Toot Toot

We live on an island, and the nearest bridge to the mainland is an old single lane swing bridge which pivots in the center to let large boats pass.  The inconvenience of waiting many minutes for the gates to lower, the bridge to open, and for a slow sail boat to approach and pass through is phlegmatically accepted by island residents as just another vestige of island life.  So is the additional delay of letting long lines of waiting cars on both sides of the bridge to dissipate.  To pass the time, I sometimes count the cars in line after the bridge restores passage to automobiles.  The largest of these counts stands at 25 cars each way.

Unfortunately, our island's having a roadway running along the beach makes it a favorite route for tourists who like to gaze at the sea, admire sunsets, and ogle the many houses being built or remodeled.  These strangers aren't schooled in bridge etiquette in spite of well worded signs that dictate that the file of cars going off the island goes first, and then the on-island flow goes next—all without alternating individual cars from opposite sides.  If these instructions are followed, delays can be minimized, but—alas—tourists aren't familiar with the rules and don't read the signs.

Somehow a wrong-headed sense of politeness takes over, and the driver of about the third car in line thinks it would be nice if a few cars of the opposing stream could get across.  Thus a hap-hazard alternating is established which drives local residents nuts.  Yesterday I was third in the line of off-island traffic.  The first in line was a tourist who had waited ten minutes for the bridge to open facing, not ten feet away, the sign explaining the rules.  The gates opened and he decided to wait in a silly, Alphonse and Gaston "after you" gesture to the first car on the other side of the bridge.  A polite toot-toot on my horn got him to cross the bridge before the horde on the other side could get moving.

Then, to my consternation, it became evident that the second car—the one in front of me—was also a tourist.  A cordial toot-toot again didn't move him.  Not wanting to wait for the whole line of cars to come on the island out of turn, I pushed the car ahead of me across the bridge on the sheer strength of my horn.  Thereafter, even the tourists got it, and all cars crossed the bridge in two long single files as requested by the signs.

I'm not normally an impatient driver, but our single lane bridge tries the manners of all local residents.  Impatience doesn't usually get you to your destination any sooner in 21st century Florida traffic.  So I'm not really proud I used my horn to get bridge traffic to move in an orderly fashion yesterday.  I must learn to tolerate out-of-state rubber-neckers who drive the key looking from side to side and pointing at the water while ignoring traffic signs.

These blogs are about Cuba and its animals, and clearly the above has little to do with those themes.  But I was reflecting on the meaning attached to a polite toot-toot of a car horn, and I recalled how very different the meaning can be in Cuba.  If you hear a little toot-toot while crossing a street in Havana, be afraid, be very afraid.  For in Cuba, "toot-toot" means, "you are in my right of way, and if you don't get out of the way, I'll hit you."  I've seen this command caution to pedestrians and bikers many times while riding in Cuban taxis.  The drivers are deadly serious, and pedestrians who don't heed them are in deadly peril.

Spanish and English have a few words that are identical in spelling, but have completely different meanings.  Those words are called "false cognates."  Well, the "toot-toot" of a Cuban auto horn is a false cognate with the same sound in Florida. Here it is a gentle nudging, and there it is a command with potentially fatal consequences.

Les Inglis

Snapshots from the Caribbean

I have a large collection of photos I took during various trips to Cuba.  And I have a smaller batch of photos Charlene took during her trip there in April 2012.  On searching through all these photos, I realized that she and I have different ways of looking at the world.

It wasn't really a surprise for in all the years I've known her she has demonstrated an almost extreme orientation toward animals.  Extremely compassionate, that is.  My own history shows some compassion and humane interest, but it can hardly be called "extreme."  She is, but I am not, ready to parody Barry Goldwater to say, "Extremism in the defense of animals is no vice."

How does this manifest itself in my picture collection?  We both take pictures of dogs and cats, but she concentrates on animals much more than I do.  She snaps street animals and pet animals—sick ones and healthy ones, cases of mange and good shiny coats of fur.

My own photographic efforts betray my intense tourist's interest in being in a foreign country.  I record architecture I like and street scenes, monuments and especially Cuba's old cars, and people in public scenes and small groups of friends.  You can find animals in my pictures, but to nowhere near the extent they appear in Charlene's collection.

Is this really important?  Well, probably not, but any marriage is a long process of getting to know your spouse, and the photos clearly show me her lifetime of dedication to animals.  Mine, on the other hand, are the photos of a traveler in a very unusual, long isolated, historically important part of the world.  The animals are there in my pics too, but not with the same emphasis or frequency as in Charlene's.

I think also that our respective photo collections suggest something significant in my own make-up.  I suspect that subconsciously I am reluctant to document animals who show the ravages of homelessness, lack of medical care, and starvation.  I resist taking some pictures perhaps to avoid broadcasting unwelcome images of suffering.  It's kind of a karma thing.  Still, the central purpose of my trips to Cuba is to reduce animal suffering, and I'm sure we've made progress in that area.

The Humane Society of the US tells us that massive spay-neuter campaigns are the only effective long-term solution to reducing homeless animal populations.  On some of my later trips to Cuba, I have felt there were perhaps fewer animals on the streets than in earlier years.  Just wishful thinking?  I can't prove it as no one can take a census of the animals in a city of 2 million people.  But I think several years of large numbers of animals being sterilized by Aniplant have helped the situation noticeably.

Just this week I found another clue.  Havana's homeless dogs are rounded up by prisoners into trucks and taken to Arroyo where they are kept for a few days and then poisoned.  It sounds barbaric, and it is, but five years ago they were processing 15,000 dogs a year, and today the rate is down to 5,000 a year. That's 10,000 slow, agonizing animal deaths a year saved.

No, we can't count the animals in the streets, but really neither can we count the large numbars of suffering dogs who aren't there because of Aniplant's spay-neuter campaigns.

That's the number we are working to increase.

Les Inglis

Baggage Blues

In the waiting lounge in Miami's airport, Cubans and Americans going to Cuba gather   early in the morning to await opening the check-in desks.  Standing in the center of the lounge is a roll of blue plastic film about four feet wide next to a rotary platform.  I've been in hundreds of airports, but this is the only plastic film dispenser I've seen in a check-in area.

A traveler approached the dispenser with two bags, and the attendant placed one on the turntable and started a motor.  The film wound off the roll onto the bag as it turned around and around.  Each layer of plastic clung to the previous one until a tough, think plastic shell developed like a cocoon of a silkworm.  Then his second bag was encapsulated and the traveler paid the attendant.

I watched several people wrap their bags this way, and later, as I progressed through the check-in line, I wondered what was so valuable that it justified the blue plastic treatment.  I felt a little ashamed of my naked bags, but they contained nothing anyone would want to steal.  After getting my boarding pass, we went through security where X rays and sniffing machines checked us and our baggage for weapons, explosives, illegal drugs, and a bunch of items I can only guess at.  I wondered what the blue plastic people did if they had to open a suitcase.  I guessed they had gone through a search prior to the encapsulation process.

When I go to Cuba, I carry a suitcase full of out-of-date veterinary medicines.  There are never any controlled substances, and out-of-date stuff has no commercial value, so generally there's no objection. But a suitcase full of medicines can be pretty heavy, and I always have to pay an excess baggage charge.  I've been charged as much as two dollars a pound for weight over my 44 pound limit plus $20 per piece of checked baggage.  Even though my baggage has no commercial value, the airlines charge me like it is pure gold.  Curiously, while I routinely pay excess charges going to Cuba, they don't seem to charge me for excess on the return to the US.

After the X rays and sniffs, we are separated from our checked baggage, and I don't see any more blue plastic until I pass through Cuban Immigration in Havana.  In the large room where checked baggage appears, we wait for 10 to 15 minutes for the first bags to appear on the carousel.  Often only one flight is unloading, but the amount of baggage is incredible.  In addition to bags, there are hundreds of packages, cartons of consumer products, even large flat screen TV's and kitchen appliances—all inside blue plastic film wraps.

With the first bag, people crowd around the carousels so you have little hope of spotting your bags until some other travelers find theirs and leave.  Well, what did I expect; this isn't England where people cue up to take their turns in an orderly fashion.  This is a bunch of Americans and Cubans in a hurry to get home or to their hotels.  Finally, the mystery of the blue wrap is solved.  These are mostly people on family visits, and they all have gifts and purchases for relatives living in Cuba.  The carousel is a sea of blue plastic, and people are snatching bags from the carousel and loading pushcarts.  They all look like they have been on the shopping spree of a lifetime.

The plastic is to prevent theft by the airport baggage handlers.

I've never lost a thing in a checked bag, and I have no idea how much such theft occurs, but the suspicion that it does occur sells a lot of plastic.  Maybe that's what the handlers were doing in the 15 minutes it took for the first bags to appear.

Les Inglis