Sancti Spíritus/In the Cuban provinces, when the light returns after about 20 hours of daily blackouta frantic activity begins, regardless of whether it is day or full night. Its residents do not know very well when that moment will be, but they will have very little time to do everything that the usual cut of energy has not allowed them.
“We only find out when it comes, and we know that there are two, three or four hours that we have ahead,” says Alicia, a neighbor of Sancti Spíritus who does not just understand the “schedule” of electrical rationing to which the central province is subjected. “The only sure thing is to run and put the washing machine, or a little rice in the electric pot.”
On Monday, it occurred at one in the morning: “At that time I started preparing breakfast for the family to have it in the morning, because my husband had to go to work anymore anymore was not going to be light.”
A similar panorama refer to residents in Camagüey. In the 36 hours that a habanero spent in the city that went to visit some relatives, “if there were six with electricity it was a lot,” he tells 14ymedio. “When the light arrives, a counterreloj race is unleashed to try to use the appliance equipment: put the washing machine, load the mobiles, freeze some meats, light the water pumps to store it in the tanks.”
“People are already mentally exhausted that they only say ‘Light left’, and they already know that more heat is coming without a fan and to pass work”
The most surprising thing for him is how “they have adjusted their lives to an existence without electrical energy.” The same refers to Spirit Inés: “People are already so depleted that they only say ‘Light left’, and they already know that more heat comes without fan and to pass work to cook, but they have sought their mechanism to survive, they no longer care if there is light or not.”
There are professionals who continue to work in the light of the candles, or a rechargeable lamp. Days ago, thus attended a veterinarian from Ávila, with a bulb attached to a ribbon on his head. Tired, he distributed with an assistant the urgent cases that were coming to the consultation, while looking for the ceiling and whispered: “Long live the Cuban Revolution.”
The survival instinct means that even people respond “everything goes normal”, in a city like Holguín, where, according to the last program of the electric company, they have only seven hours of light of 24, on alternate days. The next day, they “enjoy” three more hours. However, the correspondent of 14ymedio In the area, “in some places it is going earlier than usual and arriving later.”
Those who can cook with firewood or coal, so that the streets, in the country that boasts of be betting on clean energyThey are filled with an irrespirable air. “At eight o’clock at night you can’t leave, because you drown,” says Alicia. “Everyone is cooking with firewood on portals or courtyards. The smoke fills everything.”
But not even those primitive methods are available to everyone. “Those who have the possibility cook with firewood,” says a neighbor of Santiago de Cuba, “because the carbon can 300 pesos and the sack, 1,200.”
“If it is in the morning, the workers will solve things to the city and return, but if it is after three in the afternoon, they all go to their home”
In Santa Clara they also cut the electricity constantly, Roniel says. “If it is in the morning, the workers will solve things to the city and return, but if it is after three in the afternoon, they all go to home.” They know that in two hours, which would be missing to finish the day, at 5 pm, they will not put it. The man laments, resigned: “Tell me what productivity a country can have.”
The untimely schedules also cause people to rest, which was already difficult for the heat of summer and mosquitoes that proliferate without fans. “You can’t sleep, because when the light comes, you have to get up and get to do things,” says Inés. Thus, they roam altered, stressed individuals down the street, alienated by lack of sleep. Many, visibly drunk; Alcohol and drugs are the only escape.
For this Friday, the Electric Union of Cuba forecasts a deficit of 1,565 megawatts (MW) at peak schedule – for a demand of 3,750 MW and an availability of 2,215 MW – that will show a real foul of 1,635 MW. It is a “low” figure in a week in which an affectation has predominated not less than 1,700 MW.
Inés has been in the nerves, without being able to go to the doctor. “There is no time here to get sick,” says the woman, demacred. “I am waiting for the doctor to return on vacation and give me pills to feel better.”
The scene takes place before the attentive gaze of the residents of the neighborhood. The lack of distractions – not talking about the Internet signal in almost all day – makes everyone pending conversations and alien discussions. Inés low the voice: “I realize that I live in an impossible place. When I start thinking, what I want is to die, disappear, because I don’t know what future there is.”
