No more photos!

The Playa Este is a stretch of beach about 30 minutes out of Havana which is known for its beauty.

As it’s Sunday, a lesson free day I decide to catch the bus there. When I arrive at the bus stop at the Parque Centrale there is already a long queue. A bus comes 35 minutes later, but I am left behind, the first in the new queue.

While waiting, I got chatting to Claudia, an Argentinean girl who is visiting her Cuban friend who has a 5 month old baby girl. It turns out they live nearby and they invite me to visit them later. They tell me they will be at the Tropicoco beach, the second stop on the bus route and they will look out for me.

When the next bus comes I have been waiting in the heat for over an hour. Waiting is a normal thing in Havana. People queue for everything and perhaps because they are used to it, there are few signs of impatience. Queues are very democratic. When you arrive at the end, you ask who is last and then as long as someone has come behind you, apparently you can leave your place and come back later without a problem. As people are usually queuing in the full sun with no seating, so it’s good to know that you can go and get a drink of water of find some shade for a few minutes and not lose your place in the queue.

The fact that bus is air conditioned is a welcome surprise and I sit in the first aisle seat so I can get a good view. The interior of the bus is quite dark and the curtains are pulled to keep the sun out. A young Cuban man gets into the window seat next to me and chats to someone on the phone. I mention all this because when I get off the bus and see that the beach is indeed lovely I reach into my pocket to get my camera to take a photo and my camera is gone. In a split second my mind runs through the time since I have used it. It was at the Parque Centrale when I took some photos of the passing traffic, and I also remember all the wonderful shots I took last night in the old city that I haven’t had a chance to put on the computer yet. The one that comes to mind is of the ninety old cigar smoking women who I stopped to talk to for a while. The camera was in my dress pocket and either it fell out onto the seat or it was stolen from my pocket. Either way the chances of getting it back are extremely remote. I try to be hopeful and go straight back to the place that the bus dropped me off because I know it does a circular route and wait for the next bus.

To cut a very long story short, I did not find my camera, in spite of spending hours trying to track down the bus and crew.

I am so disappointed as not only have I lost recent photos, but the camera had film of my family in Hong Kong and Rottnest and of my hiking on the Amalfi Coast. I have so many places to see before I go back to Australia and the photos would have been part of the record of my mid life gap year.

I also did not “see” or experience the beach at all, and it’s a shame because it was lovely, albeit crowded, and I am so sorry that I did not manage to reconnect with Claudia and her friend and have no way of doing so.

I am supposed to go out tonight with Ulrike, a Swedish girl who is also doing salsa classes with me. She has hooked up with a lovely Cuban guy, Roberto and they have invited me to join them at club 1830, a salsa club overlooking the water. It is a huge effort to get ready as all I want to do is mope. Gustavo knows I am upset and tries to cheer me up. I tell him I am sad today, but tomorrow I will be ok. 

Club 1830 is a bit surreal. The music is hypnotic and the moves on the dance floor even more so. There are few tourists, but I am lucky enough to meet a couple of Aussies from Newcastle! It is so good to hear the Australian accent after all this time and even more so to experience the Aussie sense of humour. Neil is keen to learn to salsa, confessing he was kicked out of a school in Newcastle because he was so bad! It doesn’t stop him strutting his stuff on the dance floor, which is kind of cool!

Roberto introduces me to a few of his friends and eventually Jesus, who tells me that he is a lawyer for the Ministerio de Justicia, asks me to dance.

Jesus tells me that he works very hard during the week days and on the weekend he loves to dance to relax. He is patient and encouraging in spite of my clumsy efforts and when I thank him and suggest he find someone more his level to dance with, he says one of the nicest things a man has ever said to me. It was in Spanish, but effectively means ‘I am happy standing by your side”.  Later he shows me the view from the Castillio and he becomes very affectionate. My Spanish is limited so I tell him that I appreciate his attention and he is a very attractive man, but my situation is muy complicated. It is easier than the truth. He seems genuinely crestfallen, but as I walk off to catch a taxi back to my “casa” I am sure he is already giving compliments to another “chica”.

I think again briefly about losing my camera. It is just not worth the trouble of claiming it on insurance as I felt unsafe going to the police station –and have in fact been warned off going there, and there is no Australian embassy here to actually report the loss to, so I will just try to find another one in Mexico City, or maybe just do without it.

Taking photos has been almost an obsession for me since my brother Paul died so many years ago, after I realised I had few photos of him and particularly of the two of us together as adults. For me, photos as a kind of “back up” for a memory not as sharp as it used to be. When I see a photo, it touches a pathway in my limbic system and I am immediately drawn back to the time that the photo was taken. The whole experience is recreated and replayed, complete with sensory accompaniment- I relive the emotion, and the particular aromas, tastes, sights, sounds and textures of the experience.

I wrote down the following quote recently. It seems appropriate here.

We take pictures because we can’t accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility

We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time

We take pictures because we know we will forget

We take pictures out of pride –a desire to leave the best of us preserved

We fear we will die and others will not know that we lived

“A year of fog”- Michelle Richmond

These words resonate with me. Perhaps taking photos has been my way of insulating against ceasing to exist, a way of not being forgotten.

After all, while even one photo of me remains, I still exist even in death, but without any photo perhaps with time I will cease to be.

But for now I “am” and that’s more than enough!

A presto or should I say Hasta Pronto!

Mon x