More on the Cuban reality

My grandfather has always told me that being Cuban is a profession, not just a nationality. Being Cuban, and living in Cuba that is, entails that even the most insignificant, daily task, like getting a bite to eat, is made up of a long series of complications, some of which may even be absurdly illegal, for which they should award a college degree. A Cuban does not simply buy something, he has to conseguir, which roughly translates as to acquire through some alternative means. Sometimes, he has to inventar, to invent, this is when he really has to stretch the realm of the imagination, like when he has to, MacGyver-like, make replacement parts for '50s-era American cars from scrap metals and old Chinese bicycles.

Food is no different. The pathetically inefficient socialist system provides no places where a busy resident of Havana, like a university student, can get a snack on the go. Cubans have to resort to privately owned places, eschewed decades ago by Fidel Castro's economic retardation, they are the only things that run with any efficiency in the country today. Take Pizza Celina, for example:

Near the University of Havana, students line up at lunchtime outside a building with peeling pink paint to shout orders for pizza with tomato sauce and cheese for 8 pesos, which is about 38 cents. A little bit more buys a ham or sausage topping.

Minutes later, a basket on a rope drops for payment. Money collected, the basket comes down again, bearing hot pizzas, grease soaking through butcher paper wrapping. There is no soda, or napkins.

The basket-on-a-rope delivery method is popular among those who share and sell goods in apartment buildings without working elevators.

"We come here because it's good, it's fast and it's cheap," said Laura, a 20-year-old history student. Like many Cubans, she wouldn't give a last name, uncomfortable talking with a foreign reporter about an issue as political as food.

She said she often eats for less money at the university cafeteria, but the food there isn't as good as at the privately run Pizza Celina.

"This is a bit expensive for us but we come when we can," she said. A recent increase in the monthly government stipend for students, from 20 to 50 pesos (about $1 to $2.50), means she can now afford to visit the pizzeria once a month.

Laura lives on the other side of Havana, and it's impractical to go home to eat. There are few nearby places to buy cheap food, save for a nearly empty state-run vegetarian restaurant. "I've never gone in there," Laura says.

The AP has more here. There's nothing that hasn't been written about before, but the Cuban reality is so absurd and surreal that everyone outside it needs a constant reminder lest they forget it's anything close to a life of dignity.