Almost Gone

As I get ready to leave Cuba, it's time to say goodbye to some things I didn't write about, but which nevertheless I'm fond of. I'll be leaving behind Roberto's fantastic Creole cooking. The dinners he produced with a seemingly inherited ability to create amazing flavours were always a high point of my day. I won't again be waking up in the near future with the sound of salsa on the neighbour's stereo drifting through the windows. Walking down the street I won't pass dozens of people wolfing down the unofficial national food — cake. Or stare hungrily at an entire icing-covered cake being carried away from the dirty street-facing window of a tiny bakery.

I will have to say goodbye to the charismatic Afro-Cuban religion, where lit cigarettes are placed in the mouths of statues of saints so that they smoke during ceremonies, where there is a black Madonna, and where rum is drunk in place of wine. I will leave behind the local slang, where a tourist is called "juma" and money is "guaniquiki". And finally, I will tearfully bid farewell to the nickname I was given by Roberto and Francisco when I started staying at their house: papichuli.