A photo, a memory

This place I photographed in Old Havana transported me back in seconds, as I framed the shot with my mobile phone camera, to my pre-university days. Specifically, to the horrific practice that apparently had been passed down from generation to generation, whereby whenever someone had a birthday, they would be doused with buckets of water wherever they happened to be, like a trap, or dragged screaming to the swimming pool area where they would be thrown in without much consideration. I mention this because the swimming pools had been out of use for years, with stagnant, greenish water... In fact, in the three years I spent there, I never saw the pools in use.

I have such bad memories of this that I don't know for sure if it was one pool or two... And I never said when my birthday was.

When I saw those things, I felt frustration taking hold of me, and I wondered if I was wrong, because I saw that most people were enjoying it. I wondered how the "guest of honour" really felt.

It usually happens to me that only echoes remain of bad memories, and sometimes I cannot recall them in detail as my mind tends to do with good ones.

I often hear others talking about their memories of the Pre and they talk about nice things, about how good those years were. I never participate in those conversations. I just smile and listen attentively. Because for me, those three years were pure torture, from the moment they put us on the milk train from Candelaria to Pinar del Río, which invariably broke down on the way, and a journey that should have taken two hours sometimes lasted up to five... Maybe more. What distressed me most was that on the way home, after eleven days there in that hell, exactly the same thing happened. I think it broke down more on the way back to spend the weekend with the family... imagine, with those hours lost on the train, the time to be at home was short.

It was an elite school. We had to study every night in the classrooms. So everything was governed by strict schedules, starting with the wake-up call at 6 a.m. Or I don't know if it was earlier, maybe 5:45... There was a series of activities throughout the day, including classes, sports, preparation for the defence, work in a vegetable garden, cleaning of common areas and corridors, for which teams were formed and worked on a rotation basis, cultural activities when there were any, such as the so-called matinee in the evenings, with dance music so we could unwind. But back to the hostel... I hated it when a teacher would come into our hostel shouting "Geeeeet uuuuuup!" Going to the bathroom at that time was also super stressful. Those filthy bathrooms, which we had to clean ourselves, were never clean. The water was freezing in winter. Some people had electric heaters handmade, which you put in a bucket of water and it heats it up in 20 minutes. The showers had no privacy...I hated that the drains were always clogged, and even though I bathed in flip-flops, the dirty water always reached my feet... I suffered from fungal infections for years.

The hostels, I vaguely remember, had three or four cubicles, each equipped with eight bunk beds and a locker next to each one. Do the maths: eight bunk beds, upper and lower beds, 64 people who need to use the bathroom in the morning...

There wasn't much theft there, but incidents of this kind did happen from time to time, especially with food. The food they gave us in the pre-university dining hall... why even talk about it? A bread roll cut in half in the morning with a hot thing called Cerelac, made from soy. Some stayed behind in case there was a second helping, because it was a long way to lunch, and we had a cafeteria with a limited selection for a snack at 10 a.m... I don't remember buying anything there. Lunch and dinner were meager, inedible every day. I suppose the cooks tried to work miracles with what little they had, but they weren't very successful. We always joked that the beans looked like stones. The day there was a skinny chicken leg, we practically had a party. On Sundays, when we weren't supposed to go home, our parents would come with homemade food and other things we might need...It was the day the reinforcements arrived, and that was another celebration. When I saw my mother struggling to get to Pinar del Rio in the bed of a truck, I told her to just send me the food.

I witnessed several breakdowns, I suppose, caused by... I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. One girl started, seemingly out of nowhere, having vasovagal syncope. She would faint anywhere, without warning, until her health became untenable and she had to drop out of school. Or she was transferred. A real shame, because she was very studious and intelligent. In our high school group, she was always one of the top students... Because, to stay at the IPVCE (Pre-University Vocational Institute of Exact Sciences), you had to have grades above 85. Having a low ranking at the end of the three years would prevent you from pursuing your dream career. Back then, I dreamed of being a lawyer because I liked what I saw in the movies.

Another girl from my class was diagnosed with schizophrenia. And she lived in the same city of Pinar del Río and, of course, had more freedom; she could sleep at home if she wanted. She also received food that her family brought her often, as well as other supplies, clean uniforms, etc. I often wonder where they and my other classmates and dorm mates are now. I was so lonely that I didn't even make any friends there. No one who remained a friend over the years.

One day I discovered I could practice badminton on the small court at the end of the Pre-University building in my free time, and represent the IPVCE in competitions, and that's how I got excused from going to work at the vegetable garden.

Sometimes, if I didn't have free time, I created it myself by skipping classes. I was never a good student, even though my grades said otherwise.

And the truth is, I don't feel like I learned much there... I don't remember anything at all about math, chemistry, physics, or anything... In fact, science was really tough for me the first few months because I failed every subject. I'd go to mandatory study time and stare at the ceiling. Until one day I also discovered that by studying the lesson of the day, I could pass any exam with flying colours.

I have a lot to tell you about those years... You know, vaguely. And about how I managed to get a place in Journalism, when I decided at the last minute that I wanted to be a journalist. But I can say for sure that training to compete in badminton did me a lot of good.