately crocheted tablecloth. When her husband was
alive, Rosa spent much of her time crocheting. Though she was college-educated,
he forbade her to work or leave the house without him. They never had children.
Prior to marrying him and prior to the revolution, Rosa worked as a tutor for
wealthy children.
Rosa unfolds the tablecloth,
shakes it and drapes it over the kitchen table.
"I'm poor. I don't
have much, but everything I have is yours."
When her husband, Juan,
was alive, life was better. She never wanted for anything. She calls those the
happy days and divides her life into two periods- when Juan was alive and now.
Juan died ten years ago, at the same time the island lost Soviet aid.
Relatives try to persuade
Rosa to move to Habana or Santiago where conditions are better, but she won't.
She won't even visit. There are too many memories in her house.
As she sets out to
buy milk, Rosa stands before the bedroom mirror and brushes back strands of
hair with her fingers. Missing clumps reveal pink skin several shades lighter
than her caramel complexion. Rosa wraps a scarf around her head to hide it.
She flicks the window
locks. She jams a chair up against the back door and locks the front door.
"Quedate aqui.
Cuida la casa." Stay here and guard the house. Sandito, the dog, barks
and wags his tail.
She slams the door
shut and greets a neighbor.
"How are you?"
he asks.
"En la luchita."
In the little struggle, she says with a smile.
As Rosa wakes, Felicia
arrives at school.
Her class doesn't start
until seven but the bus comes at 5:30 a.m. It's too far to walk and the horses-drawn
carriages, the primary mode of transportation in Manzanillo, aren't out that
early. Sometimes Jorge, Felicia's husband, takes her to school on the back of
his bicycle, but Felicia prefers he stay home and attend to her son, Jose. Children
stop receiving milk at seven and Jose is nearly eight. It is a struggle to find
breakfast for him. Yesterday all he had was a piece of bread with cooking oil
on it.
"But there are
people in worse situations. Most of the kids in my class come to school on an
empty stomach. How can they think with an empty stomach?" asks Felicia.
A few days ago Felicia
gave one of her students a peso for a haircut.
"Some of these
parents just don't care."
Felicia lives near
the ocean in a neighborhood called El Malecon. Her school is in the hills, in
one of Manzanillo's poorest barrios.
Felicia waits in the
teacher's lounge for school to begin. She is a secondary school English teacher.
Secondary school includes seventh through ninth grade. Schooling through ninth
grade is mandatory. After that, children with the best grades go to the pre-university
level where there are general schools and scientific schools. Others go to military
schools, art schools and technical or trade schools. Few of Felicia's students
will go on to the pre-university level. Masters and doctorates are available
by invitation only.
At seven, students
file into the classroom. The other teacher is absent, so Felicia has eighty
students instead of forty. She turns on a small color television. It is time
for tele-class, a new one-hour live broadcast from Habana. The government developed
it five months ago in response to the teacher shortage. The same tele-class
is shown to seventh, eighth and ninth graders.
The rowdy children
settle down when the television teacher begins speaking. He greets them. His
name flashes on the screen. For the next hour he speaks in English. He asks
the children to repeat after him, to respond in English, to copy sentences.
But they don't understand any of it and talk among themselves instead. Felicia
paces the aisle shushing the children, warning them to listen. Several students
walk in late. All the seats are taken so they sit on the floor or stand. Some
can't see the television.
"I didn't know
you lived so far from school," Felicia says to one latecomer.
A bell rings signaling
the end of class. The children jump out of their chairs. They had no chance
to ask questions, nor did Felicia have a chance to teach. Prior to tele-classes
Felicia wrote lesson plans, led discussions, and assigned homework. Now she
maintains order. Some suggest taping tele-classes enabling teachers to pause
them for questions, but there aren't enough videotapes.
At 8 a.m. Felicia walks
to the teacher's lounge and waits. She only teaches one class today, but stays
in case she is needed. She is paid 300 pesos a month, roughly $15.
At noon she strolls
around the corner to buy a snack. She stops at a small concrete house with children
in front. One little girl has a Barbie Doll. The others chase after her.
"Dejame ver la
muneca." Let me see the doll, says a thin, curly-haired girl in a red T-shirt.
A sign on the door
lists today's specials: Pru, a root drink, Fritura, a fried corn patty, and
pizza. She settles on the pizza and a sugary pink drink similar to Kool-Aid.
The pizza costs two pesos. It is a small thick bread with tomato sauce and crumbled
cheese. In three bites it's gone. Most people go home for lunch, but she
lives too far away.
"Six years without
lunch. I am so hungry," she says.
It will be another
six hours before Felicia eats dinner. Her breakfast of coffee didn't stop the
hunger pangs, nor did the tiny pizza. But she would rather she go hungry than
her son or husband. She often goes without to provide for them. One time she
went a year and half without shoes. Today, she nearly forgets it's her birthday.
"I'm celebrating
by cooking and cleaning," she says when she remembers she's now 33.
Eight years before
Felicia's birth, women revolutionaries founded The Federation of Cuban Women
(FMC). The goal was to eradicate machismo and create a more equal society. They
fought for eighteen weeks of paid maternity leave, free contraception, pre-natal
care, abortions, and a national daycare system for working mothers. But equality
is still a distant goal. Women, especially Manzanilleras, bear a disproportionate
burden.
Felicia prefers not
to discuss politics.
"My politics are
my son and my husband, my family."
While her father is
not in her life, Felicia has a close bond with her mother, who raised her.
It is time for an assembly.
The teachers in the lounge trudge to the schoolyard. A doctor stands at a podium
yelling because there is no microphone. She's hard to hear and the children
talk among themselves. It is nearly one hundred degrees and there isn't a breeze.
The sun is merciless.
"Escuchen. Es
importante." Listen, it is important, says the doctor.
The doctor alerts the
children to the dangers of viral meningitis. She describes the appearance of
the mosquito that carries it, and symptoms. Fumigations are occurring across
the countryside, she tells the children. Only a few people have as yet contracted
the illness, but it hasn't been seen in Cuba for decades, and health officials
fear an epidemic. They suspect a mosquito carried it across the Atlantic on
a cargo ship from Africa.
"Can we count
on your help?"
"Yes," the
children shout back.
Felicia leads the children
upstairs then returns to the teachers' lounge. She makes small talk to pass
the time. She opens a worn brown book and points at a United States map. She
smiles.
"Where is Michigan?"
She has a friend in Michigan. It would be nice to visit, she says.
At five Felicia heads
home. It's a fifteen minute walk downhill to the horse and carriage stop.
She hails the first one.
"Hay lugar, cochero?"
Any room, she asks.
But all are full. Another
fifteen minutes pass. At last, one with room. The cochero stops and Felicia
climbs on.
"This is a Cuban
taxi," she says with a smile.
She points at a passing
horse and carriage.
"Would you believe
me if I told you that man was once the best history teacher in Manzanillo? He
quit and now makes more money as a cochero."
Has Felicia ever contemplated
quitting her job? Perhaps for a more lucrative one in the tourist sector?
"No, I love my
kids," she says. "I'm
a teacher."
Her best friend Angel
works at a tourist resort nearly three-hundred miles away in Cienfuegos. He
has friends from abroad who visit and leave generous tips when they check out.
When Angel visits he will hide a five or ten dollar bill somewhere in her house.
Sometimes she'll find one in a pair of pants or under a dish. It's her only
access to dollars.
"He knows I won't
accept it if he hands it to me. We're all struggling and he can't afford charity
anymore than I can. But by the time I find it, he's already gone."
After a twenty minute
ride Felicia pays the cochero one peso and begins the long walk home. When she
arrives, Kevin, the dog, is whimpering. He's tied up and hungry. If she were
to untie him, he would run outside and be stolen. She puts leftover rice and
beans in a tin plate. Kevin wags his tail and devours the food.
Felicia's mother and
Jose are waiting too. Jose's elated face is smeared with dirt. She hugs him
and tells him to clean up. She prepares a bucket of water and finds a bar of
soap.
While Jose washes in
the backyard, she carries a bucket of water to the outhouse and pours it into
the toilet to flush it.
She changes into shorts
and a tank top and walks to the kitchen. She points to the kitchen ceiling.
There are several lose bricks.
"Watch out. They
could part your skull."
The kitchen is filled
with chicken wire, bags of concrete and scraps of wood.
Jorge is planning to
fix the house. They bought it for a good price because there are holes in the
walls and ceiling. Mother, father and child share a small room with a bed, a
crib, and an armoire. Jose sleeps in the crib. They cannot afford a bed for
him. Even if they could, there's no room for one.
Felicia is proud they
have a home of their own.
"We own this,
we don't rent," she says.
Felicia's first marriage
was to Salo, a man she met in college. They were happy for a while, but after
Jose was born, he began to change. He became distant and withdrawn. He dropped
out of school. Then he disappeared only to resurface in jail. He had built a
raft and attempted to reach the Dominican Republic. Instead, he washed up on
Cuba's southern shore. He spent four years in jail for attempting to leave.
"He said 'If even
a dove, an animal, migrates in search of better conditions, shouldn't we humans?"
After that she divorced him. She was hurt that he had not discussed his decision
with her. She was even more hurt that he would abandon their son. It was then
that she began dating Jorge, a childhood sweetheart.
"If it weren't
for him, Jose and I would have starved during the Special Period," says
Felicia, referring to the early 1990s when food was even scarcer.
It was Jorge who rode
his bike up into the mountains in search of firewood when there was no combustible
liquid to light the burners. It was Jorge who found platano trees when there
was no food.
"You ate whatever
you could because you never knew when you'd have your next meal."
Felicia makes dinner.
She pours rice onto a piece of cloth. She sits at the table to clean the rice.
She lifts the tablecloth
to reveal a table made of wood scraps. Rusted nails jut from it.
"Jorge made it."
She continues picking
out bugs, rocks, dirt and discolored grains of rice.
It takes fifteen minutes
before she pours the rice in a bowl, lugs water in from out back, and washes
the grains. Next, she cleans the beans and lights the
burners.
Jose runs clutching
a piece of pink paper. He prances around the kitchen, waving it in the air.
"Look what I found
today, Mami. Colored paper!"
Ana starts work at
seven. Her job is a forty-minute walk from her home. Her boyfriend usually takes
her on the back of his bicycle, but not this morning.
Today reminded her of the days when prepared breakfast for the two older children,
sent them to school and then went to work with her youngest child in her arms.
That was thirty years ago when her husband left her for another woman. She was
twenty-four then and raised her children without any assistance.
Single mothers are more common nowadays. Between 1973 and 1988, 39 percent of
all Cuban children were born to single mothers, by 1989, 61 percent.
"No era facil.
But we survived."
For the past three
decades Ana has been a cook at the Circulo Infantile, a government-run day care
center. The program provides low-cost daycare for working mothers at 20 to 70
pesos a month depending on the parent's salary and the number of children in
the family. Initially, the program was free but it became too expensive for
the government.
The children are between
6 months and 6 years-old. They begin arriving at 6 a.m. and are picked up by
7 p.m. Ana's responsible for preparing their morning snack and lunch. At 9 a.m.
children have milk or orange juice, if available. Today the children had a yogurt
drink and bread.
Ana would like to retire,
but she needs the money. In Cuba, women can retire at 55, men at 60.
Ana and another cook
are in the kitchen. It's a small room without windows. No one else is allowed
in because years ago, someone put crushed glass in the children's food.
"Te imaginas?"
Can you imagine? asks Ana.
Outside, the children
are divided into groups. All the workers are women. Each one has a group of
ten to fifteen children. They sing songs and play with the children. One woman,
about Ana's age, is in charge of the 3-year-olds. She sings a song about rabbits.
A boy cries as his father leaves. Two others fight over a red flower. A little
girl pulls a little boy by the ear and he screams. There aren't enough chairs
to accommodate latecomers.
"I'm so tired,"
says the teacher.
She holds up laminated
pictures glued on popsicle sticks.
"What's this,"
she asks.
"A lion,"
says the crying boy.
"Yes, a lion.
And where does the Lion live?" she asks
"In the zoo."
Across the yard, 6-year-old
boys sit at tables, drawing on scraps of notebook paper. A pencil breaks and
the caretaker sharpens it with a knife. As the boys draw, the girls play at
life-size stations made of cardboard. There is a factory, a kitchen, a beauty
salon, a hospital, and cars. A group of girls plays in the kitchen. One cooks
while the others sit at a table. The cook serves equal portions to each girl.
"Eat all your
food. It's rice, beans and chicken," she says.
When Ana gets home
at 3 p.m. she makes dinner immediately so she can have the evening to herself.
Her boyfriend comes home at four. Tonight Ana is visiting a friend, Oda. Oda
moved to Habana six months ago. This is her first time back. Oda is homesick
and unhappy about the move. She wants to return to Manzanillo because her family
is here. In Habana she is isolated, depressed, and losing weight. A robust Manzanillera
is considered beautiful. When her friends call her "flaca", thin,
it is not a compliment. They say it with concern. They pinch the pink spandex
of her dress to show how loosely it fits her.
"Tienes que comer,
Oda." You have to eat, says her worried sister.
Ana carries a Batido
de Trigo, a wheat smoothie to Oda.
Though Oda loves her
husband, she is considering leaving him to come back. Like many women in Manzanillo,
her family is her priority. She feels uprooted in Habana, though conditions
are better.
"Have faith in
God. It will pass," says Ana.
She is a devout Baptist
as is Oda.
"Ponte de rodilla
y ruegale al Señor." Get on your knees and beg the Lord for strength.
"It isn't easy,"
replies Oda.
Oda's sister, Flora
needs advice too. For the twenty years of their marriage Flora tolerated her
husband's affairs. He was recently arrested and Flora went to visit him. Another
woman was there.
"Votalo ya."
Dump him, advises Ana.
"There's a point
where you have to say 'no more' and love yourself more than you love him. You
can't live like this."
Ana knows about cheating
men. She complains that Cuban men are mujerieros, womanizers.
"They don't want
to stay with one woman," she complains.
After Ana's husband
left her, she met another man. She fell in love and they were together for several
years.
"But he was too good-looking." Women chased after him.
"The women here, they don't care if a man is with someone."
So Ana left him. He
is a tall, handsome man with a black mustache. Even now, when they meet on the
street, she hardly resists his charms.
"He wants to be
with me, but who can be with a man like that?"
After that relationship
Ana met another man. She was with him for eight years but he followed another
woman to Habana. Later he returned, ill and disheveled. Ana nursed him to health.
"I guess I was
better." Ana smiles.
They have been together
five years since then. He lives with Ana.
"But it's my house.
I own it." Ana's eyes sparkle. The pride in her voice rivals the tone with
which she speaks of her children.
"It's not much,
but it's mine."
As Ana arrives home,
Belen is cleaning. She wets a gray rag and wipes it across the counter. It's
9 p.m. and she just walked in the door. She too had a long day. She leaves for
work at 7 a.m. and it's a forty-five minute walk, but she likes the time alone.
"Give me hot chocolate
now," demands her 9-year-old brother.
She ignores him and
pulls a strand of black hair behind her ear. She swats away flies with her hands.
Her cheeks are flushed.
"Nowww" he
whines.
She rolls her eyes,
sighs and lifts the milk off the cupboard shelf. They have to drink it as quickly
as possible. They don't have a refrigerator.
When her mother isn't
home, Belen is the matriarch. As if on cue, the 5-year-old twins, run in. They
are clad in underwear. Their petite facial features are perfectly chiseled,
as if from marble, and their wavy black hair in a disarray. One twin is screeching,
the other laughing.
"Nina me jalo
el pelo," Nina pulled my hair, says one, eyes wide with astonishment.
The other continues
laughing and runs out the back door.
In the living room,
Belen's grandfather and his trio make music. Two of the men are middle-aged.
They arrive immediately after work every day and stay for hours. Belen's seventy-year-old
abuelo is the oldest and most experienced musician. He founded the trio half
a century ago. Belen grew up with the sounds of his guitar, as did her mother.
The three men fill
the house with traditional Cuban love songs, boleros. They sing of loves lost,
unparalleled devotion and beautiful women.
"O mi amor, por
siempre tu." O my love, for always it will be you, her grandfather croons.
"Are you hungry?"
Belen yells. With one hand on her hip, she wipes the sweat from her forehead.
He stops singing.
"Of course I'm
hungry. When's dinner going to be ready?" he asks. There is irritation
in his voice.
Belen prepares the
rice. Melodies arise in the background.
"They say it's
women's work," she whispers.
Belen's ex-husband,
Luis, had the same idea. She thought he was romantic at first. He seemed protective,
not controlling. She drew other conclusions when she found he was cheating.
"Tenia otra mujer."
He had another woman, says Belen.
Belen and Luis only
knew each other for a month before they were married. She was flattered that
a man ten years older was interested in her; especially a good-looking man.
It was a way to get out of the house, and start a life of her own. But the marriage
only lasted 9 months. Why did they marry so quickly?
"Because he wanted
to," she says. She doesn't want to discuss him anymore.
Divorce is common.
Many Cubanas have been married multiple times. Couples can divorce easily if
their marriage "loses meaning" or if a spouse is "abandoned"
for six months. In addition, boys as young as 16 and girls as young as 14 can
legally marry.
By 1987, more than
one-third of marriages and divorces occurred among adolescents. In 1992, a majority
of married couples were under thirty. Such marriages lasted on average less
than two years.
Belen's ex-husband
still pursues her. He loiters outside her work. He offers to walk her home.
He brings her gifts. She tells him, "I don't want anything to do with you."
Just a few months have
passed since their divorce, and she is eager to wed again.
"Do you want to
see my wedding album? The gown is beautiful."
She is looking for
a boyfriend, but prospects are slim. She doesn't have time to look for a man,
and there aren't any at school. She yearns to be a mother and wishes she had
children. She smiles at the thought. She would have some already if her ex-husband
weren't sterile.
Her gaze shifts. An
cat jumps over the fence. It is emaciated and severely burned. Most of its black
fur is missing and its pink skin is covered with pus, open wounds and blisters.
"It was caught
stealing."
The cat went into a
house through an open window or door looking for food. Someone then threw hot
water or oil on it.
"It was probably
a piece of meat or fish."
Nowadays, Belen works
at Manzanillo's only medical school where she is a waitress at the dormitory
cafeteria. There are many extranjeros, foreigners, but tips are rare. For the
past 3 years Belen has also been a student at the school of gastronomy, a trade
school for restaurant and hotel workers. She's learned basic English and service
skills. She's learned how to set a table and how to take an order.
When she was 14, Belen
had the opportunity to go to pre-university. Her grades were high, and teachers
encouraged her to pursue college. The pre-universities are located far away
in the mountains where students spend half the day studying and half the day
working in fields to develop respect for the land and laborers.
After several months
at school Belen returned because she was homesick. Others say she missed a boyfriend.
That was when she chose to attend a gastronomy trade school.
"Me gusta."
I like it, she says.
Where will she be in
10 years?
She laughs.
"I don't know.
I haven't thought much about the future."
She would like to work
in a place with more tourists, but that is competitive. And the idea of leaving
home for Habana scares her. She looks down and separates the discolored grains
of rice.
"I'm not going anywhere," she says.
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