The neighborhood in Havana where you are most at risk of being clobbered by falling masonry from crumbling buildings starts across the street from the Parque Central Hotel, where vacationers sip mojitos in a lushly-tropical lobby, and pay more for one breakfast buffet than a month’s worth of much tastier street food (in this is dual economy, tourist dollars cost about 25 times more than Cuban pesos).

Here, in Havana Central, is where I roamed with my camera in three trips to Havana from 2015 to 2016, to the sound of roosters crowing and the smell of overripe guava. There were no computers or plastic bags and American brand names existed solely on clothes donated from family living abroad. 

Entrepreneurship flowered, with men and women in doorways pouring coffee, selling Bic lighters, and fixing sewing machines. Timed to the school bell, women appeared selling chiclets for a peso each and in the late afternoon a man with a towering chef’s toque in the street from a cart sold pieces of a chocolate confection with ingredients from God knows where: When I wanted to make a flan I needed to visit three different stores to buy the sugar, eggs and vanilla. 

There was the cliche Havana — fat cigars in men's shirt pockets, Che everywhere, garishly-made up women in flouncy costumes charging to have their pictures taken and many more Easter egg-colored ‘50s Chevy’s than I imagined (often perfectly restored on the outside but with gaffer-taped seats), but just beyond the tourist zone these kinds of revelations: A husband and wife, both doctors, with the man in a sharp, all-white ensemble who, during an alarmingly expensive lunch they tricked my friend and I into treating them to, pointed out the holes in the inner seam of his trousers and revealed that their monthly rations only provide enough dry milk for their baby for one week. At a dance hall, a handsome young Cuban fishes in the purse of the fat middle-aged German lady to pay for their drinks, she with a hand resting on his thigh.

Weekends and evenings, children thronged the streets, reminding me of the ragamuffins I photographed playing in the street in Maine 25 years ago, pre-internet, on Fulton Street in Rockland and Bayview in Belfast. But in January of last year there were clusters of people on a sidewalk and in a park, accessing wifi, and in the Plaza Vieja, a wizened man selling peanuts in a paper cone who said he fought alongside Castro stood in front of a shiny Paul & Shark boutique. 

This is a snapshot in time: Change is coming.  

Patrisha McLean will present a slide show and talk, which will include travel tips to Havana, at the Camden Public Library, Thursday June 15, 7 p.m. Her show is up for the month of June.