October 2010
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Thirty days as a Cuban:
Pinching pesos and dropping pounds in Havana
Patrick Symmes is the author of The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile.
In the first two decades of my life I don’t believe I ever went more than nine hours without eating. Later on I was subjected to longer bouts—in China in the 1980s, traveling with insurgents in remote areas of Colombia and Nepal, crossing South America by motorcycle, deeply broke—but I always returned home, feasted, ate whatever, whenever, and put back on what weight I’d lost—and more. I’d undergone the usual trajectory of American life, gaining a pound a year, decade after decade. By the time I resolved to go to Cuba, and live for a month on what a Cuban must live on, I was 219 pounds, the most I’d ever weighed in my life.
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| SEE ALSO: Budgets, Personal; Cuba; Havana; Havana (Cuba); Hunger; Rationing; Weight loss | |||||||||||||
| Response: December 2010, page 7 · December 2010, page 8 · December 2010, page 8 · December 2010, page 8 · December 2010, page 8 | |||||||||||||
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