The “frazada de piso” (cloth that is used to clean the tile floors in Cuba) disappeared from Havana stores for over a month. Rumours has it that the factory was closed, nothing was of course said on the national television, regarding that common matter.

I was visiting Havana for a month and the floor cloth subject was present in almost every conversation. Some neighbours were thinking of using an old towel or t-shirt to mop the floors. By the end of the trip someone advised my grandma that the desired product was slowly back on the stores but people were allow to buy only two. The problem is that when the cloth began to disappear from the shops ilegal street vendors had a hidden stock  and were buying tons of them to re – sell them for double the price. The frazada reached $50 Cuban pesos on the street.

A few days before I left Havana friends started talking about the shortage of laundry detergent. Who knows what the situation is right at the moment but I suspect the subject moved from the difficulty of cleaning the floors to the impossibility of doing the laundry… always something missing… for Cubans the entertainment never ends.