Cuba 2

I haven't gotten the hang of ordering entries chronologically - sorry about this. We're up to 3AM, Saturday night in Havana, which has a nice rhythm to it.

The casa where we were staying was an art deco palace, perfectly restored, with beautiful 1920s furniture, balconies and tasteful artwork: my boyfriend has a gift for choosing holiday accommodation. It was 6 stories up, and the lift was out of bounds unless you were travelling with luggage. We were opening the main door when a youngish guy slipped in beside us, muttering that he was going to his aunt's house. The improbability didn't bother us: in multiple apartment buildings, people often let one another enter without prior interrogations.

He let his three friends in, and our bag was inevitably gone. It was quick, clean, and professional; and there had never been much in the bag in the first place (a travel scrabble set, Simon's notebook, two guidebooks, and Si's mobile phone, which we carried to tell the time). I never felt frightened, though I did feel pissed off. I briefly considered (from the 5th floor) giving chase, but I was wearing high heels. I'm sure they were very annoyed when they discovered how very thin the pickings were.

What surprised me, and what makes this a story worth telling, was the response of our hosts in the casa particular. From our arrival, we had been warned of robberies, but I confess I never took the warning very seriously. I live in Honduras, where people are murdered for their mobile phones, and so I've reached a point where threats are only real to me if I think my life is in danger. I tend to consider myself invulnerable to petty tourist crime, largely because I'm so darn grungy, and most places are crawling with people who are clearly more worth robbing than I am. So these thieves made a bad call, but it's the first time it's happened to me since I lived in Barcelona, and I was happy to have survived unhurt and essentially undamaged (shame about the scrabble though).

From the perspective of our Cuban hosts, the issue isn't personal safety. The issue is the hassle involved in reporting these incidents to the tourist police. And the possible discovery of impropriety - many casas are semi-legal, or host more guests than they're legally allowed to, and thus, simply can't report thefts. All this being the case, our hosts responded to our sob tale of violation and ignonimy as though THEY were the ones who had been violated, and us the perpetrators.
It was 6.30 in the morning, and we were up early to get a bus to Trinidad. I was very very tempted not to tell them (I had a sense of how it was going to play out), but since we had nicked their guide book for its excellent maps, and thus got it stolen, I felt honour bound to let them know. So I gingerly broached the subject.
The first response was reproach: "I told you not to carry a bag! I told you not to walk the streets late at night! You can't trust anyone here... I told you!"
Next came anger: "You let them into the building?! At 1 in the morning?!" (we lied about the time). "You must NEVER do that! Oh no, what can we do?"
Next response, and this took me by surprise, was bigotry: "Sorry about this Carol. Were they black?"
I tried to turn it around. "We weren't hurt," I observed, "and that's the main thing".
Dismissal: "No of course, it's not violent here" (viva la revolución) "but you can't trust anyone. Oh no! I told you not to take a bag".

Our Irish friends who are spending 2 months in Havana learning Spanish confirmed that Cubans are curiously callous in this sense. It may be a combination of paranoia and isolation, and a sense that for the many westerners soaking up the country's atmosphere without understanding its realities, there is no problem that can't be solved by money; while for ordinary Cubans, there's no problem that can. I don't know. If the incident hadn't happened, I would have come away thinking of our hosts as oddly intense but very sweet individuals. I still do think of them that way. But it was a strange insight into their culture.

I'm very interested in any observations on this point...