What to Send to Cuba: The Universe in a Box
The anatomy of a shipment to Cuba, where choosing between eating, staying clean, or getting medical care has become a daily sacrifice.
By Ignacio S. Acedo (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – You have to fit the universe into a box, inside four cardboard walls. That is the challenge every time it’s time to put together a package for Cuba. You could fill an ocean liner with everything that’s needed. But finite reality imposes itself. You have to measure space and respect weight limits. And then come the dilemmas.
From Havana they ask you for food, so you start with the most basic shopping list to fill the stomachs of those waiting for the blessed package. Powdered milk, gofio, sugar, and coffee (yes, you read that right—people in Spain now have to provide products that were once quintessential Cuban staples but have become prohibitively expensive and exclusive on the Island). A little chocolate, whose taste has also faded into memory, a few cans of fish (“Sardines, please!” pleads Irene, my recipient, with almost religious fervor), the ever-useful instant soups, nothing special in Spain but a treasure in a Havana pantry now that, with the blackouts, cooking has become pure alchemy.
Then come the inevitable seasonings (“When the oregano arrives, I don’t even use it for cooking because I enjoy smelling it so much that it actually hurts to use it,” Irene continues), and, if possible, a bag of beans, because the ones sold “at outrageous prices” in the Saturday street markets “are like rocks and completely useless.” Mayonnaise and ketchup “to disguise that frozen chicken that tastes like cardboard or that cursed ground meat.” And oh, if only there were room for a bottle of olive oil!
Just buying survival essentials has already used up half of the twenty kilos I originally planned to send. Left behind are those candies that are always so appreciated, the can of condensed milk that has become an object of reverence, or the jar of honey that was also requested through the sacred communication channel. It hurts to choose. But there is still so much left to fit that those sacrifices have to be swallowed without anesthesia.
The toiletries are just as overwhelming. Shampoo, deodorant, sanitary pads, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. Nothing can be left out, and the shoes that are always included double as containers for the complete hygiene kit. In Cuba, the debate over whether to eat or stay clean became impossible to resolve long ago. Neither a ration book nor a miserable peso salary is enough to cover both needs (never mind dressing and buying shoes like a normal person). So you tuck fluoride toothpaste into every gap, scatter sanitary pads to spare women from the makeshift menstrual solutions we’d rather not describe but everyone knows about, wedge in a bottle of pH-neutral cleanser, and find room for lavender-scented soap bars. Could hair dye fit too? Wet wipes? And toilet paper, impossible though it is because of the space it takes up. Still, somehow, there will be one corner left.
There’s nothing for headaches—let alone for the diarrhea that is now running rampant—along with that blessed omeprazole, painkillers for spasms and assorted aches, “whatever vitamins you can find,” Band-Aids, disposable syringes “because at the neighborhood clinic, getting an injection is only possible thanks to a miracle from abroad,” and Betadine or something similar, “because a wound in El Cerro, Havana is more than a wound—it’s a disaster.” The medical supplies are just as desperately needed. That wartime first-aid kit also fights for space and nearly overflows the box.
You are not allowed to send batteries of any kind or matches. “You know how that is,” Irene laments, accustomed to lighting candles or the stove with all sorts of improvised tricks when the power goes out, or even leaving the burner lit continuously because otherwise there may be no way to light it again. But there is still room for the ballpoint pens that are so badly needed and impossible to find, a small notebook for taking notes—since there isn’t even space left in the margins of the now nearly vanished Granma newspaper—and as much detergent as can be squeezed in (“because that powder they give us here that’s supposed to wash and disinfect is just another sham”). The box started out rectangular, but after being crammed with everything, it has almost lost its geometric shape.
It gets wrapped in layer upon layer of packing tape, because a package from Spain becomes an irresistible temptation for customs officers, warehouse workers, and delivery personnel the moment it lands at Jose Martí Airport—no level of the hierarchy seems immune. And the shipment is packed with emotion as well, along with a prayer to the Virgin of Regla that it will arrive intact, however long it takes in a communist system where even the most basic things get bogged down forever in bureaucracy and absurd procedures.
Then comes the other party involved: Cuba’s postal service. Once a model of efficiency, honesty, and public service, it has now collapsed and outsourced deliveries to private small businesses. From that point on, the package becomes a bundle of uncertainties until it finally reaches its destination weeks—or even months—later. Because, surprise of surprises, it first stops in Italy, slowing the process even further.
If God takes pity on your luck, they will have something to eat, be able to bathe, and won’t have to endure the agony of an exposed toothache without relief.
That is what Cuba has been reduced to.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated in English and posted by Havana Times.
The diehard communists and the yanqui imperialists have combined forces to reduce the Cuban people to this. Both sets of tyrannical rulers need to be overthrown.