Stan and Kim in Cuba

  A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to go to the local CVS pharmacy to make some purchases, my first time entering such a store in over a year. Kim had sprained her ankle, and was in need of some anti-inflammatory pain reliever. I went into CVS and made my way to the pain reliever aisle, and quickly realized that I am not over the re-entry culture shock of coming back to the US after an extended time in Cuba. Back in Matanzas, if a pharmacy by chance had a pain reliever in stock (which it usually did not), there would only be one variety. Here, we have dozens of varieties, and I stood there somewhat paralyzed in front of so many options. I was reminded of a line from a Wendell Berry poem— "In plenitude too free." I finally did the sensible thing and called Kim to see whether she needed ibuprofen or naproxen sodium or acetaminophen or aspirin or  magnesium salicylate tetrahydrate or some combination of these, and whether she wanted tablets or capsules or cream or powder. On...

(blog post by Kim)   When we were in Cuba, I learned how to get every bit of medicine out of a tube of ointment.   Anabel, from our companion church, took a knife and cut open the tube so she could get out just a little bit more.   It works with toothpaste too.   I never realized how much toothpaste was still in the tube.   In times of scarcity, inventiveness finds ways to get every bit.   Cubans are champions in inventiveness. As the scarcities intensified before we left, I began to appreciate this not just as an innovative and creative strategy, but as a concrete way to make what we had last just a bit longer.   Our socks also began to wear out and so, being the practical but not very talented seamstress—(I should not even use that word to refer to me)—I started to try and repair socks and other clothes.   When I would show my work to friends in the Kairos Center, they would laugh as my the stitches were all over the place and everyone agree...