Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  They were on edge about the CIA. Recently declassified documents exposed that, from 1960 to 1961, shortly after John Kennedy became president, the CIA had conspired with the Chicago Mafia (which was angry at Fidel Castro for having closed down its lucrative Cuban gambling casinos) to have him assassinated.

  A team of three uniformed and well-informed security agents questioned me for two hours. They studied each page of my passport, attempting to relate each entry or exit stamp to some contemporaneous anti-Communist or anti-Socialist world event: Did I have anything to do with the death of the authoritarian president of Turkmenistan? Was I involved in the referendum Hugo Chávez lost two years ago in Venezuela? What role did I play in the overthrow of the president of Fiji? Was it truly a coincidence I was in Khartoum the very day Chad attacked and almost captured it? Was I involved in the negotiations to renew U.S. rights to use the airbase in Kazakhstan? Why did antigovernment riots erupt the day I landed in Bangalore? Did I expect them to believe it was a mere coincidence that two days after I left the northeast of Sri Lanka, the government resumed its offensive against the Tamil Tiger freedom fighters? Didn’t Latvia ask the Russian troops to leave shortly after I visited Riga? (They were bluffing on that one; my Latvian stamps were in a much older passport.) Hadn’t the U.S. begun preparing Djibouti as a base from which to attack Saddam Hussein while I was there? Didn’t Ethiopia and Eritrea resume their war shortly after I visited both countries?

  I tried to explain, as politely as possible, that these were all really, truly, mere coincidences, and that if I had orchestrated even a quarter of the acts they suspected, I’d be the greatest agent provocateur in history. I repeatedly sought to convince them that, if I really were CIA, I’d have half a dozen passports at my disposal in various names, and there’d be no paper trail for them to scrutinize. All to no avail.

  What ultimately persuaded them of my innocence was my response to their question about where I’d be staying in Havana. When I gave them the name of my backpacker’s hostel and showed them the receipt for my reservation—made through an innocuous-sounding front in Toronto because the U.S. embargo did not allow Americans to use a credit card for any transaction in or with Cuba—they promptly stamped me in and allowed me to board the plane for Havana. They’d quickly concluded that no self-respecting CIA operative would ever stay at such a dump.

  Havana was wonderful. The people were extremely warm and hospitable to the rare gringo they got to meet. (The city was packed with young tourists from Spain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and South America.) Havana had a certain raffish charm, with a quarter of the guys selling cigars on the street and a quarter of the women selling themselves. In pleasant contrast to the horrible life-or-death atmosphere of Haiti, Havana was calm and relaxed, uncongested and peaceful. I saw none of the standard indicia of a repressive dictatorship or of a people unhappy with their government: no tanks guarding the presidential palace; no soldiers or cops with assault rifles on the corners; no ubiquitous photos of Our Dear Leader; no walls or billboards plastered with political slogans, save one tattered sign celebrating the 50th anniversary of the revolution. The people discussed politics openly, had high hopes for reasonable treatment from Barack Obama (who was just starting his first year as president), and showed no signs of being repressed or fearful.

  I saw few cars on the streets. Most of the locals used the ultramodern buses or the tiny, brightly painted, three-wheeled putt-putts. But the cars I did see—the same cars they had before the revolution—were a glorious reminder of the Fabulous Fifties, ostentatious gas-guzzlers sporting tailfins, Dagmar bumpers, and a ton of chrome: Chevys, Fords, Plymouths, Dodges, Studebakers, Buicks, and Oldsmobiles, all lovingly cared for and repainted in brilliant colors, but mainly aquamarine. Here and there a few Soviet-era Ladas. Gone to the scrap heap were the magnificent cars of the 40s: the DeSotos and LaSalles, the Chrysler New Yorkers, and the big Caddies.

  The food was plentiful and tasty. And familiar: My ex-wife was the daughter of an American engineer who’d worked on projects in Cuba in the 1950s, where she learned to cook delicious piccadillo and ropa vieja.

  Columbus, after sailing along the coast of Cuba in 1492, exclaimed, “this is the fairest isle man has ever seen.” But let’s remember that Chris had limited experience with tropical isles in those flat-earth days, and that his opinion was expressed before eleven million hungry folks chopped the forests into plantations. The part of Cuba I crossed was mostly flat, with some hills and rolling terrain, pretty rivers, and three distant mountain ranges, some rising to 6,000 feet. I visited a lovely valley and a pretty good cave in the northwest. The jungles were gone, and though Cuba claimed to have 80 varieties of palms, the majority I saw were the misnamed royal palm, which looks like two telephone poles stuck end-to-end with a few leaves glued on top like a green toupee, its fruit only fit for pigs, the island’s main source of meat.

  Because the Communist regime in Cuba forbids the ownership of valuable private property, there are few cars and no congestion on the island’s roads. In rural areas, people and goods are often transported by home-made carts like these, and in the cities the few cars were lovingly preserved relics from the ’50s.

  The old colonial towns usually had a well-preserved central square, the Plaza Mayor, but the other parts looked as if they hadn’t been refurbished since the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill in 1898.

  Most of the land under cultivation was in cash crops, either tobacco or sugar, both of which were in trouble. Cuba lost its prized touch in rolling cigars when the old artisans jumped ship for Florida, and the sugar-based monoculture, which sustained it financially for two hundred years, had declined precipitously. After the triumph of Castro’s revolution in 1959, sugar was able to prop up the economy because the Soviet Union, as a gesture of Socialist solidarity, agreed to buy all of it that Cuba grew at prices above the world market rate, and also barter some sugar for Russian oil priced below market. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled that contract, and about 100 of Cuba’s 160 sugar mills also fell, and many cane fields reverted to weeds.

  The financial void had been filled, to some extent, by nickel mining and tourism, but the main hard-currency export was doctors, 40,000 of whom were working throughout South and Central America, with their paychecks going into the Cuban Treasury.

  Everybody worked for the state in this Communist society. All the businesses I visited—banks, factories, tour agencies, farms, stores, cleaners, publishers, hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops—were owned by the state. No meaningful private property was allowed, although those who owned land before the revolution were allowed to keep 80 hectares, and those who owned those wonderful old Buicks and Oldsmobiles were allowed to pass them on to their grandchildren. But Cubans could not sell their old cars or any of their land because Fidel had no tolerance for private property aside from inexpensive personal effects.

  Although everyone was an employee of the state, the system was far less rigid than the one imposed throughout Red China from 1960 into the 1980s, where the state determined, early in one’s life, what career one pursued and where one worked and lived. Once that had been decided, the hapless Chinese citizen was usually stuck with that role for life, or at least until a more enlightened leadership came to power with Mao’s passing. To my eye it seemed that the Cuban form of Communism also worked better than that system in the USSR. The workers, waiters, and shop girls I encountered all genuinely tried to be helpful and give good service, even though they received nothing extra for it. In the old USSR, most of the people in those positions got their jollies by ignoring those they were supposed to assist or by treating us with open disdain.

  The main economic problem with the Cuban system was that the government didn’t pay the workers enough to live a comfortable life, even though nobody starved and all were guaranteed a high school education, unlimited free medical care, and a social safety net. Starting salaries in most positions were $12 a month, rising to $24 for
more experienced or managerial workers. This low wage was the most vocal complaint of the Cubans with whom I spoke. They didn’t mind being ruled by the Castro brothers, or not being able to have real elections, or not being allowed to march against City Hall, but they did mind trying to live in a workers’ paradise on 40 cents a day. Everybody wanted to find a way to earn more money, even though everybody was supposed to be equal.

  While I was there, the government was just starting to listen to them and to loosen up the system. In February 2008, after a full 50 years in charge of the Revolution, Fidel Castro had resigned, and his brother Raúl was promoted to president, bringing with him hope for liberalization, which, on my visit one year later, I could see was coming. Slowly.

  The government had begun issuing licenses to individuals to rent out rooms in their apartments to tourists (with the government grabbing 65 percent), and had started allowing some folks to sell and serve food from their homes, but only through those windows opening onto the street. They could not yet convert the ground floor to a restaurant, but I felt it was sure to come.

  The government was also not interfering with the young men who’d converted bicycles to pedicabs and earned unreported income ferrying people about. Prostitution and tipping from tourists had also become large sources of supplemental income, even though the police clamped down hard on the sex because selling one’s body was officially incompatible with Communism, as it was deemed to tacitly express the participants’ disapproval of the collectivist system. It was clearly a form of private enterprise—the most private of all—and an implicit statement that the government was not paying that person enough.

  I hated to leave Havana. It’s one of the world’s most livable cities and must have been spectacular during its glory days before, and for a decade after, WW II. It has superb weather in the Caribbean winter; bright, sunny days with cool ocean breezes from three directions; broad boulevards; little pollution; no traffic congestion; a score of sun-dappled, palm-treed parks with whispering fountains and plenty of comfortable benches; dozens of ornate old forts, palaces, and public buildings; convivial, well-educated residents; handsome, athletic-looking men and svelte, graceful women; and good food at reasonable prices, including some delicious pizzas for 30 cents a pie from home kitchens.

  I had hoped the U.S. would abandon its embargo so others could enjoy Cuba, and was pleased when President Obama substantially relaxed the regulations on contacts. The embargo made little sense, other than as a Cold War vestige maintained to mollify an impassioned coterie of 1.2 million irredentist émigrés who regularly vote, primarily in Florida. It’s been in effect since 1961, and Cuba had not collapsed, but had instead become the center of an anti-American Socialist coalition with Venezuela and Bolivia, supported by China. The embargo was counterproductive because it made Cuba more exotic and whetted the interest of Europeans and others to visit. It encouraged deception and hypocrisy, with visas easily obtained in Jamaica, flights taken from Haiti, and cases of Coke and Sprite winging in from the bottler in Mexico City. Does it make sense that this was the only country to which our government forbids us to travel?

  The big news during my stay was that Fidel was alive! He made his first public appearance in many months, to greet the president of Chile, dispelling rumors he’d kicked the bucket. Nevertheless, Cuba is slowly moving away from his brand of rigid Communism and allowing, even encouraging, some forms of free enterprise, a trend that should continue as Fidel fades from the scene and other, less rigid and more liberal, leaders take over.

  Cuba constitutes a remarkable paradox, a striking failure on human rights, but an outstanding success in human development, requiring the fair-minded monitor to give each its due.

  As for human rights, there were virtually none. In almost every year of the last 45, more than 20,000 dissident Cubans had been imprisoned for political reasons, solely because of the way they think. Teachers and professors who did not espouse the party line were routinely purged. Homosexuals, religious practitioners, and other “undesirables” were sent to labor camps to be brutally “reeducated.” The state controlled all radio, TV, and newspapers, and used them to purvey propaganda. Neighbors were organized to spy on neighbors through the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. More than a million fled, mostly to the U.S. And though hard figures were hard to come by, it was widely accepted that between 15,000 and 17,000 people were executed by the regime, mostly in the formative years of the Revolution.

  Against this bleak record of human wrongs, Cuba scores high on the Human Development Index (HDI), ironically attributable to the same authoritarian, state-controlled system. Its literacy rate was 99.8 percent, second highest of any state. Its infant mortality rate was among the lowest, and current life expectancy—which likely did not include the executed dissidents—was 78.3 years, 36th longest among mankind, on this largest and most populous island in the Caribbean. In 2006 Cuba was the only nation to satisfy the WWF definition of sustainable development, having reduced its ecological footprint to less than 1.8 hectares per capita. In 2010 it boasted an HDI over 800, third best in the Caribbean. And, most telling of all, Cuba’s national baseball team regularly beat ours in international competition, winning nine straight World Cup championships in one stretch.

  I don’t imply that the ends justify the means, for the message is mixed in this “workers’ paradise” just off our shores. It’s like locking a person in prison for life, but providing him with first-rate tutors, outstanding medical care, and three square meals a day. You end up with a healthy, educated prisoner who lives a long, restricted, and incomplete life in a cell without walls called Cuba.

  Several days after I left, Raúl Castro announced critical reforms that, without his saying so, moved Cuba away from total Communism. A month later, President Obama announced the U.S. was easing travel restrictions to Cuba and was introducing a “series of steps [to] be taken to reach out to the Cuban people to support their desire to enjoy basic human rights and to freely determine their country’s future.” By 2012 some 400,000 Cubans were self-employed—22 percent of the workforce—and Raúl Castro declared he wanted to move 40 percent of the country’s output to the nonstate sector within five years.

  I assure you, and my intrepid interrogators, that I had nothing to do with any of this. It was just another of those odd coincidences. Really.

  CHAPTER 15

  You Are What You Eat

  I had few menu options on these journeys and little time to be picky about food. As a lifelong omnivore, I ate whatever was available—except endangered species, raw sea urchin, and tortured veal.

  An essential part of the discovery and adventure (and sometimes the delight) of travel comes from sampling the unusual foods the locals eat, foods they’ve been eating for hundreds of years without noticeable harm. Dining on the indigenous fare also helped me better understand the local culture and economy and the way they lived.

  In the course of my travels I’ve eaten: armadillo (in the hills of Grenada); zebra (Kenya); fish lips, fish eyes, fungus soup, duck’s feet (all in China); kangaroo, ostrich, emu, and Moreton Bay bugs (Australia); fugu sushi (carefully prepared in Japan from poisonous puffer fish); guinea pig (Peru, Bolivia); snake (all over); spotted dick and blue-teat pie (England); horse (Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and CAR); possum pie, callaloo, dasheen, sapodillas, pawpaws, and cush-cush (various Caribbean islands); gnu, antelope, eland, gazelle, springbok, steenbok, klipspringer, kudu, nyala, and oryx (sub-Saharan and southern Africa); pigeon (France and Morocco); iguana (Central America); blood sausage (Colombia and Germany); smashed chicken infused with sugar and covered with ice cream (Turkey); crocodile (Africa and Australia); roasted duck gizzard, braised jellyfish, spicy soup of shredded intestines and organ meats boiled in blood, (all in China); pig’s blood porridge, caramelized fish hatchlings, lotus root salad, steamed blood cockles, caramelized pork belly and Mekong rat (Vietnam); toasted leafcutter ants, oven-baked tarantulas, waxworm potato fritters, bees, beetles, crickets, worms
, caterpillars, scorpions, wax moth larvae, and grubs (in many places, and not always intentionally); and just about every fruit and vegetable under the sun.

  Among the more memorable culinary experiments was an anteater Steve and I found recently run over on a road in Panama. Not wanting to waste a good source of protein, we chopped it up, added salt and pepper, wished we had a box of Roadkill Helper, roasted it over a campfire, and it tasted … awful, like a burger marinated in formic acid.

  And a platter of sea cucumber—a cold, black, warty little creature served as a gelatinous, forbidding-looking dark lump—which, once ingested, tasted like a mix of Jell-O, lard, and library paste.

  Rats are, in contrast—and after you overcome any squeamish cultural bias—rather tasty, especially the big ones eaten in Africa, where they’re called “grasscutters,” an appealing appellation doubtless bestowed by the branding consultant who renamed the Patagonian toothfish as “Chilean sea bass” and the slimefish as “orange roughy.” The locals skin the rodents, split them down the middle, spread them out flat, and roast or grill them. Each tastes exactly like what it ate. If it lived in a cane field, it tastes like sugar; if it lived in a pineapple patch, just Dole it out.

  Unfortunately, the elephant dung beetle I ate in Kenya smelled exactly like what it ate, but I overcame this olfactory impediment with a liberal application of OFF! insect repellant under my nose. (Better to use perfume or aftershave if you try this experiment at home.) I felt guilty eating it because the dung beetle performs an invaluable service in disposing of animal waste, a dark and lowly job, but somebody has to do it. (On my short foray into Kruger National Park, one of my companions was a leading authority on dung beetles and gleefully rushed from one pile of hyena droppings to another with his magnifying glass. I tried to imagine his backstory, what childhood trauma impelled him to that career. After all, he could have been a proctologist.)