Waiting in queues… Communism in action!

One of the effects of the communist era in Cuba has been that the Cuban people have an incredibly well developed system for queuing, that after my time in China, I definitely wasn’t expecting. Waiting for things in China was also a legacy from communist times, but instead of the communist era making Chinese good at waiting in queues, it turned normal Chinese people into monsters when there is a line involved! Chinese queue with their elbows, and generally the accepted form is to push and shove and push and shove until you have pushed everyone out of your way and you are at the front of the line and can get on the bus, go to the toilet, buy your ice-cream, or do whatever it is you were queuing for.

By contrast the Cubans are extremely civilised, and when there is a queue for anything, there is no pushing or shoving; Cubans are far too easy-going and laid back for that. In fact, if you have to wait for something, there is rarely any need to queue up in a line at all. What happens is that you arrive at where a bunch of people are waiting, maybe it is in a bank, maybe for a bus, and you ask ‘Who’s last?’ Someone will raise their hand, and you remember that person, because that’s who you go after. When the bus comes, a rough line forms and you stand behind that person in the line. In the bank, when that person goes up to the counter, you know that you are next. It’s so brilliant, and civilised, and no one even bothers to try to push in, or jump the queue.


My favourite waiting experience was in Coppelia, Cuba’s most famous ice-cream parlour. The Lonely Planet describes it as a cultural experience without equal; it is a park with a number of different areas in which ice cream is served at ridiculously cheap prices. Rough queues form at the outer edges of the complex, each entrance having its own ‘line’ that leads to a certain area of the park. You ask who’s last, and remember that person and everyone kind of huddles around in a sea of people, but as people are called into the magical realm of Coppelia one table at a time, you realise that everyone knows their place. We were after a Cuban rapper and his girlfriend, and he spoke excellent English, sounding just like a hip hop DJ from a disco in the states! His English had a rhythm that really made it sound like he was rapping as he explained the process of waiting in line, getting a table and ordering your food. The average wait time is about an hour, he told us! We must have been there on a very average day, because almost exactly one hour from the time we arrived at the front of the queue and were let into the section of tables and chairs in our area.

I was hoping that it was bloody good ice cream to make it worth the wait! When it came I found that the ice cream itself was nice, but nothing particularly special. In any other country in the world, I’m sure I would be furious if I waited an hour, only to find that rather than the hundreds of flavours available in Haagen Daaz, Ben and Jerry or Wendy’s that there was exactly one flavour on offer that day, chocolate. I don’t even particularly LIKE chocolate ice cream, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

Five scoops of ice cream cost 5 pesos, or about 25 cents, so Joo and I ordered five scoops each, feeling incredibly decadent as we did so. But when our lone plate of 5 scoops appeared, I looked over at other tables and I was agog to discover that the standard was 3 plates each, or a whopping 15 scoops per person, as well as an assortment of cakes and biscuits to go with it! Joo remarked that it looked like everyone was eating ice cream for their dinner! The rapper and his girlfriend seemed to find this statement incredibly funny, and I found out why when their plates came out. Four cakes, four bowls of ice cream, and several biscuits later, they laughed that they really wouldn’t need dinner! I guess if you have waited in line so long you want to make the visit worth it, but I still couldn’t work out how so many skinny people could eat so much ice cream in one sitting and still stay skinny! I guess it’s not something that is done everyday, that’s for sure!

Despite the queuing, and the rather average tasting ice cream, the process of standing in line with other Cubans felt authentic and real, and gave me a shiver of excitement that I was experiencing ‘real’ Cuba. I found that I really didn’t mind the wait. Of course, the fact that the whole thing only cost me about 20 cents probably helped. But more than that, the wait gave us a time to chat, to socialise, and make new friends and no one seemed impatient or frustrated. By the time we got to the table, the rapper and his girlfriend had invited Joo and I along to a concert the following night, and we felt like old friends. I guess I could really see the beauty in the slower pace of life in Cuba that means people aren’t always in a hurry, that gives people the time to pause, to talk to people, and appreciate the smaller things in life. As I sat eating my five scoops of chocolate ice cream, I tried to imagine people in New York stopping their daily routine to wait in line for an hour for a bowl of ordinary-tasting ice cream, in only one flavour, and it made me realise how refreshingly different things in Cuba are. I couldn't help but wonder if the lazy, laid back nature of the Cubans that allows them to wait so patiently without complaint is due to the effects of communism, or simply the culture and climate, or some combination of both. Whatever the reason, though, I figure that it would be such a dreadful shame if that aspect of life there were lost in the corporate rat-race, should capitalism and the free market be introduced.