Ah, supermarkets

Nine months after returning to the grey skies and warm homes of UK life, whilst I am on balance very happy to be home again, I do find myself missing aspects of life in Cuba. The climate is definitely the big one: sunshine and blue skies and perfect temperatures in the 'cold' season; sunshine and blue skies and massive thunderstorms in the hot season. Oh, how I hate being cold and how I long for regular sunshine and warm breezes. What else? Hummingbirds, jewel-like and tiny, darting onto my balcony to drink from the aloe flowers or whizzing around the bushes outside the school gates in the morning. Salsa lessons with friends from work and the little crew of teachers from Salsa en Casa who were excellent teachers and a lot of fun on a night out. Walking the noisy, dirty, crumbling, beautiful streets of Old Havana. Sundowners with friends at waterfront bars on Avenida Primera in Miramar. Wearing shorts and t-shirts and flip flops; yes, that's another reflection on the weather. Flame trees and jacaranda in blossom, and massive ceiba trees draped in creepers. Sunday supper club. The beach - ah, the beach! The perfect island beach of your dreams, with crystal clear turquoise waters and white sand and palm trees dotting the background. Thus:

Cayo Levisa - utterly perfect

But this post is not about that. This post is about something I don't miss. Something so simple for you, non-Cuban island dweller, that you barely even notice how amazing it is. I'm talking about supermarkets. Actually, I might as well be talking about your local corner-shop because, guaranteed, it has more variety and in some instances more actual stuff than your average Cuban supermarket. Shopping for food in Cuba is an activity that consumes the lives of ordinary Cubans and expats alike, and one that you simply cannot understand unless you experience it for yourself. I spent much of my Saturday morning (and sometimes Sunday) out hunting and gathering. Off at 8am to the agromercado, or fresh produce market, to get the best of the produce or to ensure you got some things before they vanished - for example, the cooks from the Chinese embassy would have cleared out the entirety of the broccoli man's small stash if you didn't get there before them - and to buy black market eggs from the two crones we christened 'toil and trouble'. When eggs were available. Then it was off before 9am to join to queue for the supermarket at 3ra y 70ma, or Flores further down the road, to see if maybe there was butter this week, or chicken. Off to Palco for toilet paper (if they had it), cleaning products (if there were any) and long-life milk (stopped being sold around 2019). And then an early afternoon hit-and-run forage if you'd heard from someone else that shop X still had flour, or rice, or whatever. 

Just finding food was a weekly exercise in ingenuity, dedication and patience. And coordination with others. It was normal, if you found something - particularly chicken - to buy extra on the assumption that your friends would want it, or to call when in a shop to say 'I've found this, do you want some?' There are over-subscribed WhatsApp groups for Havana expats which are solely dedicated to letting people know where certain things may be available. Chicken at the Zona plus! Apples at Flores! How bad are the queues? No more than half an hour! And it's not just food stuff that is hard to come by, but everyday things such as toothpaste, deodorant, any old thing you might find at a hardware shop, car parts... You get used to stopping at petrol stations on road trips, because you never know what random, hard-to-find items they might have. Hotel shops too. I've driven to Varadero and back, a four-hour round trip, to buy cleaning products and meat when the pandemic began to squeeze supply lines. But even before that, supermarket shelves were often empty, or stocked with only one item, as per the photo below, taken when Tamar visited in February 2017. She spent most of her trip saying, "Wait, what do you mean you can't buy ...?" 

February 2017 - there was long-life milk that day, hence the 20 or so litres in the trolley...

The regularity of shortages of specific foodstuffs - meat and dairy - was why I had a massive chest freezer. For those moments when you actually found beef or butter or cheese, and you bought as much as you could/was seemly, then stuck it in the freezer for the long months of scarcity. I once bought 5 kilos each of salted and unsalted butter, which kept me going for the better part of a year; likewise, Georgie and I once queued for two hours at the end of a two-month meat shortage to buy beef from Palco and each came away with, at a conservative estimate, around 20 kilos. We were lucky that we had the ready cash to do so; the average Cuban, on a monthly government salary of around $30, did not always have the ready funds for that kind of purchase. Just getting by, for the average Cuban, is hard, made harder by the squeeze of the Trump years. But well before that, corruption, fraud and theft were endemic, and trust is often in short supply. When it's that hard to find enough food just to get by, the ordinary Cuban puts themselves and their family first and will do whatever it takes to feed their family. 

I made a reference to the scarcity in Cuban shops in an early blog post during my time there, and was warned by a colleague that even though I hadn't been critical, even though my post was purely commentary, I should take it down right away. Anything that might imply any kind of criticism of the government or its policies would be noted and filed away and in my position I simply couldn't afford the risk that came with that. So I had a self-imposed moratorium on any kind of commentary on domestic, economic or foreign policy for the duration of my stay there; now that I'm no longer resident, I can talk about the issues with freedom. Unpacking the factors that have led to the everyday scarcity that Cubans live with is not something I wish to do in detail here, not least because I'm no expert, but I would say the following: it is certainly true that many of the country's shortages are due in no small part to the US-led system of sanctions and the American embargo, known in Cuba as the bloqueo. The embargo is - in the view of this foreigner - an utter waste of time. After nearly sixty years, it has not achieved its intended aim of regime change and the worst of its impact is felt by the average man in the street, certainly not by government officials or military generals, who live quite comfortably thank you very much. 

However, it has been convenient for the Cuban regime to blame shortages on the bloqueo when there is plenty of evidence that internal policies and politics, as well as chronic economic mismanagement, contribute significantly to the situation. It is well-known that the government doesn't pay its bills, so countries are chary of selling goods - petrol in particular - to Cuba, for fear of never getting paid. Official corruption also plays a part in the shortages suffered by ordinary Cubans. One famous example of this concerns the manager of Palco, one of the largest of the dollar stores (so-called because you would shop there largely with the CUC, roughly 1 to $1, rather than the monedad nacional or CUP, roughly 24 to $1. The currency has now been unified, so that particular issue has at least disappeared, though others have risen in its place). Palco was one of the few places where you could reliably find goods you couldn't find elsewhere, often because the price tag was higher than the average Cuban could afford: long-life milk, imported butter and cheese, Spanish chorizo and jamon, beef and chicken, cereal... It had a massive warehouse out back, with a huge freezer for meat storage. Imagine everyone's shock (for which, read no one's shock) when both the manager and the millions of dollars it turned out he'd embezzled disappeared. He'd been running a cosy little sideline selling off all the meat from that massive warehouse on the black market, and then did a bunk with the profits. So next time you read some leftie columnist telling you that Cuba's problems are all the fault of the Americans, don't swallow the whole story - the bloqueo is certainly bad policy that only a tiny minority of disproportionately powerful, wishful-thinking Cuban exiles in Miami support, but it's an easy scapegoat for broader, systemic problems with Cuba's economy and its ruling elite.

Why did this cross my mind today? Well, in an admin-y moment I was tidying up the notes on my computer and I found one called "Stuff I have bought". It is a list of the many and varied things I bought any time I left the island during the four years I lived there, to bring back for my store cupboards, my fridge, my friends' store cupboards and their fridges, and even, on occasion, the school. It's a very long and varied list, so I have published it below the text for those who have the time/energy/patience to go through it. If you don't, fair enough, but bear with me whilst I answer some questions relating to it. Why so many electrical goods? Because even though there were shops that sold some (though not all) of these items in Havana, the mark-up was ENORMOUS, with a 100% import tax on some items. When I left the island and sold off the contents of my kitchen, it was the small food processor that was most in demand. Why did you bring in random fruit and veg? Cuba imports almost no fresh fruit or vegetables; in some ways, this is the height of sustainable agriculture, in other ways, it is astonishing how much you can miss eating an apple. Don't they grow coffee in Cuba? They do, but they roast the hell out of it and so the beans are blackened and lead to a bitter cup of coffee. Why so much medication? Were you really sick all the time? It is very hard to come by medicine in Cuba, so the more you can bring in with you the better. Again, when I left, I emptied my medicine cupboard entirely and gave it to a colleague whose husband had chronic back pain and for whom tracking down pain killers was almost her second full-time job. Why all the dried fruits and nuts? You can't find those in Cuban shops. Why the many spices and slightly eclectic foodie bits? Ditto, so if you want to eat a more 'global' style menu you have to have a well-stocked pantry and the only way you can stock it is by bringing in the specific things you want. Why all the stuff for other people? Because that's how expats roll.

This list made me stop for a minute and reflect: on how necessity is the mother of invention; on how Sunday supper club grew out of a group of friends getting together to make delicious meals out of whatever they could find/smuggle/stash in their luggage; on how lucky I was even to be able to bring all those things into Cuba when many Cubans can't even leave the island; on how incredible it is there are countries in the world where you can go into supermarket and buy anything you want at any time. When I lived in Cuba, every time I went to visit the American cousins I would go to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods and just stand in the cereal aisle, overwhelmed at how much choice there was, before pulling out my carefully curated list and buying a mix of what I needed, what were definitely little treats that added a little shine to life back in Havana, something special for the next Sunday supper (burrata always G's favourite) and what would not take me over my luggage allowance. (By the by, I am now AWESOME at packing any suitcase to exactly 23kg. This is not a skill I will need much in the near future, but one of which I'm rather proud.) I may have constant access to the largesse of British supermarkets, but I remain childishly delighted by the sheer variety of foodstuffs, by knowing that if I run out of toothpaste Sainsbury's will definitely have some, by having a choice of delicious cheeses and yogurts and fresh vegetables - though I remain committed to seasonal and where possible local buying, so no Peruvian asparagus in January or parsnips in August, thanks all the same. 

I don't think it will ever wear off, this feeling I have now of just how much I enjoy shopping and supermarkets - and don't get me started on high-end delis and food shops, I could be in one of those all day. Nine months down the line, I still find it enormously thrilling. And I hope that it never wears off, this sense of wonder and excitement at the fabulous ease and convenience and freedom of shopping back home. Ah, supermarkets. Mundane and routine for some - for others, a whole new (rediscovered) world.

Stuff I have brought in my luggage to Cuba

(some of this list featured regularly in my suitacses, some items were one-offs)

baking powder 
soap
chocolate chips for baking

preserved ginger

preserved lemons and limon baladi spread (or לימון כבוש)

rose harissa paste
peanut butter (crunchy)
coffee beans - kilos and kilos and kilos

coffee bean grinder
walnuts

hazelnuts

cashew nuts

pine nuts

prunes

dried figs

dried cranberries

raisins/sultanas
pearl couscous (known as ptitim in Israel)

tahina
tofu 
toothpaste

toothbrushes
hairdye

brackets and wooden shelving for the kitchen

Tupperware in all shapes and sizes (including a marvellous one for salad leaves that unaccountably went missing from my shipment)
pretzels

trail mix 
mirin
rice vinegar
soy sauce
PAM cooking spray
muffins (for Jeremy as much as for me)

marmalade (for Jeremy)

crumpets 
flour tortillas

food-grade oil for wooden salad bowl

wooden/magnetic knife block

superglue for mending wooden/magnetic knife block

cheese: cheddar, burrata, goat's, gruyere, parmesan, Isle of Wight blue (thanks Mum), mozzarella 
Brabantia D bags for the bin
electric lighter for the kitchen hob (as the igniter was broken)
corner scratcher thing for the cats (never made it onto a wall, they used it flat on the ground)

cat toys

secateurs

memory foam mattress topper

memory foam pillow

large reusable water flask

several coffee thermoses

bread knife
paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, antacids, pain relief gel, tampons
large littler box
candles
large vase
another large vase (the cat broke the one before)
gin & creme de mure
moisturiser of all kinds
deodorant 
chocolate
cat treats
togarishi chilli mix & palm sugar 

fennel seeds
soba noodles
udon noodles

salad nut and topping mix

nuts in general
Quaker oatmeal

miso paste

miso soup mix

nam plan

mustard seeds

chocolate digestives for Becs

tamarind paste
walnut oil

olive oil

truffle salt (oooh!)
panko bread crumbs
Kleenex balsam tissues
Peptobismal
insect repellant
shampoo & conditioner
red lentils
ground almonds
emery boards for G
walnuts 
Malden sea salt
Chipotle Tabasco
cafetière (x 3 over 4 years, kept breaking the damn things)
cumin
pan scourers
aluminium foil 
cat travel crates
Whiskas (of course you can't buy processed cat food in Cuba; when I ran out, which I did on occasion, I fed mine raw chicken)

dry cat food
cat vaccinations: rabies, F3

cat microchips

asparagus (I kid you not)

blueberries

courgettes

mange tout

raspberries

pomegranates (you would not believe how long they can last in the fridge)

apples

Greek yogurt

natural yogurt

salad spinner

toaster (x2, the weird voltage and electricity supply fried them)

tiny food processor

blender

instant yeast

bread flour (sometimes there were flour shortages)

four pistons for the school car

oil filter for my car and Mike's

windscreen wipers

various electonic-y type things for Berrin 

camera parts for Berrin