Fate

Calle Hamel, a little alleyway in central Havana, unites two art forms: music and visual arts. It is home to the art studio of Salvador Gonzalez Escalona, a famous self-taught Cuba painter who's been feted across the art world. He's had exhibitions in places such as New York, Paris, and Rome.

Salvador has painted large bright Afro-Cuban murals on the walls of Calle Hamel, combining a mixture of abstract and surrealist design with phrases giving advice and warnings about danger, death and life. This project is affectionately called Callejon de Hamel. It's is recognised as the first open-air mural in Cuba dedicated to Santeria (the traditional African religion brought by African slaves to Cuba) and reflecting Afro-Cuban scenes. Salvador himself describes Callejon de Hamel as a community-based project, "from el barrio, to el barrio and with el barrio."

Every Sunday 1200-1500 a free Pena Cultural Alto Cubana, known as la Rumba de Cayo Hueso, is held to honour the different Orishas (basically, Gods of the Santeria reglion). This is basically an outdoor concert, and is extremely popular, attracting large enthusiastic crowds. It's not only locals but many tourists who turn up, hearing about the event. It's a wild, riotous, extremely fun time. It gets very hot and there's little shade. Everyone's dancing and sweating and compressed into a narrow alley, so if you ever go, bring lots of water.

There is, however, one other option: El Negron bar, set in the side of the alley, sells a potent mojito which they make with honey instead of sugar. Before the concert started, I went to the bar to try their famous drink (so famous that they've already taken advantage and jacked up the price to $3!). Waiting at the bar for my drink, I glanced around and saw, behind me, an incredibly beautiful Japanese girl.

I turned back to the bar and blinked. Surely not. Surely I was hallucinating. I turned around again. No, she was still there, with her hair dyed a light red and holding a large and expensive Japanese SLR camera, snapping photos of our surroundings, in a light brown outfit, waiting in line behind me for the bar.

Several swigs of honey mojito later, I plucked up the courage to talk to her. She was indeed Japanese, travelling alone, didn't speak a word of Spanish, spoke passable English, was doing a further degree in sociology, was interested in human culture, and had decided to come visit Cuba because of her interest in the people and the art.

For those of you unfamilar with the Japanese, let me give you some background: Japanese society is extremely insular, very pragmatic, and extremely group oriented. The Japanese are not very concerned with the world at large, nor do they have a strong tradition of study in the humanities. Finally, it is rare to meet a Japanese alone: they are almost always in groups or at least in pairs. In fact, Japanese society is in many ways like Singaporean society.

So here I am in Cuba and I meet a beautiful Japanese girl who appears to fit in with her society about the same that I fit in with mine (i.e. very little)- well, let's just say I felt I found a kindred spirit.

Unfortunately, with the concert underway, we could barely hear each other. After some time of fruitless shouting at each other
(e.g. Me: "How do you like the music?"
Her: "What?"
Me: "I SAID, "HOW DO YOU LIKE THE MUSIC??"
Her: "It's very good!!!"
Me: "What?"
Her: "IT'S VERY GOOD!!!"
Me: [despairing] "Oh, okay.")
I asked her to have lunch with me after the concert. She said yes. I was very excited.

Then I lost her in the crowd. Couldn't find her after the concert. Never saw her again.

As Blackadder said, "I think the phrase rhymes with 'clucking bell'.

Posted by pj at September 6, 2004 10:24 PM