In a land of equals, some folks are more equal than others. Just like in the United States of America, large cities generally are centers of wealth and small cities located in agricultural regions aren’t.
Large cities in Cuba like Havana and Sancti Spiritus are in 1,000 times better shape than little places like Placetas in the Villa Clara Province.
And Placetas is where we spent the last week.
To say it’s run-down would be generous.
To say it has a chance to pull itself out of the situation it is in would be inaccurate.
To say there isn’t a group of people who want a better life in Placetas would be completely wrong.
We met that group on Tuesday morning at the Adventist Church in Placetas.
It’s the only Adventist church in town, but it’s not the only church in town. It will be the first clean-water system placed by Living Waters for the World in the town.
And the water there is bad, terribly dirty and dangerous.
During our training sessions, we put some of the water from the tap used by the people in the church all day long into an agar plate. Those plates create and environment for items living in the water to grow. In this case, the plate was filled with bacteria and even worms after just a couple days of growth.
The site of the agar plate shocked the folks who were there to partner with us in the installation and operation of the system.
Frankly, it made me wonder how I had successfully avoided becoming sick in the week we spent with them, but, as I always am in Cuba, I was vigilant in being sure I didn’t consume a single drop of water that didn’t either come from a bottle or a purification system.
This struggle to find clean water is a crushing blow to the daily life many of the people in the third world deal with for their entire lives.
Now, the people of Placetas have the opportunity to avoid that struggle and enjoy a life without the disease-ridden water they were burdened with for the last 50-plus years.
Clean water seems so simple to us, but it is life-changing for those who don’t have it.
In this Cuban town, the streets have fallen apart.
There are no garbage cans. Let me repeat that: there are no garbage cans in the town.
Garbage day is every day when the residents simply place a shopping bag with a small amount of trash near the edge of what passes for the boundary between the front yard and the street.
I never saw who picked up the trash, but it was gone by the afternoon. There was a noted smell of burning plastic in the air on Tuesday.
There is limited access to internet that costs the equivalent of $1 per hour in a Wi-Fi network in the town square. There is no access to a gmail account without extra security layers added to the account before you leave.
Cubans do have Facebook and can be contacted through WhatsApp and Cuban-based emails.
While the idea of being disconnected from the world for an entire week sounds awesome, it can sometimes make the anticipation of what you’d find upon your return overbearing.
In our case, we found out two greater members of our church family passed away and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. We might have been the only Americans who cared and didn’t know the outcome of the game. We were actually in the Miami airport when the game started and watched the game for a bit while we flew to Havana. The game was shut off when we hit Cuban air space.
While the people in Placetas have a desire to improve their lives, they don’t have the ability to do so.
It’s not from lack of intelligence. The literacy rate is nearly 100% and there were more engineers working on the water system in Placetas than there are in the whole Presbyterian Church in Greenville.
It’s not from lack of desire. Those who came to work on water system knew they need to provide basic services like clean water for their friends and neighbors.
Their problems are directly caused by tightening of regulations by our government on Cuba and the countries who do business with them.
My only question is, nearly 60 years on, “To what end?”
What has our blockade and sanctions done in Cuba?
Those sanctions caused a beautiful, intelligent and articulate people to suffer for their entire lives.
And we did that.
Angel Alert goes out to the missionaries throughout the world who try to help alleviate the problems in the countries they visit.
Jon Alverson is proud to be publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.com or call him at 335-1155.
