By Pedro Pablo Morejon
HAVANA TIMES – I woke up on December 31 excitedly thinking about Hugo Puig, a Cuban small businessman who these days they call an entrepreneur or a self-employed person. A stroke of bad fortune had him born and living in Cuba – hard luck that among so many thousands of millions of souls waiting for a body, his had come to be reincarnated in this place, a highly unfavorable locale for investing effort and capital.
Nonetheless, perhaps without knowing it, his personal flag is that immortal phrase from Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea: “Man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” So here, in one of the anti-market meccas of the world, he has built his business, accompanied by a first-class team.
Like all good businesspeople, his goals aren’t limited to his financial returns. He wants to rise above, leave a trace of love in the world. Hugo has demonstrated that he deserves it – he’s a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, the type of person that makes you believe, once more, that there’s hope for Cuba.
From early on, a desire burned in him: to provide a free New Year’s Eve dinner for 180 low-income seniors and children at his dining establishment [“Bar K5”] in Guanabo, a beach town east of Havana. He wanted to offer them the opportunity to be happy for a time, enjoying a good meal with love and company.
The invitation for this quantity of people to come share free food began to appear well ahead of time via the Facebook page “Giving back happiness.”
He wasn’t alone in his effort, but relied on a special team: Yoli, a bartender, helped speed up service; Sergio marinated the meats the day before; Michael tirelessly served the plates, sweets and drinks; Yennifer helped serve; Maria washed the dishes; Raciel and Henry helped with whatever came up; Kevin was the chef, aided by Jorge, DJ and Erick from maintenance. And Yipo, the driver, took on the task of taking the pork legs to roast.
All of them began working from the earliest hours of the morning. All of the were doing it for free, moved by the love of their neighbor. All of them, together with Hugo, made possible the dream of a dinner for people that life had not been kind to.
There were problems at first, because many of those invited had a fear that threatened to douse their joy: the thought that the food might run out before they were served.
“Don’t worry. There’s enough for everyone,” Hugo soothed them.
Then the plates began to arrive: congri [a Cuban dish made of rice and beans], roast pork, yucca with onions, salad with dressing, special sweets, and cans of Tukola drink… all served restaurant style, with metal silverware and napkins. At that point, they all began to understand that it was serious, that they wanted to make them feel special.
When he began to see the first smiles, the faces of satisfaction on those old people and children, enjoying themselves as they’d seldom been able to do in their lives, Hugo felt like the richest man in the world.
Richer than Elon Musk himself, he’d say afterwards, without suspecting that his gesture would later go viral in digital media sites inside and outside of our borders.
Read more from the diary of Pedro Pablo Morejon here.
