Mostly birdpants, and also some commentary.

Today the gang got carted to Cojímar, a beachside town outside of Havana. We were told that we were going to tour a "project" there, leaving us wondering if we were going to be:
1. watching people doing a project
2. doing a project ourselves
3. visiting the projects
4. doing a project in the projects
5. watching other people do a project in the projects

Turns out, we were just going to see the rural set-up for communism. The place that we visited was the town's co-op, the place where people get their rations, and other community stuff goes on. I'm still not entirely sure what they do, but they were friendly, so that was good. They also talked a real lot about these "pantapájaros" that they make, which was fascinating, of course, but also rather dull considering that I had no idea what an pantapájaro was. While we were sitting and listening to the woman describe the pantapájaro project I pulled out my notebook and wrote a note to Courtney that said: "pantapajaro?" Courtney read this, then whispered, "BIRDPANTS?!" thinking that I was pointing out someone in our vicinity who was sporting birdpants.

This provided a fantastic visual of feathery pants, (perhaps big-bird-esque?) but still didn't seem quite right. The thought of the population of Cojímar being provided with feathery, colorful birdpants by the government was as delightful as it was improbable. I then asked Honorio, and he said that they were actually saying "espantapájaro," which means scarecrow.

I took the liberty of making a rough sketch of said avian fashion pieces.

So, after the lady stopped talking we then had to watch a slideshow of snapshots from past scarecrow shindigs that they've had. This was stunningly boring, and devastatingly devoid of birdpants. People make scarecrows, name them, hang up signs with the names of the scarecrows, then, evidently, pose by their scarecrows for terrible photos that'll be added to the slideshow.

On the plus side, they gave us coconuts! For some reason, the man passing out the coconuts felt the need to give me an abnormally large one that had the fabulous feature of a hole in the bottom of it as well as a hole in the top! This led to a lap of coconut juice. (Oh, and coconut juice is a diuretic. Fun fact that we all learned through experience!)

I took some pictures of coconut time, naturally, abandoning my obese, leaky coco on the ground briefly.

A few happy coco campers, blissfully unaware of the lack of bathrooms in the area:
and one photo that I snapped before the tambor began this afternoon:
The lofted ceilings, beautiful tile floors, and ornate gates on the windows still have such an elegant feel despite the lack of upkeep. I can't even imagine what it looked like in the 50's, politics aside.