‘I train anyone who asks me to, mi reina. What if the Nicaraguans showed up here? There’s heaps of them already, they’re coming for us,’ the slight, dark man continues. People call him ‘maestro’, or so he says. ‘I’ve taught lots of Turks. They take care of their things, their women.’

Two months ago, a woman who lived alone was robbed in her own house, on kilometre eight. They gagged her and took everything. And last month, masked men broke into the house next door to the public prosecutor’s office. The owner wasn’t home, fortunately. We drive along the buckled road. The man talks and talks and I’m reminded once again that I spent my childhood in a state of unwarranted boredom. ‘El maestro’ lives close to where they’re building an enormous concrete court for a sport complex, over a mangrove swamp. In his neighbourhood, he says, residents have to pay out of pocket for the sewage system to be cleaned. Sooner or later, the rains will come, and the men have organised to clear the pipes before the floodwater rises above the waist.

‘Above the waist?’ I ask, incredulous.

‘Ugh, yeah, it’s awful, mami,’ he says. He falls silent and speeds up as we reach a place I recognise. In a video I saw from a few years back, some kids dangled from a branch of this tree, suspended over the fresh brown soup that rose until it covered the rusted bodywork of several abandoned cars, American models. Girls emerged with babies in their arms and men bailed out their living rooms, pail by pail, desperate, even as the rain kept coming.

A sudden noise distracts me, a bang; I look ahead and try to figure out where the clattering clarinet and aggressive violin solo are coming from. ¿Cuándo llegará, cuándo llegará, cuándo llegará el día de la justicia? No justice, no peace! I shiver at the swell of a choir. The cymbals clash their way in. It must be a charanga brava band, rehearsing right here in the park of this sad neighbourhood. I think of asking the maestro to let me off, but there’s almost no one in sight and I’m already late for the opening of the Green Moon Festival.

‘Shit, qué vaina firme!’ the maestro exclaims, and it’s true, I say, very firme. They’re Cubans, I tell him. They must be practising for the concert on Thursday.