Photos

(NB : Dear fellow T.E.ers, I've just *started* posting most of the photos from my last travel here, where I'll be more present from now on as there are much less limitations : I don't feel any more like posting just one photo each day but rather, posting lots of them in the same time and irregularly ; also, tired of writing long critiques very often...

Although there are great persons present here too, on Flickr I find so many more people photographies, plus the system is much more flexible as has been explained on the forum - ... but I still intend to pay small visits sometimes, ...even if much less regularly... Hope that you'll understand !).
..............................
About this photo :
Not technically my best shot but this one is very close to my heart. Taken under a bleak and poor neon light, after dinner. Please read the following story, which has a bitter sweet taste, like the strong Cuban coffee that I love :

I met Señor H. on 2 occasions, first introduced by his shy and discreet son who was talking with friends in their decrepit but impressive courtyard, a very old building with fascinating former grand beauty, shared with at least 20 other families ; the next night, I was invited to share their meagre meal and that's when I took the photo.

A man who has seen the world, a retired merchant sailor ; his ideas, expressed in a clear Spanish very easy to understand (for me who speaks a sort of baby Italian), were eloquent and rather moving, talking of his great hopes for the future with Raul Castro and Pres. Obama.

Proud of the achievements of his country in terms of health and education but nowadays, his salary does not allow him to indulge often in the simple pleasures of life : he is drinking rhum rarely but if he cannot get his daily cups of sweet "Cubita" (one of the famous brands of Cuban coffee) nor smoke the famous cigars which are "entirely natural" and therefore, less harmful to the health than cigarettes, "what's left to enjoy ?"

"We'll never go hungry in Cuba but our diet is less varied nowadays : what can I afford with this bill of 10 Cuban Pesos, which some years ago could still buy a good meal ??"

Later on, his dear 31-year-old TV, in front of which we were talking all the time did not seem to want to work anymore : new worries ! "What will happen to us ?", did he ask to his sweet and gentle wife, "will we now start to argue at our age ? - how will we spend our evenings ?" ... Fortunately, it was just a false alarm and the old engine after some hick ups gave back the normal humming discreet sounds.

There was another guest at his flat that night, a black man who had been a colleague of his... Señor H. wanted, like many others, to know if I was a practicing Christian. Before answering, I asked if he was : he shrugged and said that while travelling in nearby Haiti, he had been introduced into the "Santería" (a local form of Voodoo) and it was him, - strangely a poor white man, who explained to me for the 1st time the various objects of cult in a secluded location in his small flat.

... Some of the predictions made by him and by another initiated person that I met somewhere else have already been proved right !