Cuba Diaries by Isadora Tattlin

Author:Isadora Tattlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2002-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

III. 18

I am taken to meet Alfonse, aka El Ingles (the Englishman) because his father was an East Indian from Jamaica. Alfonse is a handsome negro de pelo who has been allowed to cultivate a rubble-strewn empty lot on the outskirts of Siboney. He started with two helpers and three hoes and has been clearing the land by hand, removing the rubble and extracting from the soil shards of dientes de perro (literally, dog’s teeth—sharp volcanic rock), which he is using to make raised beds.

Alfonse is also, through some new law or loophole, allowed to sell what he produces to members of his “club.” For five dollars each time you attend the “club” you receive a jaba full of vegetables.

Pole beans I see, carrots, cucumbers, and Swiss chard, but foreigners also bring Alfonse seed packets of plants he has only heard of and seen only in pictures on the backs of the packets. The foreigners translate the instructions on the backs of the seed packets for him.

“Mira, señora,” Alfonse says. He leads us to a raised bed in a corner of the garden. He pulls an empty seed packet off a stack. “Do you know this vegetable?”

I tell Alfonse zucchini are very well known in the United States and in Europe.

Alfonse kneels, brushes other leaves aside, and shows me a mound out of which zucchini tendrils and leaves are beginning to unfold.

Memories of the taste and smell of zucchini come flooding back, even though I was in a country in which zucchini were readily available just a few weeks before. Memories of the tastes and smells of other vegetables you can’t get fresh in Cuba come flooding back, too—of broccoli and asparagus and fat celery.

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