AN AB FAB TOUR OF THE HIDDEN CARIBBEAN
Sanet Oberholzer chats to Joanna Lumley about her recent adventures in Cuba and Haiti, with a camera crew in tow
To the Caribbean
British actress Joanna Lumley recently completed a journey of nearly 2,500km from Cuba to Haiti and she’s inviting you to tag along in the new BBC Earth Series Joanna Lumley’s Hidden Caribbean.
The two countries may be different, but they are linked by common threads in their history: colonisation, slavery, revolution, natural disasters and political troubles. Neither country is rich in monetary terms, but both are filled to abundance with life.
The Absolutely Fabulous star, who turned 74 this month, says she wanted to take a film crew there because people don’t know very much about the countries.
“We know about Havana cigars, we know about Fidel Castro and Guantanamo Bay but we don’t know terrifically much about [either country] and I thought it would be lovely for us to go — not only to Havana, which is the most popular part, but to travel around and see a bit of it.”
Haiti isn’t really what she would call a “holiday destination”, but, says Lumley, she’s in the business of making travel shows, not holiday shows.
Kicking off the two-part series in the back of a hot-pink vintage car, Lumley starts out in Havana. She explores the back streets of the Cuban capital and meets Idamelys Moreno, a female boxer who is fighting to make the sport accessible to women (women are banned from boxing professionally in Cuba).
Lumley says a highlight of this part of her trip was a visit to a world-famous family of rumba players, drummers and dancers.
“I found it utterly thrilling to be in the same room as that stupendously complex and sophisticated drumming — that was a huge thrill,” she says.
Moving on from Havana, she visits
Cuba’s tobacco region, where she reads a bit of Charles Dickens to factory workers as they roll cigars. She then hops on a train to the town of Hershey, where she meets a family who once worked in the chocolatemaker’s now-abandoned sugar factories. She visits Che Guevara’s grave, and ends in Fidel Castro’s home town, where residents are preparing for the 60th anniversary of the Great Revolution.
In the second episode, Lumley visits the town of Guantanamo, home to the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp, before making her way to Haiti. Here she experiences extremes: the luxurious port of Labadee, where cruise ships dock, and the city of Cap-Haitien, where the beaches are covered in plastic that has washed ashore.
She boards a sailing boat for the island of Ile-a-Vache, where she attends a voodoo ceremony before making her way to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, which is still recovering from the devastating 2010 earthquake.
In Haiti, Lumley’s highlight is making a trip to the city’s citadel, built just as Haiti finished its revolution.
“It was quite a huge thrill, riding on a little pony, being led by a chap who walks with you all the way up to the extraordinary citadel perched right up on the highest hills. That was really astonishing, I adored that,” Lumley says.
Cuba is safe, clean, very poor, very polite and organised. Except for the poverty. Haiti is the complete opposite.
“It is chaotic, lawless, has filthy water, potholes in the roads and a kind of rebellious, strange streak in it. It’s ‘Catch what you can because nobody is going to help you,’ ” Lumley recalls. During the 12 days the crew spent filming in Haiti, they were accompanied by bodyguards.
Lumley says the insecurity made it hard to feel at home in Haiti but she loved everyone she met. “We were just fascinated and so grateful to everybody who went out of their way — at some personal risk sometimes — to speak to us and to welcome us into their homes.”
If you would like to plan a similar trip, Lumley’s advice is to be prepared, read up on the countries and decide what you want to do beforehand. Learn the local customs, have respect for them, be courteous and, above all, smile. Learning some basic phrases in Spanish and French will also go a long way.
“Cuba and Haiti are two of the poorest, most challenging countries I have ever visited but they’ve given me some of the best experiences and I’ve met fabulous people. Would you want to visit it? Of course, if you’re adventurous. It’s not easy, but then travelling often isn’t easy.”
Joanna Lumley’s Hidden Caribbean: Havana
to Haiti screens on May 27 at 7pm on BBC Earth (DStv channel 184)