I got to visit Cuba for the fourth time last week; it is a beautiful country, its people so warm, friendly and hardworking, and it’s so very different from our life here in North America. I took some mental notes on the bus ride back to the airport:
Sketches of Cuba 2018
University-educated bus guide,
fluent in four languages,
entertaining with his dry sense of humour;
is he happy?
horse and buggy carrying uniformed girls to school;
boy pumping water using an ancient hand pump;
powdery sand stretching to infinity,
outlining the turquoise ocean;
bright splotches of yellow popping out of the green;
signs of Irma,
uprooted trees, missing roof tiles;
cinderblock homes,
windows shuttered up, blocking the heat – no glass?
men, the same vintage as their bicycles,
pedalling down dirt lanes – s-l-o-w-l-y,
sniffing dogs trailing along behind;
bamboo fields
and neat rows of green
meandering up hillsides toward distant mountains;
people chatting in corner cafés – not Tim Horton’s,
waiting, for what?
Time stands still.
Jan L. Coates