Worlds Apart

This is our entry in Lost in Translation’s THURSDAY’S SPECIAL: JUXTAPOSITION.

When we visited Cuba last May, we had dinner one evening at Restaurant Moneda Cubana on the corner of Mercaderes and Empedrado Streets, near the Cathedral Square. We had a table for two on the rooftop, at the edge, with a beautiful view of the fort across the Bay of Havana and of the surrounding buildings and the small park below where boys were playing. Beside our building was another building being renovated, with signs all around the building showing what it would look like when completed.  While we were in Old Havana for a week, we never saw any actual work in progress on that building, or any indication that the renovated building would look like the imagined building.

From our table in the restaurant, we had an excellent view inside one room of the building under renovation. The room, with bricks propping open the shutters on either side, was empty except for a man who stood in the window periodically, probably because it was cooler there. He was dressed too well to be a worker and it was too late in the day to be working. Was he a foreman, a squatter, or someone else? We never knew.

From his perch in that window, the man observed the tourists walking beneath him. They never looked up. From our higher perch at our table, we observed the man. He never looked up. We were in almost the same place but worlds apart.

This photo was taken on May 12, 2016.  Specs are:

Olympus TG-4, ISO 500, f/4.5, 1/80 sec, 15.41 mm