Food is sold in bulk, and supplies are very limited. It is late in the afternoon, and all around us in the narrow streets, designed for horse and buggy and pedestrian traffic rather than motor vehicles, habaneros are taking care of late afternoon chores or socializing. There's a line outside the free-enterprise farmers market, so we enter to see people buying vegetables and meat brought into the city from private farms. In front of one house, domino players have set up a table and started their game. Old people take the late evening sun on the front stoops of their buildings or on the balconies overlooking the streets.
Children play baseball in the streets with homemade balls and a stick for a bat.
Two men have just opened a bottle of rum, which they invite us to share. We pass it around after first splashing a few drops on the ground for the orishas. Here I am, a white foreigner, carrying in his pocket more money than most cubanos will earn in a year, yet I feel safe. A couple of people want to look through my camera, so I hand it to them without any thought that they might simply take off and run away with it. But part is because I know there is little violent crime in Cuba.