Poor Santiago de Cuba.

New houses in Santiago

The streets of  the city of Santiago de Cuba remind me of the streets of some in San Francisco in that they descend steeply to the bay but that is where the similarity ends. For most of poor Santiago is now one big, derelict, depressing mess. 

This is because it has yet to recover from the extensive damage done by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. 

In fact according to the Cuban hurricane organisation; "Reports from the area after the passage of Sandy spoke of widespread damage, particularly to Santiago de Cuba.  Throughout the province, 132,733 homes were damaged, of which 15,322 were destroyed and 43,426 lost their roof. Electricity and water services had been knocked out, and most of the trees in the city had either been ripped off their roots or had lost all their leaves. "

Monument at General Maceo Plaza of the revolution

While the historic, official  buildings and monuments are in pristine condition, obviously restored and repainted since the hurricane, the residential areas including most of the 132,000 homes seem to have had very little if anything done since the devastation although I will admit that Santiago is the only place in Cuba I have seen brand new homes. 

These are just across from the 26 de julio museum and I had thought they were offices or some other type of official buildings until I saw the lady who works in the bathroom at the museum entering one and she told me she lived there.

Anyway, the historic districts are a must visit when you go to
Cuba as there is so much to see and learn.

On the other hand, the  historic city centre  is the only place I have ever seen beggars  and persons pestering you to buy everything from tours to services, after four visits to Cuba.

However, the province of Santiago de Cuba itself is really beautiful, lush, expansive, with thousands of acres of healthy cane fields, billowing ranches where horses and cattle seem to roam without a care in the world while the  looming, variegated and historically important Sierra Maestra mountains hover protectively on the periphery.

Despite how depressing some of the city now looks however, I am indeed happy that we undertook the over 170 km ride  from Holguin in our smooth running 1953 Chev  (driven by Rashell) to once again visit that historic province which remains the home of so many Jamaican descendants .

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The magnificent cathedral

OF ATLANTIC CITY AND LESBIANS

After seeing how hurricane Sandy had devastated Atlantic city, I had the urge to go see for myself what it looks like now, since I had seen ads saying they were again open for business. Although I am too much of a cheap stake to gamble, the fact that the casinos give back a large proportion of the greyhound bus fare in cash in the hope passengers will gamble in their hotel, spurred me even more to take the two hour trip. 

However, if these casino owners had more people like me, they would go bankrupt, for the last time I went there I got back my full $22 in cash and only gambled $5. This time I noticed that they only gave back $25 of the $37 fare, but what the heck.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how normal the place looked, no sign of the devastation less than  a year ago. It seems to me too that they have brought in a whole pile of white sand, (the sand looked grey the last time I was there) probably from Guyana which has an over- abundance of white sand which they export to as far as South Africa.

What was really great too was seeing Red Stripe beer billboards on the along the boardwalk, although the signs made no mention of Jamaica anywhere.

Anyway, the rest of the world does not seem to be aware that they are back in business as the numbers were really low with the majority seeming to be older retired folk many with walking sticks and other walking aids. But I guess that is normal as it was a Tuesday when most younger people would be at work.

The casinos and hotels are really fabulous and because Donald Trump is such a prig, I hate to admit it but the Trump hotel complex was really the nicest.

So they are back in business but it still remains a secret!

On the return to New York I had to go to Times Square as it is really one of my favorite places in the world and although I know everything goes in New York, I really was not prepared for this.

Two black lesbians in the middle of the street topless and feeling up each other.

Ugh, disgusting and all this while young kids and families were around in abundance.

Battling Hurricanes

We in Jamaica seem set to get a taste of hurricane Sandy which the meteorologists tell us will be a category one hurricane when it hits us later today, Wednesday 24th October 2012. So far, we have been having steady rain since yesterday morning, but nothing catastrophic and I hope it will remain that way.

If it really develops into a hurricane anyway, it can never be a s bad as hurricane Gilbert which was a category 5 hurricane and which totally devastated the island in 1988. I remember it like it was yesterday for as usual, I never make preparations for these hurricanes despite the many warnings. This is because I live in a hurricane zone and every single year of my life , I hear warnings of impending hits by hurricanes and they never come.  So when Gilbert came, I was playing dominoes with my fiends and we never stopped playing until  the lights went.

As I have  slab roof  at home, the damage to the house itself was minimal and my kids, Thor and Michele and I just sat it out playing board games until we were tired. It was the after effects that were terrible  for we never got back light for 6 weeks and of course we had not stocked up on food.

Can you imagine 6 weeks without light? Thank god I have the ability to block our bad memories so I remember very little about how we coped, except that I cannot drink water which is not chilled for I still recall how terrible the warm water we were forced to drink  tasted. That is because we had to boil the water so it got very little opportunity to even cool properly, but I remember very little else.

When I got the real bad hit was with hurricane Gustav in August 2008. As usual, I paid it little attention as it was a Category 1 hurricane but I could have done nothing to prevent the devastation it brought. What caused the problem was my governments refusal to properly maintain the infrastructure.

In my case, my backyard joins a gully. You know as a Realtor, whenever I try to introduce people to a home adjoining a gully, they always resist. I would counter by saying  that I have lived by a gully for almost 30 years and most times didn't even remember that one was behind me.

Well I no longer say that for as we say  here  "What nebba happen in  a year happen in a day" and it is so true. For as I slept peacefully  as Gustav raged outside, my tenant woke me up to say the backyard was full of water. I said fine and went back to sleep. Then he called again and when I looked again, I realised that the greenery had gone from my backyard and what remained was  nothing but water! In a split second I was out of my bed, called my neighbour Sunshine who lives above me on the other side of the road and begged  her to allow me to seek refuge in her home!

 I couldn't sleep the entire night thinking my house would have disappeared into the dirty, gushing water and worse,  I had not even stopped to bring any important documents with me or even any clothes .


The next morning, I timidly returned home and the sight was shocking, for while the house remained unscathed,  the entire backyard had disappeared leaving  only about 3 inches of dirt between the back of my house and the deep chasm that had once been a gully wall. My neighbours on both sides suffered similar fate, though I got the worse of it.

Well thank God, Sandy has now passed after ranting and raging outside for some three or four hours yesterday and all is almost well. I did lose a small fiberglass tile from the roof of my bathroom and water had poured into both the bathroom and bedroom, but that only required me doing some heavy mopping before going to bed last night, with the welcome assistance of some Vodka .  I am one of the lucky ones, for Sandy had damaged the power lines passed, and unlike 70% of electricity users islandwide, I still had power and water.

So whats to complain about? Nothing. However, I pledge to be more prepared next year....... at least taking the warnings seriously! But why, for what could I have done to prevent a small tile form flying off with the wind?