The seasoned traveler knows well enough that water is always suspect outside the western world, so I was fully prepared for the bottled/boiled water scenario in Cuba. But this fussy American princess says hot and cold running water are not optional in her holiday ghetto rental. As if Ozzy and Harriet were showing off their new television, we were proudly directed to the “luxury” hot water unit, housed in an ancient wood cabinet, in our Havanna bathroom. I was still getting over the fact that our toilet had no seat and had no patience for the old porcelain heater we would have to light each time we wanted to take a shower. Clearly in the category of “let the men handle it,” I got right out of the way. I remembered the old porcelain inserts from my grandparent’s gas fireplace and how we were threatened with visions of self immolation if we dared try to light it.
I soon learned that hot and cold was an either/or proposition, as I subjected my bare flesh to successive rounds of scalding hot and freezing cold water while fumbling with the handles. That is, until moments later when the hot water petered out completely, and I was made to stand under the drizzle of cold water, teeth clinched. Making the the supreme sacrifice of forgoing conditioner, I got the hell out as quickly as possible. In the days to come we’d learn that we’d be so miserably hot and dirty, a cold shower, actually any shower, would be welcome and as I stood there with faucets open and prayed for the water to come on many a day, a drizzle was a gift. We got so we always had a big pot of water boiling on the stove for emergency drinking, dish washing and cooking. Who knew we were part of a complex shared water system? It wasn’t until I was jolted awake from a deep sweaty nap with the phone next to my bed ringing, that the problems began.
Who is calling here and why is there a landline in a rental anyway? After the third call, I finally yanked the phone from its cradle, unleashing a barrage of Spanish. Despite my insistence that I did not speak spanish, that this insult was falling on deaf ears, that I could not help her, that this was a wrong number, the caller would not let up. On the 6th or 7th phone call, I simply, duh, unplugged the phone from the wall. At 6:00pm, another bell rang. This was the buzzer to our gate. There stood a man and two women all frantically speaking Spanish and imploring us to unlock the gate so they could get to the roof. With visions of ourselves tied up to a pole and robbed of our money and passports, we feigned ignorance until we could get our English-speaking tour guide over to translate. Hastening to the roof’s edge, we shouted across to his balcony and summoned him over. Quickly translating, it seemed that when there were guests in the rooftop apartment running water, there was no water to be had below. Ah hah! here was the source of the phone calls! The ring leader and clearly the obsessive caller was the one woman who kept throwing her hands up in the air and fairly spat out that she a university employee must have her water when she returned home from work. The other couple meanwhile busied themselves with the rickety bent metal ladder we had just been joking about and to our horror, commenced to climb on it to the crumbling roof to have a look. As my 16-year old son looked on, the second woman proceeded to carefully remove her good skirt revealing skin tight white leggings through which her hot pink bikini underwear could be seen stretched across her ample bottom. One careful step at a time, her butt swayed to keep balance on the ladder like a sight gag from a 3 stooges episode with nary a Cuban batting an eye.
By now the haughty “professor” was screaming “why me, why me” and flailing her arms while the other two high above, looked deep into the plastic barrels only to find that low and behold, there was no water to be had, surprise! It seemed that the timing of showers and laundry was a complicated affair involving yelling down the stairs, air shafts and/or off hours showers etc. and our showers in the morning, afternoon and night were severely aggravating the balance of resource allotment. Our guide, the unspoken leader of our block, assured us that the impossible woman would be taken aside and reprimanded, which seemed a little harsh for the minor annoyance (and all that free entertainment) and well we didn’t think that was necessary, but I for one had no plans to skip showers. Our guide explained that the first American guests to come to his neighborhood block would be providing substantial employment for many of his neighbors. Our comfort, and the future of tourism to his block, had been made the business of all our neighbors. Turns out there was more to that trickle down than a lousy shower.
