FEATURE-Cubans await Castro's elusive Chinese kitchen
Mon Sep 5, 2005
By Marc Frank
CAMAGUEY, Cuba, (Reuters) - Six months after President Fidel Castro promised that every Cuban household would get an electric rice cooker and other appliances, most Cubans are wondering where they are.
In announcing the plan earlier this year, Castro took to the stage like a television game show host touting Chinese-made rice cookers, fans, stoves, washing machines and other electric appliances that would soon be available.
The goods were considered evidence of communist Cuba's recovery from the deep economic crisis the Caribbean island sank into following the demise of the Soviet Union.
But so far few have been sold, though some state stores have begun offering pressure cookers made in China and Brazil, and some residents are growing impatient.
The delays are being blamed on the country's decrepit electricity grid as officials fear that the onslaught of new electric appliances will cause power failures and fires.
Previously, the sale of electric stoves and cookers had been banned due to energy shortages.
But armed with new credit from China and cushioned by generously financed oil supplies from Venezuela in exchange for medical services, Castro is spending $600 million to double the country's generating capacity within a year and import millions of the Chinese electric appliances to be sold at cost by the state.
A majority of Cuba's 11.2 million inhabitants still cook with home-made burners, kerosene, diesel fuel, wood and coal.
In a country where rice and beans is part of every meal, the promise of electric rice cookers and new pressure cookers was welcomed by many.
In Camaguey, Cuba's third city in the center of the island, the evening air smells of kerosene, diesel fumes and burning wood as some residents cook over open fires in their patios.
One joke circulating locally runs: "Have you heard the appliances have finally arrived and are being stored at the church. Why? Because they are going to be distributed when God feels like it."
ENERGY OVERLOAD
Havana port workers say boatloads of electric appliances have begun arriving. But, as in many of the best laid plans, a hitch has appeared.
Authorities discovered that Cuba's ancient transformers and secondary power lines often cannot take the extra load and are at risk of catching fire.
Castro says he's purchased thousands of transformers and millions of feet of cable to solve the problem. But it will take time to make the switch.
Camaguey resident Guillermina Rodriguez, 84, said she would be patient, as long as she got one of the pressure cookers due to arrive in the city soon.
"To tell you the truth, I don't even know how to use a rice maker," Rodriguez said, as she cooked rice in an iron pot on her one homemade electric burner.
Other local residents said their hardy old pressure cookers, in which they have cooked rice and beans for 15 to 20 years, were useless due to broken valves and worn out rubber seals.
Most Cubans have never owned an oven, let alone a microwave. They use pressure cookers not just to make rice and beans, but to bake cakes, roast chicken and cook other food.
Castro insists the kitchen plan will not only ease the burden on housewives, but save energy and help pay for the electric grid's upgrade, since electricity is heavily subsidized.
VINTAGE FRIDGES
In a series of four-hour television appearances earlier this year, Castro detailed the number of watts each new appliance would save and demonstrated how homemade electric stoves and vintage appliances, such as American refrigerators from the 1950s, wasted energy.
He even explained to Cubans how to cook rice and beans more efficiently, advice that was not appreciated by all.
"What a lack of respect. I know how to cook," said a housewife in the capital city of Havana, as she watched one of Castro's appearances.
Cuba legalized family remittances from abroad, opened-up to to tourism and foreign investment and made some timid market reforms in the 1990s to cope with the loss of Soviet economic aid and increased pressure from U.S. sanctions.
Gaps arose in Cuba's egalitarian society between Cubans who had access to dollars and those who did not, mainly in the provinces where people still look to the state to improve their lot.
"People in Havana criticize Fidel because they do not need the new appliances or want them," said Mirelis, a beautician in a sugar mill town in Ciego de Avila province.
"Here we are happy because women's lives will improve. We have to cook rice in one pot, beans in another and something else in another, often one thing with kerosene and another with wood," she said.
But she added: "We will only believe it when we see it."
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