Crumbs, Miracles, and Winding Down

In my Politics class, we learned exactly how Venezuela does their politics.  The majority of people in Venezuela are poor.  Merida is an exception.  When presidential candidates begin their campaigns, they will always target the poor, because they are the majority.  This is what has led to socialism.  When they go on their campaigns, they will bring with them things that the poor need but cannot afford, like food, or school supplies for children.  But not only this, they will also always leave with a promise of more.  With a promise that if elected, they will make it so that everyone gets the things that they need.  This gives the people hope, of the ability to have a better life, and they are uneducated, so they don't know any better.  And so, when election time comes around, the people vote for the candidate that gives them hope.  Or the president who's going to give them the things they need and want without them having to work for it.  Once the poor people's president is elected, he then goes to work on his number one goal: to keep the poor impoverished, while still maintaining the image that he's helping them.  Why?  Because if the lives of the poor actually are made better, they will lose the ignorant hope in their leader to solve their problems.  For example, there are many clinics and pharmacies in Venezuela, thanks to socialism.  Pharmacies for your medicinal needs, and clinics for your everyday injuries and illnesses, such as colds, broken arms, and stitches for deep cuts.  If you go to a pharmacy or a clinic, they will attend to you immediately.  In a clinic, all services are free.  Pharmacy depends on the medication, but consultations with pharmacists are also free.  However, if your injuries or illnesses are more severe as to need extensive medical attention, you need to go to a hospital.  There are frighteningly few of those.  And once you get to the hospital, they are almost always full up because of the few number of them.  So you have to wait in line for a bed to be open.  You must keep looking vigilantly, because as soon as someone gets up, you must race for their bed and compete with other people, without worrying if the bed has been sanitized.  In this way, by building clinics to help the small things, but keeping the pickings slim when it comes to getting real help, the poor are kept in a miserable state.  Also, Venezuelan doctors are in the minority.  Cubans and other foreign doctors are hired more frequently because they work for less money.

Venezuela has one export: oil.  They are immensely rich in oil.  They give it away as gifts.  The people of Cuba do not have to pay for oil for the next 20 years.  But because they only have one export, they import everything else.  Everything.  Even though they are capable of producing food and other things within the country, they are not allowed to do so, because of the government regulation on private businesses.  This is also why the government regulates the control on US dollars.  The government needs the dollars to buy all of the imports, because bolivares are worthless outside of the country.  No one will take them.  By not allowing the Venezuelan people to compete, they are kept at a stagnant way of life.  Unable to improve.   These things like the clinics and the food and the promises are all what my politics teacher calls "crumbs".  Crumbs given from a huge cake that the government keeps for itself.  To keep control.

But a miracle of miracles happened.  My camera is now back to full functioning order!  Everything that didn't work before now suddenly works!  I was stoked.  Also, I bought a cuatro.  Which is a Venezuelan guitar that's slightly smaller than a regular guitar.  I have yet to think of a name.

Last night I played in a flute recital.  This past week, the flute teacher from Caracas finally made it to Merida, and I had a couple lessons with him. After the recital was over, me and my Venezuelan friends went out to dinner.  It was Mexican but not the same Mexican as at home.  Here are some pictures from that.

(La catedra de flautas)

(Me and my friend Rossmary)

(Me and the flute teacher)

(Me and my friend Fabiola)

And so begins my last week here.

...Los Llanos...

The past weekend, we went to los llanos, which is a kind of rural grassland tropical forest.  Like the savanna in Africa.  Friday started out with a 12 hour drive to the place.  We stopped at a restaurant for lunch, where I discovered that my camera no longer likes memory cards or shooting videos or changing the flash setting.  Luckily my roommate's camera cord is compatible with my camera.  We then stopped in the city Barinas to pick up an Australian and two Germans, who would spend the weekend with us as well.  When we reached the border to Apure State, our passports were checked by the security guards.  Apure is close to the border of Colombia, so it is very important to have your original passports.  Copies are not accepted.  Unfortunately the Germans did not know this, and only had copies.  Because of this, our travel guide bribed the guards 300 bolivares to let us through.  This happens routinely.

We reached our destination after about 13 hours of sitting in the back of a cramped Toyota Landcruiser.  Our accommodations were essentially 3 cabins with hammocks in them, a kitchen, a porch, and a farm.  It was outdoors.  We ate dinner and went to sleep.  I was lucky because in one of the cabins there was a bat that was trapped.  I was not in that cabin.  There were bats everywhere all night.

When we woke up, we had arepas with eggs and ketchup for breakfast. I MISS KETCHUP.  It was so good.  Afterward, we were to split up into two groups.  One group would go fishing for piranhas first, and the other would go horseback riding first.  I chose the group to go horseback riding first.  This wasn't like at the zoo where all the horses have memorized where to go and follow the leader.  We were literally set loose on the wide open plane (which was actually a gigantic pool of water with grass in it. Yay wet season) and we had a guide to show us the general direction.  We were allowed to go as fast as we wanted!! I went fast.

After that, we took a ride on top of the car just like an off road car to find a new fishing spot.  As it turns out, I am horrible at piranha fishing.  There are no cane poles or reels.  Just a spool of wire with a hook on the end.  I caught lots of treefish and rockfish.

After lunch, we went on a boat safari through the canals.  We saw a lot of animals, like caiman crocodiles, capybaras, snakes, lots of birds, and a couple people went swimming in the piranha-crocodile-anaconda infested waters.  I did not.

After this, we had dinner, which consisted of the piranhas we had caught! It seemed like what they did was clean out the organs of the fish and then fried them, cause the head, skin, and fins were still attached.  I liked it.  Some people cleaned the jaw of the piranha to the bone and kept it as a souvenir.  I wish I had done that.

After dinner, we went on a night safari.  The guy walked out into the water and caught a small crocodile with his bare hands!

Then we all went to sleep.  It was an exhausting day.  Next comes the fun part.

We planned to take the whole day Sunday to get home, since it took us the whole day to get there.  When we got up and were getting ready to leave, the guys who worked there were pushing one of the cars to get it to start, because they had played music all night and the battery had died.  Eventually they got it started and we were off.  About an hour into our trip, the car that I was in completely died.  We pulled over in the middle of nowhere near this tiny farm, and assessed the situation.  We had no oil, which was strange because when we left the oil was fine.  A guy who lived nearby took one of our drivers to the nearest store on his motorcycle to get some more oil.  Our guide tried calling the company to see if they could send another car, but signal was bad in the middle of nowhere.  Eventually we got a hold of the other car, and the turned around to come get us.  Since we had to get to Barinas to drop the Germans off in time for their bus, they had the bright idea to attach our car behind theirs and pull it along.  The brakes still worked, so we could use them and not crash into the other car.  We had about 5% confidence in our solution:

I'm surprised it lasted the two hours into Barinas.  But, before we got there, the battery in the other car, which was the one that had troubles earlier, completely gave out, so we had to pull over in another middle of nowhere to switch batteries with our now completely dead car.  But anyway, eventually we make it to Barinas, the Germans leave, and we find out that the company cannot send another car.  There is no room for us in the other.  So we go to the nearest bus station and find that there is one bus left heading toward Merida.  There is one spot left in the other car, so I take it.  Everyone else pays to take a bus back.  We drag the car to a restaurant to eat, where we find that the car has run over its own rope and frayed it.  When we get going again, the rope snapped.  They got out and tied a knot in it, and we drag it for another half hour or so, until the guy who is sent to pick it up arrives on a deserted road with no lights in a winding hilly area. We don't care anymore.  So our guide and driver bid us farewell, and the other driver takes everyone back to Merida and drops us off at our houses.  We got back at 11 PM.  Considering how long we were betting on this ordeal taking, we actually got home early.  Our guide was furious because this had never happened in four years.  I would guess the leaking oil had something to do with the fact that there were seven people riding on top of the car and we deliberately drove through as many muddy gigantic potholes as possible.  But what do I know.

Some people are going to get some money back because of the thing.  I'm not sure if I care enough yet.  you have to have a sense of humor here.  It was the world's biggest accident.  I just laugh it off now.

Catatumbo

On Friday,  I took my last field trip with my Ecology class.  We went to El Paramo de Piedras Blancas.  This is the top of the mountains.  I did not suck at altitude this time! I was honestly surprised.  This is a picture of me not dying of altitude:

(alive)

We didn't stay that long because the teacher was already sick and didn't like altitude either, so I couldn't even gloat that much on how much I wasn't being affected.  But we did get some cool pictures and we did the biggest part of our work.

When we got back, I had a huge headache, so I went to bed early.

On Saturday I got up early and went to Catatumbo.  Catatumbo is famous because it is on the giant Lake Maracaibo, and has a constant lightning storm every night.  It is the only place in the world that does this.  So I arrived at the pick-up place, and we stuffed eight people and their stuff in the back of this Jeep, and we left. First we stopped this waterfall.  Then we stopped at Jaji, which is just a small little town once famous for the largest coffee plantations in the country.  The difference between this place and Merida was stark.  It was quiet. It was calm. It was pretty in one of those small town ways.  We then went to an old coffee plantation.  They had animals, and especially a lovable St. Bernard, that we all had lots of fun with...

After this, we stopped by the Pirate's Cave.  This is a stretch of caves that the Spaniards used as jails to oppress the indigenous people that lived there.  We had to have a guide because it was very easy to get lost in there.  And the flashlight they gave me kept going at the worst intervals.

After this, we stopped at another waterfall.

We then got something to eat and left for the final stretch of the journey.  We arrived in the small town on the lake around 5 or 6 in the evening, which means it was almost dark.  We took a boat out to where we would stay - a hut in the middle of the lake.  Not on some island, but poles stuck into the bed of the lake supporting it.  We ate dinner and went for a night swim in the warm water.  We sat out waiting for the lightning to start.  We saw some lightning, but then got really tired and went to sleep.  But then, later on in the night, we were woken by the sky lighting up like a strobe light.  It was amazing.

(This is a horrible picture, but we saw howler monkeys in the trees)

We spent the night in hammocks.  In the morning, we went on a boat tour of the lake and went swimming again.  I had the most amazing luck to have my camera battery die and then have my camera fall into the water within the same 10 minute period.  It works. Kind of.  I can take pictures and look at pictures. But that is it.  No video, no settings changes, no flash settings.  So I put it in a bowl of rice when I got back, and am leaving it in there all day.  Maybe having dried out will make it normal again.  At least I can still take pictures.  But here are some that I got before that wonderful incident.

And then I got back and found out my internet hadn't worked all weekend and it still wasn't working this morning.  So I am camped at school getting as much work as I can done in order to make use of the internet  I have.  But it was an awesome weekend.

Venezuelan Music Students Have Many Talents

To recap my weekend, I will go backwards.  Today, I was told there would be a rehearsal.  So around 5 PM, I drag myself out of the hammock at school and grudgingly make the walk to the music school. When I get there, there are people, but not as many as there usually are.  I ask the door man what time rehearsal is, and he tells me there is no rehearsal today.  Like this was supposed to be common knowledge, silly American.  So I trudged back to Venusa and pondered to myself.  How is it everyone knows about when rehearsals are or aren't except ME? I mean, nothing was posted.  Nothing was e-mailed.  Nothing was text messaged or called on the telephone.  It just was somehow known that rehearsal was not today.  This is not the first time this has happened.  So I continued to think.  If nothing was communicated verbally, then it had to be communicated non-verbally.  And then it hit me.  The only way this could happen is if the music students of Venezuela had TELEPATHIC ABILITIES.  With their superhuman communication skills, it just entered their minds sometime in the middle of the day: there is no rehearsal today.  And I, a simple human American, do not have telepathic abilities, which is why I was the only one who showed up today.  These people are more talented than I imagined.

Saturday and Sunday were devoted to concerts.  I played with the orchestra in a Halloween concert that featured show tunes like Beetlejuice and Phantom of the Opera, and also classics like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Night on Bald Mountain, Firebird Suite, and Carmina Burana.  I managed to find some pictures of the event, cause I was too busy playing.  This was unlike any concert I've ever played in, because there were lights, a rock band, choir, acrobats, three dance companies, and other circus performers there to do an entire routine to all of our songs.  There was enough light that we didn't need stand lights, but it got really annoying whenever I was trying to play and the strobe light was going on.

We also had to paint our faces or wear a costume for the event.

(Saturday)

(Sunday)

On Friday, we had our second field trip in our Tropical Ecology class.  This time we went to the Spine Arbustal.  Which is like desert, cause it's really hot and dry and has a lot of cacti.  We did the same environmental tests we did in the cloud forest.  A lot of people find these trips annoying, because it takes away from their free time on Fridays, but I like exploring the different parts.

 (yellow spine cacti are endemic to Venezuela ^)

(It was bright out. Squinty eyes)

(We got bored. So we fed the ants some bread and watched them go crazy on it)

So yeah.  Busy busy busy.  Lots of things planned for the last few weeks here.  And cracking down at the music school.