Cement Shoes

Packing my suitcase for my upcoming trip to Cuba, I had the good sense – or so I thought – not to include ostentatious clothes. By ostentatious I mean anything new and expensive looking, whether that was garments, shoes, jewellery or indeed any accessories at all. I’d travelled to developing countries before and had often felt very uncomfortable wearing items that local people would never be able to afford, so I toned the look down, right down.

Ten years previously, while volunteering in Nicaragua, I’d seen the look of pain on the face of one of the locals as she watched me tramping across the muddy floor of a tobacco barn in my brand new bright white trainers. She was pained by the sight of mud on them, I believe, because the trainers were conspicuous by their newness and whiteness, costing a sum which she would never ever be able to pay. As for me, I was annoyed at my own stupidity for purchasing them to work on a farm in a country in the developing world. No thought had gone into that purchase when I’d bought them in Barcelona weeks earlier in preparation for my journey. I was also annoyed at my insensitivity: how could I not have foreseen the effect that such apparent opulence would have on people in poverty?

Indeed, that lesson of not flaunting wealth made such an impact on me that I wouldn’t risk eating lunch together with the other farm workers in Nicaragua. I was really bored with rice and black beans so I sometimes sneaked away from that farm in Estelí to find an alternative. The only one that I found was on the fruit stall. So, lunch usually consisted of mango, avocado and a bread roll. The avocadoes were huge – football size – as were the mangoes. One of each was enough to stave off hunger for the rest of the day and besides, they were succulent and tasty, unlike the lunches served up by the farm canteen staff. Nursing my purchases, I congratulated myself on how nourishing my diet was with a glass of rice milk or fruit juice from a nearby fruit stall. The mood of self-congratulation turned to shame once I learned that the cost of my lunch far exceeded what our comrades on the farm earned in one day. What I was eating cost a king’s ransom in comparison to my co-workers’ dishes of rice and beans, given freely by the farm.

Returning to the question of shoes, something I witnessed a few years later in Cuba brought home to me the vastness of the divide between the rich and poor on our planet. This was the day that a helper in the guesthouse where I was staying asked me to accompany her to the house of her uncle and aunt. Their home was, like my guesthouse, located in Central Havana, which is a fascinating but very poor neighbourhood of crumbling 19^th architecture. The aunt and uncle lived in one of many dilapidated buildings that was in no better condition on the inside than the outside.

In fact, they lived in a “multifamily” floor of a building that had been “occupied” around the time of the revolution in 1959. Several families lived on each floor in a dwelling once owned by a family of wealthy landowners and businesses. There was nothing “wealthy” about the place now. Each family had been assigned three or four rooms that they used as living room, kitchen and bedroom. Bathrooms were shared among several families, as were the formerly grandiose marble staircases and landings. Dust and cobwebs besmirched cream-coloured marble floors and cracked windows that were the only remaining witnesses to the days when luxury and opulence reigned this neighbourhood.

Undoubtedly the owners of this building, and no doubt others as well, had packed their cases and flown to Miami or elsewhere with the idea of waiting there until the revolutionary verve in Cuba had died down. Many of them, unable to fit all their treasures into their luggage, had hidden them. Some were buried on land, hidden at strategic locations in the sea and concealed in false walls in buildings such as this one. But if bourgeois treasures were ever discovered in this building, there was no indication now of wealth. Instead, relentless poverty and destitution left their scars on everyone, especially the old.

In the aunt and uncle’s home the television occupied pride of place in the living room. My appearance, as a white tourist, briefly turned heads away from the screen, but after a few minutes the telenovela (soap opera) grabbed the family’s attention again. The uncle was upstairs on the roof where he was repairing his shoes, so we climbed the main staircase to greet him. Uncle Alberto was fifty-something and worked as an engineer, a subject which he had studied at university. He waved to his niece and motioned us to join him with a smile. Conversation was congenial and listening to him I learned that a few items of food, such as chicken and powdered milk had just arrived in the nearby bodega or state grocery store. They were ready for collection, so if we waited a few minutes, we could accompany him and help with the collection.

As Uncle Alberto was talking, I began to focus on what he was doing to the shoe he was working on. It seemed he was doing something to a hole in the sole of a slip-on black plastic moccasin. As I gave him my attention, I realised that he had mixed a small quantity of cement and was endeavouring to spread it over the hole of his shoe from the inside. I was appalled. How could cement be used to mend a shoe? Did he not have glue and a piece of plastic? Apparently not. No other option was open to him and he could not, and would not, go to work barefoot. He had his pride even though he had no shoes. He wanted to make that clear.

I glanced down at my sandals and felt shame. Old as they were, it was apparent that they too belonged to someone wealthy enough to pay the asking price. Uncle Alberto could never have paid the asking price for any shoe except the black plastic moccasins he was endeavouring to extend the life of. Once again, I felt shame. This man had, like me, gone to university and strived to make life better for himself and his family, yet he had been unfortunate in the place of his birth and the circumstances he had been born into. I could reach out and touch him as we sat on the roof of his building, although in reality, a vast chasm, deep and wide, separated us. Not even the revolution in Cuba had changed that.