Life at Granma Internacional (extract from my book)*

I’ve been offered a job as a translator on the staff of the English language department at Granma International, a government newspaper in Havana. It is a one-year position in a large establishment which is directly responsible to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After a few moments hesitation I accept. I’m in my late thirties and I know that I may never get this opportunity again. I may not even want it. For now, though, I do. I really do. Living and working in Cuba is guaranteed to radically transform the dull predictable routine that my life has fallen into under these dreary Irish skies in Belfast. But I don’t delude myself that no matter how desperate I am for change, leaving my home, my job and my friends is a huge challenge for me. When I accept the challenge, I feel like I’m stepping off the edge of a cliff. 

I am still free falling as I sit on the crowded Iberia flight bound for Havana on 12^th November 1999. I’ve been travelling since early morning - Belfast, London and then Madrid. By late afternoon I’m exhausted, and I still haven’t left Europe. Mercifully, the flight departs according to schedule and now we’re somewhere in the region of the Azores. Many of the other passengers are Spanish journalists who are attending the 7^th Ibero-American summit, due to start a couple of days after my arrival in Cuba. I cast my eye around wistfully, slightly envious of these people who will be comfortably back home in ten days’ time. I will not. The thought of having no return date is intimidating. As from tonight I will be lodging at the hotel of the Communist Party Central Committee, in Havana, aka the hotelito where I am to stay until an apartment has been allocated to me. I’m not at all sanguine about the quality of my accommodation and wonder how quickly I will be able to procure cockroach poison. I didn’t pack any and now I regret it. I have a cockroach phobia, which I know I’ll have to confront soon if I want to prevent it becoming a neurosis.

Che Guevara

A couple of hours after our departure, I squeeze past a sleeping fellow passenger into the aisle and head for the toilets, more out of a need to break the tedium than to relieve myself. As I’m fastening my belt and rearranging my shirt there is a heavy thump, followed by another, against the door. Typical Spanish, I mutter to myself, no patience or consideration.

“Un momento, por FAVOR.” This is the first Spanish I’ve spoken in months and my voice sounds shrill. I hurry despite my resolve not to. Setting my features into a fierce glare, I tug at the door but it won’t open. It’s jammed, and I tug again. A voice on the other side speaks to me in English. “He’s had a heart attack. Please don’t come out.”

Ignoring the instruction, I give the door an almighty shove and it opens partially, just enough for me to see a man has collapsed on the other side. He is apparently unconscious, face up, and now two men are bending over him, raising his legs. There is a public appeal for a medical doctor. Trapped in the loo, with the door ajar, I’ve become an unwilling voyeur to what I fear is a death. His complexion is ashen and he isn’t responding to the entreaties of either of his fellow passengers. I groan silently and selfishly. I don’t want the flight to turn around and land in Madrid. I’m feeling wretched, utterly exhausted. I just want to land, to go to bed; I want this journey to be over, not to go on.

Two doctors converge on the scene. There is a swift diagnosis, and it’s high blood pressure, not a heart attack. So, we continue onward to Havana. No further drama takes place for another couple of hours, but then there is a fire on board. Mid Atlantic. A passenger has been smoking furtively in the toilet and failed to fully extinguish the evidence. In tones that do not hide her fury, our flight attendant threatens the immediate detention and prosecution of the smoker in three languages. She reminds us we are halfway between two continents, with only ocean beneath us and nowhere to land. Passengers around me mutter and grumble but there is no mention of a lynching party and silence soon descends on all four hundred or so of us. Half an hour later and I’m riled once again, head up, rotating left to right and right to left, meerkat-like. Someone nearby must have unwrapped Albanian Goat’s cheese. Only something dead could be more putrid. The stench is so strong I can almost touch it. But nobody at all is eating. I sink back into my seat perplexed. Just then I catch sight of a pair of trainers, casually slipped off by Mr. X on my left. I incline slightly. Yes. He’s oblivious to the distress he’s causing and I’m reluctant to say anything. The journey has broken me.

Five hours later, I emerge into the crowded arrivals hall of José Martí international airport, trailing over sixty kilos of luggage behind me. I am to be met, but I don’t know by whom. All around me families reunite amidst tears, hugs and laughter. It’s a sea of faces. Then I hear my name being called and I turn around. A tall thin woman steps over my bags to welcome me. Her name, she tells me, is Pammy. She’s English and she works as a translator for Granma international.  Beside her is Greg, who is American, judging by his accent, another English department translator in Granma. I summon up the energy to utter polite greetings to both of them. An elderly mulatto steps nimbly into the circle and tells me his name is Moises, and he is the driver. He says much more but his accent is so thick that I can’t grasp anything other than “Moises” and “chauffeur.” In response to my silence, all three smile awkwardly and usher me in the direction of the exit.

Pammy is lanky, made lankier by her big hair, big aubergine hair piled high on her head, its garishness and abundance contrasting vividly with her sallow complexion and bony body. She’s fifty something and wearing a mini skirt which does nothing to flatter her knobbly knees. Thoughts about whether the hair is real linger on in the fog of weariness, but I sharpen my focus, gather up my luggage and follow my reception committee out to the car park where we load up the boot. Five minutes later, we pull out on to the dark and deserted road to begin the journey into Havana. Every now and again I steal glances at the hair from my seat in the back of the car.

It takes us about three quarters of an hour to get to the hotelito del partido, the Communist Party Central Committee hotel in the Playa district of Havana. I’m exhausted and barely able to converse beyond an exchange of a few pleasantries. None of my fellow travellers seem inclined to talk much either so we drive through the night in silence. This hush is strange for me because in Ireland I know that, as a newcomer, I would have been besieged with inquiries, such is the insatiable curiosity of the Celts. A funeral cortege ambience prevails as we drive into the suburbs of Havana, past a few late hitchhikers, botelleros, who plead with the occupants of vehicles who stop at traffic lights. I am surprised to see that a number of them are quickly accepted and happily jump aboard lorries, motorbikes and cars. These small but important acts of solidarity are a very Cuban thing, a consequence of the trauma of widespread fuel shortage and transport crisis during the worst years of the Special Period in the early nineties.

We arrive at the hotelito. I feel a momentary exhilaration when I step out of the car, my skin tingles in the warm tropical air and I breathe in the thick aroma of humid earth. I’m really here. In the Caribbean. In November. Before bidding me good night, Pammy hints that I am expected at the office on the following morning, a Friday. I mumble something about being too exhausted to think about it and she looks momentarily disgruntled. Then she gathers her face into a grim smile and says she’ll see me on Monday then, Agreed?” Pammy isn’t the boss. There are plenty of bosses at Granma, but Pammy isn’t one of them… yet.

My room at the hotelito is small. Twin beds are jammed together in one corner to allow the occupant access to a built-in wardrobe over in the other. There is a small table, a stool and an en suite bathroom, cold water only. It is clean and adequate. The room attendant brings me a set of towels and a plastic glass. As she is leaving, she turns and informs me sweetly that overnight guests are not allowed at the hotelito … under no circumstances. The rule seems antiquated but it suits me since I have no plans to complicate my life by introducing a man into it. Yet, in the instant the thought arises, I know I’m deceiving myself, otherwise, why would I have brought four jumbo-sized packets of condoms with me?

I roll back the 1970s-style red nylon counterpane, forage in my suitcase and unearth a pair of fresh cotton sheets. They smell of home. I lie down and struggle not to allow myself to ponder on whether I’ve done the right thing.

*An extract from chapter 1 Living Inside the Revolution: An Irish Woman in Cuba. Karen McCartney

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Inside-Revolution-Irish-Woman/dp/1511958162