A conversation with a campesino

(Warning: lengthy article follows. If I could only write about one story from all of my time in Cuba, this would be it.)

After a night of revelry in Trinidad - that post will follow - I woke up late and tired the next day. I found myself something to eat, sat out the rain and was walking up the slope toward the Plaza and to my casa, for a nap. I was walking along the pavement on the right, when a man with a cigar dangling from his mouth and sporting a straw hat across the road hailed me, or at the very least hailed someone. Wary of being hustled yet again, I almost walked on, but for some inexplicable reason, I braved the puddles in the middle of the road and crossed over. He wanted a light. I gave him one, and was about to rush off with it, before being pitched something, when he perhaps sensed my hesitance and bellowed "Soy campesino!" (I'm a farmer). All that follows is translated from the Spanish:

Rafael - for that, I found out later, was his name - took his time, lighting his cigar for maybe 30 seconds, turning it around, puffing away as it he were setting fire to London or Chicago.

He returned the lighter and as I tried to hurry off, he said, "I'm just a farmer. I am from the farms, in the mountain. I don't see tourists, I don't get to speak with tourists". All said in a tone and demeanor that said he knew I was trying to wriggle away, but not offended, nor exactly in a hustling manner: maybe just a touch of amusement. This somewhat set me at ease. "Where are you from?" he asked and upon hearing the answer asked me "Is that near Africa?"

What the hell, I thought and gave him what turned out to be the best hour of my trip.

Rafael lived in the mountains about 5 kilometers outside of Trinidad. He owned various types of trees (arboles). Early on in the conversation, he looked at me, then pointed to his blue cloth bag and said something about pesa (weight) - I mistook this word for peso (money), and tried to pre-empt any sales transactions from happening, but he clarified that what he meant was that his mangoes weighed more than a kilogram each. He casually looked at me and asked me how old I was, and upon hearing my answer, cheerfully declared, "I bet you can't carry 30 of my mangoes". Clearly he did, into town, possibly every day. Including that day. As I write this, I feel insanely happy that his sack was empty. I hope he'd had a good day.

Rafael suggested sitting down, and we sat at someone's doorstep. He needed the light again. I let him light up, and told him to keep it, to which he said "You have a good heart". He politely returned it.

I looked closely at him - he was a handsome, ruddy man, almost certainly of pure Spanish stock. He had piercing, light gray eyes; reddish complexion that bespoke of decades spent in the harsh Cuban sun; and the straw hat, slightly eaten away here and there. His clothes were a bit tattered. He was not very tall, but built well. 

He hardly looked his age - he told me he was 67 years old. He had not sold much for the past two years, he said, and I would only understand the significance of this statement later. He had no transportation, and there was only a dirt track to his village / farm. Not even a bicycle could go on it, he said. Thus he walked every day. He pointed to his shoes, which were in poor shape.

Rafael talked in earnest, as if he was on Larry King and the whole world was his audience, hanging on to his every significant word and utterance. He occasionally looked at me, but mostly looked at the ground or somewhere else, his eyes focused and passionate about the useless nuggets he was delivering to no one in particular. But to me they were fascinating - and I sat there riveted by this dignified campesino. 

Rafael's mom was 27 and his dad 34 when he was born. Six months later his father died. "She was much younger than him", he declared, "but she never loved another man. She never married!". He declared, an emphatic shake of his head. He was a little kid - un pocquito chiquito, he said, an endearing turn of phrase coming from a sexagenarian - when his mother went to a rich farmer in the neighborhood. "He had lots of cows", Rafael said. His mother had asked him for milk for her little boy, and he apparently said no, supposedly telling her the milk was only for animals - the dogs and the pigs. "He was an evil man", Rafael said disapprovingly, shaking his head yet again, a touch of sadness but no malice in this recollection, which in any case would have been his mother's for he would have been too small.

He said he had not studied much. "There are so many schools nowadays and young people have education. In my days, back during Batista's days, no". Given this and the earlier story about the evil farmer, it was no surprise to hear him say that he had fought for the Revolution. He had fought in Trinidad and in Santa Clara. (I am now kicking myself for not having asked him if he had fought with Che. I am a moron.)

He said that the counter-revolutionaries had then come to his grandparents' house. He pointed to the top of some palm trees, so I can only guess that the house was thatch-roofed and it appears they set fire to it, killing them. "I had no family left, just me and my mother", he declared stoically but with a hint of sadness, and I could not help but feel a tug at my heart strings.

He too had married, or at least found a woman -"Right here, in Trinidad", he said with a wave and a nod to the street, with a distant look in his eyes. I was unable to follow it fully, but it appeared she had left him either because he was too poor and / or he would not leave his mother.  "But I have only my one  mother! How could I leave her?!" he asked plaintively, a faint look of incomprehension at how it could even be conceivable.

He had had a horse. It had died two years ago, aged 27 or 29. That's why he had had trouble bring his produce to town for the past two years. "I know a rich man - he's got a large house and several animals. I asked him if I could use one of his horses or mules, but he does not want to give it to me. He does not have heart. I told him I would pay the 35 CUC over six months if he let me use an animal for that time, for that would make it easier to sell my stuff. But he said no", he sighed.

His pension was 110 pesos, which is about 4.5 CUCS. A CUC is about USD 1.1, so you can see it was not very much at all. Even compared to the average Cuban who makes 10 - 20 CUC per month. His mother had no pension. Both had to live on his, and whatever else he made off his farm. Apart from mangoes, he had coffee trees. He loved his coffee, he proudly declared that he drank 7 or 8 cups a day. 

(Now, you must understand something about Rafael - in that simple, unself-conscious manner of rural folk, he spoke earnestly, with no pretensions and often referred to himself in the third person. He almost always made his statements and his declarations in a manner that conveyed their importance to him - clearly a lot - but which would appear amusing for any third person. I, however, was not just any third person. Everything he said *was* important to me. I've never felt happier listening.)

He made his own coffee. "I don't like this Arabica or Robusta, just good old Cuban coffee", he declared again as if it was an important announcement. He harvested, pounded and roasted them himself. He said that people near his house smelled him making coffee and went "That Rafael, he must be making his coffee!" He chuckled. He had 150 coffee trees.

Once again in important-announcement mode, he declared "No sirree, I don't like this rum or beer. It is just coffee for me. Coffee and cigars - I can't live without them". But the cigars were too expensive. He knew a prosperous man, someone who apparently rented out rooms in his casa, and also worked in a cigar factory. Rafael, it appeared, traded his farm produce, like lime and fruit, for cigars.  

His mother was old, 94 now. She had various ailments. He pointed to the ankles, knees and other joints and said something I think meaning that she suffered from pains or ailments there - arthritis, one assumed. She also had something on the back of her neck, which he said was because she had worked all those years as a farmer and a machetera in the sun. "He had taken her to the doctors and they had prescribed something for her. "Do you know what Omega-3 is?", he asked, all innocence. "Only international clinics have it, and it costs 6.50 CUC. I cannot afford it."

You're thinking, "Hehe, we know how this movie ends!". One of you even cynically told me, hearing this story, that it probably was a very elaborately crafted ruse by someone hustling. I beg to differ. I cannot imagine that man and his story being crafted to bilk someone. Call me a poor judge of people, but somehow I felt it was a genuine experience with a genuine person.

Anyway, he too had been a farmer. "Soy machetero!", he declared, and he had worked day after day cutting cane in the fields. He had gnarled hands, a full set of teeth stained dark brown at their roots, clearly reflecting his love of coffee and cigarettes.  

Somewhere in the midst of this, the lady of the house opened her door. We stood up and separated to let her through, and he very politely said "Disculpa nos", or "Excuse us", to which she calmly said no worries and walked on. 

"I don't like this two-currency business", he once again declared disapprovingly. He was not particularly happy that people in the city could rent out rooms to tourists and make money, while people like him were stuck in the mountain with no way of improving their conditions. "How can I?", he almost cried out. He had a small house, far from town. "I invite you home. You can meet Mother. She is old, but she has lots of stories - all in her head, not written, just her memories", he said.

He pulled out a bit of paper from his pocket. It said, in Spanish: "For cholesterol: statins and omega-3". "Not for me, for my mother, you understand?", he said. I didn't have the hear to tell him that a course of Omega-3 would not exactly cure his mother, they were just supplements to be taken long term. "Can you send me some from your country?", he asked. "I'll gift you my best coffee", and he slowly wrote out his address. Rafael O___  H___, (insert name of mountain), Trinidad, Cuba. That was his address. "We have two surnames, you know. How about your country?" he asked. I didn't have the heart to confuse him my telling him I actually do not have a surname. "Just one", I said and he seemed satisfied.

"If you send me, can you please pack them well", he asked. "The authorities, they will check packages and if they find something valuable they will take it. So please pack it well", he implored. "But would it not be easier for you to just give me some money? I can get the stuff and be back in 20 minutes to show you", he suggested.

This was my moment of reckoning. Maybe I should have just given him the money, so what if he was hustling me? But the indecisive demon in me prevaricated and I eventually gave him just a couple of CUCs. I know, I still curse myself for maybe I could have done something different, something better. 

He was happy. "I'll bring you a bag of my coffee tomorrow", he said gratefully. I said I would leave very early in the morning, so no thank you, and he quickly agreed - not, I thought, as a way out, but being a practical man who could not possibly schlep 5 kilometers to get to me before 8 am.

We stood up, and we said good bye. I am not sure if I gave him a bear hug, but we shook hands and parted.

Simultaneously, my heart was the heaviest and lightest it had been in ages.

This was my conversation with a campesino.