Caibarién, Cuba ICBTS News — Not everyone is complaining about the horrific category 5 hurricane winds brought on by hurricane Irma this week.  In some tiny Cuban seaside towns, the storm surge and strong winds actually made things look certainly askew — but actually a tad cleaner.

“You always lose some palm trees in a hurricane,” one anonymous villager said, “but I haven’t seen the walls of the farmacia (pharmacy) look this clean since 1967.”  He pointed to a small, cinder block structure where the Castro government disburses free aspirin, band-aids, and do-it-yourself suture kits.  “The roads too,” he said.  “It took all the trash out to sea.  We only have three working trucks in our village and there is very little fuel for trash pickup, so this, Dios mío, was a blessing from above.  The stink!  Gone!”

Another group of villagers appeared ecstatic to find several pallets of evaporated milk washed ashore from a distressed cargo ship.  “Canned beef hash!” one old woman said, tearing up.  “Chicken of the Sea Tuna.  The storm has been very kind.”

While most Americans might consider the dizzy wreckage of displaced corrugated roofing, plywood, and bathroom fixtures the stuff of landfills, most of the villagers were excited about the shopping opportunities. “You can rebuild your hut,” our source said, looking over a broken door handle.  “And it’s all washed clean by the sea.  We only get two annual bars of soap per family here, and you have to be a newlywed to get a new mattress, so we see this as a blessing.”

The celebration was interrupted by near pandemonium, when someone announced that a 24 foot sail boat had floated into the harbor undamaged.  It may have arrived in a seaworthy condition, but it was soon submerged entirely when nearly 200 residents tried to steer it north, towards open waters.

 

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