Potrerillo
We enter Potrerillo from the east. The Caunao river flows calmly just south of us. Jiandry passes me the backpack, dismounts, and walks the horse to a bright blue house right at the T-juncture where roads lead north to San Juan, south to town and Lomita and east back to Jorobada. The blue house belongs to his aunt, he tells me. I lean my bag against one of the posts holding up the wire fence where Jiandry tied the horse, and walk through the gate of the small, picture-perfect front yard full of small red and yellow flowers and bushy greenery.
The aunt comes out to greet us, drying her hands on a small towel. She waves us in. Jiandy is a light-skinned man. His aunt is a dark mulata full of energy and so happy to see her nephew.
“Passen, passen. Hay niño, how long has it been?”
“A week?” he laughs. The small entrance room soothes my eyes with its light blue paint. I feel the coolness as soon as I walk in. She hustles to the back and we sit in two rockers. Her tiny son, around two years old, walks from the kitchen focusing on the two glasses of cold water in his hands as if they were birds about to fly away.
“I stink,” I tell him holding my hand out to keep him away.
“I’m sweaty too,” he shrugs and runs back to the kitchen.
“So, what is this?” the aunt walks in with coffee and asks, pointing at me, the horse and pack outside. We explain and she listens, raising her eyebrows at the “walking” part but does not seem too impressed.
Turning to Jiandry she asked, “when will I see you again?”
“Busy with my work,” he says. “I’m working now!” He points at me.
“I’ll be back after I drop him off,” Jiandy says. “I’m leaving the horse.”
Horses are not allowed in town, he tells me. But no sooner do we started walking down the main street to the Casa Cultural that two men on horseback ride towards and past us. Cowboy hats and all.
“No horses?” I ask.
“Nope” he smiles dryly. “Not allowed.”
We cross the bridge over the Caunao River. On the right a crowd gathers around a bar, music playing. A new, private place, one of my cultura handlers explains to me later.
“Nothing to do in town for the young people,” she says. “The guy rents the place from the state, serves drinks during the weekdays and then has music on the weekends. To dance. It is new. We’ll see if it works.”
This was the second attempt to create a private music club in town. Two years ago, another entrepreneur transformed a “nave,” a warehouse in the outskirts of town, into a dance club that didn’t last too long.
“Too far out of town. With transportation the way it is...” This place, in the center of town, has a chance.”
The town buzzes with activity. People lining up to buy drinks or snacks at the local timberiches—kiosks that sell anything from water to juice to crackers. Stories fill the air, arms waving, voices trampling each other between bites, in the excitement of the telling.
In the dead center of town, where four streets ride over each other, stands the Casa de Cultura—the Luis Dagoberto Sanchez Aguila Casa de Cultura, to be exact, named after a son of Potrerillo who made his national and international name popularizing traditional Mexican ranchera music throughout central Cuba, despite having to do so from a wheelchair after an accident paralyzed him from the waist down.
The two women sitting by the door see us open the gate and jump into action, surprised to see us.
“You’re so early!” one exclaims.
“We expected you in the afternoon,” says the oldest one.
Taking the tractor in the morning from Matagua is throwing off the timing for everyone and these women had the timing right, for once. They act surprised but they are ready. At the far end of the one large room that makes up the casa cultural stands a folding table with a clean green and white checkered tablecloth covered with plates of fresh fruits and thermoses of cold fruit juice. White napkins protect the fruits from the persistent flies.
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| Early Chinese Community Members of Potrerillo |
“We’ll call the promotora and tell her you’re here.”
One of them punches a button on the archaic beige multi-line phone on the table by the front door and rotator dials the promotora. The other busies herself arranging the drinks on the table. I drop my backpack and say goodbye to Jiandy.
“Thank you for the escort. Say hello for me to that monster of a boy that you have.” We shake hands and he heads down the street, back to his horse.
***
A smiling, dark-haired, breathless woman rushes through the door.
“We expected you later,” she says and introduces herself as the promotora cultural of Potrerillo. After the obligatory explanation about the project to the promotora and a few other members of the cultura one of the ladies asks, “So who brought you here?”
I tell her about my guide from Jorabada.
“He drove?”
“No. We walked. Well, I walked, he rode his horse.”
“Caminando?” Her brain explodes in front of my eyes. “Con este calor?” In this heat?
“It’s not as hot through the fields as on the roads.”
To them, I’m trying to explain a phenomenon akin to having superpowers, but it really is not as hot walking along dirt roads than on hot asphalt. The point does not strengthen my defense against their strong suspicions, I can see it in their eyes, that I am “loco de remate,” a whack job.
“I’m walking por dentro.”
Almost in unison, they chime, “Well, to Mal Tiempo you have to take the carretera. You can’t get there por dentro.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you can.”
Each nods or shakes the head. Nope. Cannot do it. One man, leaning against the frame door watching the discussion disagrees.
“Yes, you can,” he says. “There are paths. Los güajiros don’t take carreteras. We can find you a guide.”
I smile and point at him. “See. He gets it! Exactly!”
This sets in motion a discussion of how such a “locura” could be done. The guy who suggested the possibility leaves in the middle of the discussion, which worries me, given the abundance of nay-sayers in positions of power sitting around me, but he returns a few minutes later with a piece of paper.
“Ok,” he said. “This is the route.” He sits next to me and traces it with his finger.
“Callejas, Cepero, Navajas, Mal Tiempo monument, Mal Tiempo pueblo, Cruces.”
He beams, satisfied with himself, as if he’s discovered the route through the Northwest Passage.
“We’ll find you a guide.”
***
My hosts discuss with great enthusiasm who could be my guide. I listen closely but am distracted by a Lada pulling up and parking right in front of the building. Out its doors fold Lazaro, Orlando, a woman that turns out to be the promotora cultural of Cruces, my next stop, and a thin black man who introduces himself as the sub director of Cultura for the entire province of Cienfuegos, Rober’s counterpart.
I give Lazaro and Orlando great hugs, forgetting for a second what I must smell like. I am glad and surprised to see them.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Lazaro.
“Miguel told me to come see how you were. He approved everything. The car. The driver. The gas. Everything.” These are high priced budget items and the significance of Miguel’s approval, beyond his good will, is not lost on me.
“And you?” I turn to Orlando.
“Giving you a welcome to our province. Seeing how you are.” He says.
“Let me guess. You changed your mind and you’re going to walk with me?” I tease. It is a running joke, funny only to me, that Orlando would walk with me even one step of the journey.
The plan for tomorrow is to hit the backroads to Mal Tiempo, the site of the historic battle where Esteban teamed up with heroes of the war of independence Maceo and Gomez to fight the Spaniards. The day will end in Cruces, the regional capital. Leaving Cruces the next day would be the start of a long trek through Lajas to end in Ciego Montero, approximately thirty seven kilometers later. From my desk in Miami, I envisioned this as being the longest day of the walk but figured that I would be in good enough shape after ten days on the trail to meet the challenge. I had not counted on already having walked two or three nearly forty-kilometer days, including the ball busting Day 1 from Sagua to El Purio. Yeah. I can handle a measly thirty-seven-kilometer day. No problem. Especially since I can arrange to have my backpack meet me there.
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