“There are water problems in the building,” reads a sign at the entrance to a block of more than ten floors in Havana. The warning was mocked this Monday, when the lack of supply is combined with the low temperatures that affect the west and center of the country. “At least we already have justification for not bathing in this cold,” a neighbor ironized.
“This looks like a festival of rags,” says another resident of the Centro Habana municipality when she went out early this morning to buy some bread at a store on Carlos III street. “People put on what they have on top, even a lady with a towel wrapped around her shoulders was in the queue,” he told 14ymedio.
Old coats from the time of the Soviet Union alternate with more modern winter clothes. In the queue for the ATM of a Banco Metropolitano branch, it is easy this morning to detect who are the retirees waiting to withdraw part of their precarious pension and who are the clients with more resources.
“This raincoat was given to me when I worked in oil and I earned a trip to the GDR [República Democrática Alemana]”, says an old man clad in a huge coat that was once lilac but now only has a vestige of that tone
“This raincoat was given to me when I worked in oil and I earned a trip to the GDR [República Democrática Alemana]”, says an old man clad in a huge coat that was once lilac but now only has a trace of that color in the area around the seams. The rest is ocher and gray.
A few steps away from him, a young woman shows off a beret with an image of the Eiffel Tower, leggings with Christmas motifs and a leather jacket. Those who have traveled or have family abroad take advantage of the winter temperatures to wear clothing that the rest of the year does not leave the shop windows. This is your only chance to make your status known through long sleeves and scarves.
While in other circumstances everyone flees from the sun to shelter in a shadow, these days a small ray that filters through the clouds is enough for people to squeeze to reach it, as in a bus stop outside the school Mario Muñoz, where everyone waits, undisturbed, under the light of Indian.
At another stop near the corner of Tejas, people take shelter inside the portal from the icy breeze that runs through the popular avenue this Monday. The early morning left record temperatures, according to experts: specifically, 3ºC in Bainoa at 4 am, a value seen only in January 1981, according to the meteorologist published on his Twitter account Elier Pila Farinas.
But it was not only this town in the Mayabeque province that experienced an extremely cold morning for the Island, the specialist specified: “Until 4 am, 30 stations out of 68 have temperatures below 10°C” in the country.
The drop in thermometers did not cut the length of food lines, however. Throughout the weekend and this Monday morning, the lines to get some food were repeated everywhere in the Cuban capital, even in the areas closest to the Malecón, where the cold, combined with the sea breeze and humidity they were quite difficult to bear.
Waiting to reach a package of frozen chicken, a mother and her daughter were this Sunday before the market in Cuban pesos located inside the Paseo Galleries. Everyone in line was covered in clothes and some even improvised some exercises or a short run to warm up. Those who endured the cold spent up to three hours to access the store.
“With this cold you can’t work, and the coat I have is not for this, it’s for a cool afternoon but not for this temperature”
In urban buses, a sector that is going through a deep crisis due to breakages and lack of fuel, passengers had the dilemma of whether to squeeze more to keep warm among themselves or keep their distance from the possible contagion by covid-19, which this Monday reaches figures that touch the 3,000 new cases.
“Hot soup, boiling chocolate and a good blanket to cover up,” enumerated a worker from the electric company who had to go to El Vedado to repair a broken transformer. “With this cold you can’t work, and the coat I have isn’t for this, it’s for a cool afternoon but not for this temperature.”
The benches of some parks, a frequent dormitory for the homeless, woke up strangely empty, as well as doorways and stairwells where many people who lack a roof in Havana take refuge. Where did they go? Where did they shelter? Nobody knows.
Around the parish of El Salvador del Mundo, in the Cerro neighborhood, several neighbors distributed hot broth and some bread to the elderly who live alone. The animal protectors also made a call to shelter abandoned dogs and cats, while in the nursing homes managed by the church, double blankets were given to those sheltered, according to reports collected by this newspaper.
“In my house everyone slept covered to the teeth,” he explains to 14ymedio Lourdes García, a resident of the Los Palacios area, in Pinar del Río, a region known for its low temperatures in winter. “We had to do it that way because the wood on the walls is very bad and what slips through the cracks is a lot.”
García’s family took extreme measures with their animals. “We put all the chickens inside the house because we can’t allow them to die outside,” he says. “The bad thing is that we haven’t been able to make an ajiaco, like we did before, because we don’t have food. So we’re left with water with reheated sugar and coffee.”
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