Round any corner of any street and you’ll see them.
These small people are blissfully unaware of the adults and their refurbished Oppo smartphones, pacing back and forth or sitting on curbsides in small groups near the sparsely spread wi-fi hotspots. They are likely chatting to cousins who made their exit to Florida years ago.
But running amok in small cobble-stoned streets and laneways, town squares and parks are the children. Not an electronic device between them – playing together, laughing, running, falling. I vaguely remember those days from my youth many centuries ago.
Maybe I got them on a good day. But these kids, everywhere in Cuba, are going off their nut. For the sub-10-year-olds, most games were simple, tag seemed the most popular. A bit older, if you were lucky enough to own an old tree stake and a scrunched-up wad of paper, baseball – or if no tree stake, football. A bit older still, for the teenagers, things became more serious, hanging in groups chatting up the girls/boys/both.
At all their ages, there wasn’t a supervising parent in sight. In Cuba, the neighbourhood community is alive and well, everyone takes care of everyone else – and everyone knows each other’s business and all of their little secrets!