Cuba

[Sheila]

As I said the other day, we are recently back from a holiday in Cuba.  The staff in the hotel are wonderful but the poverty outside the hotels is terrible.  A monthly ration of rice and beans is allowed, a few eggs and small amounts of meat.  Medication is difficult to buy and the staff were very grateful for the paracetamol we had taken.

If we ventured outside the hotel we were asked for clothes, ladies sanitary things etc.

One of the hotel guests hurt his ankle and another guest, who is a nurse, was trying to help and we all offered pain killers that we had brought.  There is a doctor in the hotel but he would have had to got medication by taxi at great expense.

Everyone is paid the same wage but those who work in hotels are lucky because they get tips.  The situation is worse than when we went five years ago.

[Raven]

What a way to live, sounds awful. Thank Heavens for the NHS, not perfect but still there for us all.

[Scrumpy]

What an experience!! It was like that in The Gambia when we visited it.
It's an eye opener visiting a poor country.. makes us realise how damned lucky we are , even though we are having a rough ride at the moment, It doesn't compare with what some are living with..
Had a power cut last night.. just for a few minutes and all I could think about was not having a tv.. Selfish or what.. !!

[Alex]

It is an eye opener actually visiting poor countries, which is why I imagine so many people who live there are trying to move to Europe.

As for Cuba, there is now a crisis off the Florida coast with thousands of people from Cuba and Haiti trying to get to the US.

[JBR]

What an experience!! It was like that in The Gambia when we visited it.
It's an eye opener visiting a poor country.. makes us realise how damned lucky we are , even though we are having a rough ride at the moment, It doesn't compare with what some are living with..
Had a power cut last night.. just for a few minutes and all I could think about was not having a tv.. Selfish or what.. !!

Cuba?  Gambia?
How long before the UK?