one more, written on tuesday Sept 12th

So, marietta, our helper (my empleada), arrives every weekday at about 8.45 am, and leaves around 4 pm. our house isn't really big enough to require that much cleaning time, and the only things to get ironed are Steve's shirts, but here is why she comes every day:

1. some guys ring the bell - they want to know where we got our guard house because they need one.
2. the fish delivery guy (who can also get almost anything else that might fall off the back of a truck around here) comes by to tell us that he can't deliver anything this week because of the meeting of heads of non-aligned states - no one can ride around (even on bicycles) with parcels.
3. the water guy from the embassy comes with two more water bottles for us.
4. a couple of guys in a horse cart show up to take the coconuts off of the trees in the back so that they don't fall down on our heads and kill us while we are lazing aroud the pool. I paid them too much, but they had to fend off thousands of ants while 30 feet up in the air swining around machetes. What's a few dollars to me?
5. two guys from the embassy come over to check out the new stove we have in the garage and to figure out how they will wire it.
6. two more guys from the embassy show up to look at the work that the carpenter did yesterday with the new curtain rods, and to consult on the wiring of the new stove.
7. a friend comes over for coffee
8. the garbage removal guy comes from the embassy to take away our non-recycleables.
9. the fumigator stops by to spray the yard for mosquitoes so that we can avoid catching dengue (big problem here for the past few months).

And all of this at my gate before noon today.

In between arrivals and departures, I made orange juice. We bought a HUGE bag of oranges for $5, but they need to be dealt with fairly quickly. No preservatives, you know. I am about halfway through the bag right now, and we have a lovely container of very tart fresh-squeezed orange juice in the fridge.

The only person who DIDN'T come to my door was my Spanish teacher, but that is no great surprise, as driving this week is quite bad, what with all of the non-aligned heads of states zipping around town in official vehicles having meetings. Or whatever you do when you are unaligned. Whatever that means.

written on Monday, 11 September, at home

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore...

I keep getting this feeling here. This is SO NOT TOKYO! Which is mostly fine, although I have moments of missing Tokyo viscerally. If that is the word. I feel it in my gut. Clearly, four years was enough time for me to put down roots, to really feel at home in Tokyo. I remember that I was ready to leave, that I was ready for new challenges (hoo, boy, watch out what you wish for...), I was tired of the constant fear of earthquakes. But WOW do I miss it. I think if I start listing the things I miss, I'll end up a snivelling mess. However, just one thing - I miss having INTERNET!!!! I am writing this at home, assuming that I will be able to figure out how to transfer this from heret o some internet-connected computer somewhere, sometime soon.

Havana is beautiful and kind of sad. Or not sad, but melancholy or something. The buildings and the city itself are just stunning. But things are crumbling (oops - power just went out, hooray for the UPS I have the computer connected to...). If Cuba hadn't had the last 50 years of isolation, it would be just like the rest of the world (probably just like the Dominican Republic, our home 4 years ago, or was it 5), and that would be a sadder thing. Things are kind of static here, at least architecturally. I can imagine, driving along the Malecon, or though my 1950's neighborhood, what Havana looked like in its mid-20th Century glory. Our area, where we live, was all built in the 50's, and the architecture is experimental (not all of it successfully so) and funky and cool. Our house is all strange angles and different levels, and I love it. We have friends who live in houses build in the 1920's, or even back in the late 1800's, I think, and those houses are amazing. But everything that is not a government building, or that isn't housing a foreigner (or isn't a part of Havana Vieja- Old Havana) is completely crumbling. If you sneezed too loud (like a salaryman on the subway) the whole place might come crashing down around you.

One of the things that Steve did during our unpack on the weekend was to disassemble our bed. It was kind of creaky and wobbly, and so he took it apart to investigate. It was held together with plumbing parts. The bedframe was screwed to the headboard with water-line shut-off valves. A testament to Cuban ingenuity, and to the complete uselessness of the Canadians who have used the bed for the past however many years. Because not only was it put together with toilets, but it was also assembled in such a way that only four of the six legs could touch the floor at any given time - hence the fantastic wobble and rattle every time we ummm... got into bed.

I know, in my heart, that it will be good for me to take a hiatus from shopping. Tokyo made a master-consumer out of me, and unpacking our riches was embarrassing at times. We just have so much, and people here have so little. But I miss heading out the door to go hunting for something new. A chachka, or a place to explore, or whatever. I can do that here, but the EASE of doing it in Tokyo... The first day that Sam went to school here, and Steve went off to work, I thought - what do I do? I can't just walk out the front door, hop on the subway and find something new and amazing. I know that I am wrong, and that the things to be discovered here in Havana are also new and amazing (and far more accessible - at least I can speak and read the language - what a strange experience), but I wanted to hop on the subway and be taken there. Not worry about how to get somewhere, or whether it will be safe or clean or if there will be a toilet or edible food (don't get me started on the food - I am going to have to learn to cook again...). And I've lost the feeling of familiarity. Tokyo was strange and unintelligible and grey all over, but it was HOME. And so will this be, eventually.