Waiting to Collect the Result of a Lifetime of Work
HAVANA TIMES — After some time, I finally decided to go to the bank. I needed to pick up a magnetic card. The first thing that caught my attention when I arrived was not the number of people. It was the exhaustion etched on the faces of the elderly waiting under the sun. In the men leaning on their canes. In the women searching for a spot along the bank’s outer wall because it was the only place where they could sit. In those who had been waiting for hours to collect their pension.
I thought my errand would be simple, but while waiting, I found myself observing a reality that was much harder to ignore. Most of the people there were retirees. Some had arrived before dawn. Others had traveled long distances to collect money that, in many cases, barely covered a fraction of their most basic needs.
The heat was suffocating. There were not enough seats. The elderly settled wherever they could. A wall became a bench. A small patch of shade became a refuge. A cane also served as support to endure the wait. As the morning dragged on, I wondered how many stories lay behind those faces. How many years of work, how many sacrifices… and how many more lines they have stood in.
Then a woman nearly ninety years old collapsed to the ground. The fragility of her body contrasted with the speed with which several people rushed to help her. Together we managed to lift her and seat her on the bank’s doorstep. There was nowhere else.
The scene lasted only a few minutes, but somehow it summed up everything that was happening there: the weariness, the age, the heat, the waiting. And the vulnerability of those who, after a lifetime of work, still face obstacles in carrying out something as basic as collecting a meager pension.
A little while later, the power went out, which is the most normal thing these days. First came the murmurs, then the certainty. Without electricity there was no system. Without the system there were no transactions. And without transactions there was no payment. Some people began to leave quietly.
Others asked whether it was worth continuing to wait, as I did. Many would have to return the next day, perhaps to repeat exactly the same story. I, too, ended up leaving without completing my errand.
But as I walked home, I was not thinking about the magnetic card I had been unable to collect. No. I was thinking about those people—the canes, the wheelchairs, the elderly woman sitting on the bank’s doorstep. And above all, I kept thinking about one question that I could not get out of my head:
How long should a person have to wait to collect the result of a lifetime of work?
Read more from the diary of Kamil Kenders here on Havana Times.