Cuba: Day 6 - Part 1

This morning is a morning of greenery.  Out in the countryside.  Ismaël and his Trusty Bus take us down the backroads around Cienfuegos, past several Yellow Jackets and to the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden.

What I call The Mermaid Tree

     Our guide will be botanist Roger Echeverria.  I blurt out "un nombre vasco" (a Basque name) because I recognize it from Basque friends back in France.  Yes, he admits.  He has Basque ancestors. That and the fact that my father was a veteran gardener build a bridge between us as he leads us around the garden.
       It was founded in 1901 by a Massachusetts family named Atkins to carry out sugar cane research for their sugar mill across the road. Now it’s owned by Cuba’s Department of Technology and Environment.  Roger guides us around the extensive property, pointing out all the exotic trees by name, both common and Latin.  At the end, I mention to him the Matthaei Botanical Gardens of the University of Michigan, and he’s heard of them!  I take his e-mail address so I can put them in touch with each other.  I’m sure they’d have very interesting exchanges.  Especially as Roger’s English is impeccable.

Former Soledad sugar mill

Atkins' mansion

The next stop is Atkins’ old Soledad sugar mill complex, originally built by a family from the town of Trinidad, who arrived in 1820 with 800 slaves.  The Atkins family took it over in 1884 and modernized it after slavery was abolished two years later.  (Atkins was an abolitionist.) The young Atkins set about helping the ex-slaves obtain land.  He also developed the infrastructure of the entire area:  phones, electricity, a school, a dispensary.  Although the plantation was nationalized in 1960, along with most everything else on the island, a lot of what Atkins set up is still visible here, even though the sugar cane operation was closed in 2002 because it couldn’t be mechanized.  12,000 machetes would be needed to farm this terrain.  In spite of that, the population living on the plantation’s imprint today is a walloping 4,000.  This has become an industrial zone - cement plant, oil refinery, asphalt plant - that also raises cattle and grows some vegetables.  Funds have been obtained to restore what remains of the plantation as a part of the region’s history, and the house will need a lot of restoring!

       After a presentation by yet another Nancy (which seems to be a popular name in Cuba), up steps Pedro Gutierrez, who used to be a steam train engineer on the property.  Farming the cane required 300 train cars, seven locomotives - Baldwins from Philadelphia he tells us American tourists - and 80 kilometers of track.  Now Pedro is the night watchman.  It’s touching that the system has provided a job for him, and allowed him to present his part of the plantation’s history to visitors.  He walks among us, proudly sharing the few photos he has of this part of his life.
      After the presentation by Nancy and Pedro, we're set free to roam.  In the kitchen of the worn-out mansion, a smiling woman is cooking lunch for the entire staff in huge cast iron pots that may well date back to Atkins' time.  It's pasta today, and she invites us to stay.  Another woman is mopping the mansion's courtyard with water that no longer comes from the huge well her plastic bucket is perched on.  What the mansion really needs though is a new coat of plaster and some fresh paint.

Inside the "Company store"

       I’m curious about what could possibly still be sold in the bustling Mercado Industrial Amenecer (Daybreak Company Store) across the way, open 9 to 5 according to the hours painted on the building, right alongside “Still offering good service” in red letters.  I stroll past a tired horse and cart and into the relative darkness of the century-old building.  On the wall is the now-familiar blackboard listing prices, as they were at the bodega in Havana.  Interestingly, quantities are always quoted in pounds rather than kilograms, a vestige of America’s past influence here.  And as with the bodega in Havana, shelves here are... let’s say “airy”, with few goods visible.  Condoms, prominently displayed, cost 1 Cuban peso, if you’re interested and a sign declares that you have to be 16 to buy cigarettes or alcohol.  With Chris’s help, I manage to buy a colorfully-painted wooden puzzle for my younger grandson.  I say “manage” because the price is in Cuban pesos, as are all prices, and we need to know how much the clerk will sell it for in CUCs (the tourist currency), and that takes quite a while.  It appears to be a major undertaking because few foreigners buy anything here; it’s truly a store for locals.  Fidel looks down from his painted place on the wall, keeping a careful eye on the Evil American trying to subvert his people.  Everyone else just watches with amused curiosity.  What a strange creature I must seem to them!

To be continued...