\n<\/p>\n
Havana– <\/span>Eduvirgen Zamora hides her hands out of embarrassment these days.<\/p>\n Her nails are pointed down, except for her thumbs, which have inch-long claws covered in fancy silver swirls.<\/p>\n Unable to buy a new set of nails Cuban economic crisis<\/a> Move over, the 56-year-old cafeteria worker opted to take care of her eyelashes, hoping a cheaper option would draw people’s attention upward.<\/p>\n combined with severe shortage of water, electricity and money US energy blockade<\/a> The continuation of severe blackouts has deepened poverty and increased hunger across the island. Even those who are more affluent are now throwing away long-established and often preferred routines as they adapt to increasingly grim realities.<\/p>\n Zamora said, “The Cuban woman likes to look beautiful \u2013 doing her hair, doing her nails, doing her feet \u2013 and wearing perfume.” “I don’t look like I want to look.”<\/p>\n Melina Colas knows this feeling.<\/p>\n The young manicurist who works in Havana recently sported long braids to celebrate her birthday, but soon realized it was a difficult style to maintain given her chronic lack of water.<\/p>\n She used to wear her hair long and straight, but has decided to cut it and wear it natural, even though she feels it would not suit her short stature and round face.<\/p>\n “In the past, you could do whatever you wanted,” she said of hairstyles when water was readily available. “Not now.”<\/p>\n Colas has also changed things at the salon where she works.<\/p>\n She has learned patience, aware customers arrive late because public transportation is scarce.<\/p>\n And she now relies on a mixture of water and vinegar in a spray bottle to make up for the loss \u2014 she said the mixture also helps soften clients’ cuticles and prevents a rising number of fungus cases as the time between manicure appointments grows longer for many.<\/p>\n \u201cSome cases are serious,\u201d Colas said.<\/p>\n He also lamented how the island’s economic crisis and shrinking budgets have led to a decline in customers, a trend that 50-year-old hair stylist Betty Ramirez Aldana has also noticed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really a blow to me, because I lost a lot of clients,\u201d he said on a recent afternoon in a makeshift hair salon with bubblegum pink walls. “Normally by now I’d have five, six, eight customers. Look at the time. And no one has come.”<\/p>\n The hair salon where he works recently spent three weeks without water, as electricity is supplied at several pump stations on the island and severe outages are common. He can no longer provide some hair straightening treatments, so he offers clients alternatives, including exotic cuts.<\/p>\n “Many of them have chosen to embrace their natural curly hair,” she said.<\/p>\n Lack of gasoline and public transportation, as well as falling budgets, have forced a growing number of women to uproot their roots, Ramirez said.<\/p>\n Those who can afford it call him for a tour of the home, with the original customer presumably also including “his aunt and the upstairs neighbor. I don’t serve one, I serve two or three,” he said.<\/p>\n Beauty aside, Cuban<\/a> They are also distressed at being forced to cut back on basic hygiene: some say they wash their hair only twice a month, and clothes remain dirtier for longer periods of time.<\/p>\n Antonia Isalgues Barrientos, 60, who works for a government company that runs boats from eastern Havana to the center of the capital, said she hangs her clothes outside every day after working on the boats because she doesn’t have water to wash them.<\/p>\n “It’s very hot here in Cuba; you sweat a lot,” she said, recalling how she used to wash clothes almost daily. “I was never forced to hang clothes out in the fresh air and then wear them again.”<\/p>\n Islaguez said he has seen an increase in ridership as an increasing number of gas stations are closing and only a handful of public buses remain in operation.<\/p>\n Cuba had spent three months without fuel shipments until Russian tankers arrived. arrived at the end of March<\/a> With 730,000 barrels of oil. It is expected to last only nine or 10 days.<\/p>\n Ivan de los Angeles Arias, a 44-year-old boat pilot, often boards the boat for the five-minute ride across Havana Bay, keeping his car at home for emergency use only.<\/p>\n “This is the reality we are forced to live with,” he said. \u201cYou deal with it the best you can.\u201d<\/p>\n American diplomats flown to Cuba<\/a> Top government officials will meet for the first time since 2016 earlier this month as tensions remain between the two countries.<\/p>\n The Cuban government stated that ending the US energy embargo was a top priority for its delegation, calling it an “act of economic coercion” and an “undue punishment”.<\/p>\n At the end of January, just a few weeks after America invaded Venezuela<\/a> President Donald Trump halted vital oil shipments to Cuba in a move that threatened tariffs<\/a> Any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba produces only 40% of what it needs to meet its needs.<\/p>\n The United States has called for an end to political repression, the release of political prisoners, and liberalization of the island’s crumbling economy, among a number of conditions for lifting sanctions on Cuba.<\/p>\n Arias, the boat pilot, said he didn’t think the talks would change anything for him.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no hope,\u201d he said. \u201cIt makes no sense if living conditions remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Havana– Eduvirgen Zamora hides her hands out of embarrassment these days. Her nails are pointed down, except for her thumbs, which have inch-long claws covered in fancy silver swirls. Unable to buy a new set of nails Cuban economic crisis Move over, the 56-year-old cafeteria worker opted to take care of her eyelashes, hoping a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[1340,2502,5235,7589,2175,5600,5291,11646,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-92886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-beauty","9":"tag-change","10":"tag-cubans","11":"tag-electricity","12":"tag-force","13":"tag-routines","14":"tag-shortages","15":"tag-transportation","16":"tag-water"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92897,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92886\/revisions\/92897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}