Size in Latin America

I was delighted to read that the title of "World's Smallest Man" has been awarded to a 27 inch tall Colombian man who feels very happy because he is unique although he does get bothered by people always touching him and picking him up. I can understand that. I too know the burden that being an unusual size can be in Latin America.

Before I continue with this post I should probably clarify the limitations of my "unusual size". I am just over 5 foot 9 inches and a UK size 12-14. Before I came to Latin America I had never realised just how outlandishly large I actually was. I brought my clothes in regular high street stores, I unselfconsciously stood next to "normal size" people, and the great British public never bothered to tell me "You're so BIG". Thankfully the Venezuelans soon set me straight.

Here are some of the things that I've been told/asked here:

- "You're so BIG" (countless times)

- "Gordita...." (Fatty) (also countless times)

- "Are you sure that you would fit in a two man tent with one other man?"

- "You should go in the front of the car because you won't fit with two other people in the back"

- "Please could you get out of the car and move around to the other side because you are weighing it down too much on one side."

- "Do you do lots of sport? Because you're so BIG. Really REALLY BIG. Bigger than Novio".

I know that I am quite tall, even by British standards (not tall enought to be a model or anything good like that) and that women here tend to be slightly smaller. But not fitting in a 2 man tent?!?!

For a while when I arrived I thought that I must be body dismorphic, seeing myself as an elvish waif, when in fact I am an almighty, hulking beast. It had to be me or everyone else here. Thinking about it, and after various reassuring emails from friends in the UK, I'm pretty sure that it's everyone else here.

Islands in the sun

This blog entry is very late. But at the end of July Novio and I went to visit his grandma in Margarita Island for 10 days. Margarita Island is THE holiday spot in Venezuela. Last year I asked my university class to imagine that they were ANYWHERE in the world, and to write me a postcard from there telling me about the weather, what they did on their holidays etc. etc. Two things impressed me: firstly, that most of the students actually cut out card to postcard size and either drew a postcard or printed images from the internet to make it a more authentic piece of writing; secondly, that in a class of around 30 students, nearly half of them chose to imagine that (and remember that they were given the freedom of the WHOLE WORLD) they were on Margarita Island. And not only that, they all did the same thing: "The weather was lovely In the morning they went to the beach and in the afternoon to the Sambil and Señor Frogs."

The Sambil is a shopping centre and Venezuelans LOVE shopping centres. The first thing people ask you when you say you've been to Margarita is "did you go to the Sambil?" Last year a student asked me to help him with a presentation that he had to do about English culture. His first question was "which are the biggest shopping centres in London". They are considered to be relatively safe places, but I'm not sure what the attraction is above and beyond that. Señor Frogs is a disco/bar which seems to have achieved nation-wide fame. Sadly I never went, and now it has been closed down because too many people got killed there so I can only imagine what delights this place held.

Anyway, given that these seemed to be the commonly agreed highlights of a holiday in Margarita, I did not have overly high expectations for the trip. I am pleased to report however, that I was wrong. Margarita is lovely.

The beaches are wonderful. We are really lucky in that Novio's grandma lives right on the beach and every morning I went out for a run before it got too hot. There is nothing like running along a beautiful sandy, palm-lined beach early in the morning when the only people are other runners, groups doing yoga, and the odd couple on an early morning stroll. Not only is that beach lovely, the whole island has wonderful beaches.

Margarita also has castles. One at Pampatar and one at La Asunción, with a really interesting tour (in Spanish). *Interesting titbit of information gleaned from tour: Margarita is in the state of Nueva Esparta (New Sparta), which is thus named because during the Venezuelan War of Independence the people of Margarita put up a heroic effort against the Spanish, reminiscent of the Spartans, and when the Spanish were approaching they rounded up all the hats in the area and put them on the numerous cacti, so that as the Spanish drew closer they saw what appeared to be an immense army of sombrero-wearing Margariteños ready to defend their island, and promptly withdrew (or at least slightly delayed their attack). I'm not sure how accurate this story is, but I like it.

We also went on a day trip to the much smaller and uninhabited island of Cubagua, which lies between Margarita and the mainland. This is the island where the Spanish built their first city in Latin America, Nueva Cadiz. However, in 1541 an underwater earthquake and resulting tsunami caused half of the island, and most of the city, to fall into the sea. Today, you can still see the ruins of the city, although Novio's aunts, who went several years ago, and went with us this time, said that the ruins are much more ruined now than last time they went so I don't know how much longer they will be there. There is also a lagoon with mud in it, which is alleged to have therapeutic properties. I smothered myself in it without hesitation of course, although afterwards remembered that I had also read about natural oil springs on theisland, and it was suspiciously black and...well, oily. I felt like one of those pelicans you see Greenpeace trying to help on the news after an oil spill.

We were lucky enough to go to Cubagua with a

fisherman friend of Novio's aunt who took us in his boat. There was a nerve-wracking

moment on the way back as we saw the Margarita Express Ferry (a BIG boat), steaming towards us. Apparently in these situations it is the always the fishing boat that gives way as the ferries pay no notice to them, and as the fisherman accelerated as much as possible we all gritted our teeth until we were well and truly out of the path of the ferry and its wake which would easily have capsized our boat. On the way back we went for a tour through La Restinga, an area where Margarita Island is effectively divided in two, apart from a thin strip of sand joining the two parts. The whole area is full of mangroves with pearls growing on their funny roots. The sunset was spectacular.

I have to say though, that I think the highlight of Margarita for me is its capital, La Asunción. It is a small town with an old crumbling church, a leafy Plaza Bolívar with a lovely trinket shop and café and interesting streets to wander through, where we found a house where they sell pan de leche, a photo studio with walls plastered with hundreds of old photos of Venezuela, the oldest bridge in Venezuela and a fantastic bakery.

The sunset at Juan Griego is supposed to be one of the best in Venezuela, and the boulevard beside the beach at Pedro Gonzalez has lovely restaurants. I had what was possibly the best empanada I've ever eaten in El Tirano, and saw huge wooden boats being made in La Manzanita.

I did go to the Sambil, I have to admit, but it was definitely not a highlight of my trip.

Bad milk

This morning the milk in my coffee was bad.

I had just opened the carton of long-life, with a "best by" date suitably far into the future and it tasted of bad cheese and ruined my coffee. This is the second time this has happened in the last couple of weeks. Last time we bought 6 litres of milk (you have to buy milk when you can get it here - there very often isn't any), and they were all bad.

Election time

With less than a month to go until the elections to the National Assembly, the politicians are pulling out the big guns.... or big boobs in fact... In Valencia, the nearest city to where I am, one of the candidates is holding a raffle to raise funds for his campaign. The prize?? A boob job of course. The article I read didn't make it clear whether the winner had to claim the prize themselves or could elect a friend or relative to receive the privilege of going under the knife. If not then I would imagine that the raffle would be a bit of a failure... I mean, it's unlikely many men would enter, and given than a large percentage of women will already have had their boobs operated, the pool of unoperated ladies is rather small...

The other clear sign that the election is up and coming was the governments decision to ban print media from publishing "violent images", after a number of national papers published a gruesome image of a morgue in Caracas, with bodies piled up on trolleys and laid out on the floor. It was indeed a striking image, and I have to say, that Venezuelans do love a gory spectacle, (for example, when I used to get the bus from Maracay to Caracas, if we passed a crash the people would crowd to the window on that side of the bus to take photos on their mobile phones) and personally I don't think that the newspapers should pander to this voyeuristic desire to see other people's pain. However, ever one to favour freedom of the press, I am not in favour of the government's desire to dictate what the papers can and cannot publish. And more to the point, protecting children from violent images does not address the fact that everyday they are subject to violent acts and images all around them in their lives. Last week, one family friend was killed because someone tried to grab her bag and she fell in front of a lorry. Neither the theif nor the lorry driver stopped. The previous day another family friend had been followed coming out of the bank, on foot and then on motorbike, and when he arrived at his home was robbed and lost the considerable sum of money that he had withdrawn from the bank (equivalent to 5 months minimum wage). And this is just people known to our family. And these are not even shocking events anymore. There is no hope of justice. Nothing will be done to find the perpertrators of these crimes. Venezuelans will become more and more scared to go out of their house, or more and more resigned to the possibility of losing their money, their possessions and ultimately their lives.

The Economist wrote about the government's decision to ban violent images and in the comments section, amongst all the people who argue with national statistics and political arguments, was a comment from a young Venezuelan that gave me goose pimples to read. It gave his personal experience and summed up the glum resignation to the situation here that so many people feel:

"all the comments are about the whole picture, i´ll talk about my pov, the people i kno, the murders i´ve been touched by...about the "chavez Generation" kids who had lived their childhood and teen years in the past decade (like me), i´ve known at least 3 teens killed by people their own age (one time i even knew the killer)...i´ve been robbed two times by people my own age, i´ve had friends of friends been kidnapped, insanely killed or involved in unfair attacks, the kind of attack that is the result of hate and resentment, all of my friends have seen a gun at least once pointing at them just to take away their cell phones and nothing ever happens, here you just say "thank god they didn´t kill me" we don´t even complain any more, we don´t ask for help anymore..."

Long time no blog

We went out for a drink on Wednesday night with a friend of Novio's and his gilfriend. We went to Maracay's only "pub-style" drinking establishment. Novio's friend knows the owner who was very attentive all night. The friend was telling me how last year he was driving back from his girlfriend's house at about 1am when someone through rocks onto his windscreen (three rocks about the size of a large grapefruit). As this is quite a well known trick in Venezuela to get people to stop so they can rob/kidnap you, he kept driving, with his windscreen smashed to pieces. He drove to the nearest police station but it was all shut up and in darkness. He beeped his horn frantically, because he wasn't sure if the stone-throwers were behind him but there was definitely no policemen there, so he kept driving to the next police station. When he got there he told the two policemen what had happened and exactly where. "Oh yes", they said, "that´s the stone-throwers". One looked at the other, "shall we go and have a look?" They decided that they would and the friend waited at the station for them to come back. When they arrived they said "oh no. There was no-one there." And that was that. Case closed.

Yesterday some friends came over to watch a film. While we were watching it one of their phones rang. Their cousin, who lives just a couple of blocks away from us had had his car robbed at gunpoint outside his flats. We all agreed this was very annoying and carried on watching the film.

Rancho Grande

On Sunday F and I went with his cousin and his girlfriend to Rancho Grande. Rancho Grande is a biological station within the Henri Pittier national park. It was originally built as a hotel by a dictator in the 1960s, but what with military coups, changes of dictatorship and whatnot, it was never finished and was left to go to ruin. Somewhere along the lines the Universidad Central took over the top floor and they use it as a study centre, and the national park guards use the bottom floor. The building hasn´t been refurbished however and it is like a secret ruin hidden in the hills. There were quite a few birdwatchers waiting for birds to arrive (there is some incredible quantity of birds there apparently) and a couple of park guards but it was basically deserted.


We did see some pretty cool birds and also an amazing butterfly when had beautiful orange and black wings and when he closed them he looked just like a leaf. Amazing.


Also on the wildlife front we found clumps of bats sleeping in the old cookers in the kitchen. Yuk yuk. I still haven´t got over the time a bat fell on my head in the church porch.

Driving

When I first got here I´d forgotten what a terrifying experience being on the roads here is. Drivers pay absolutely zero attention to traffic lights or who might have right of way. It´s like an endless game of "chicken" to see who will get out of whose way first. However, it´s only taken me about a week and I´ve managed to develop an immediately attainable state of zoned-outness every time I get in a car. I blithely watch the cars whizzing past about 20 centimetres from where I´m sitting and I don´t even flinch. Perfect.

The other thing I´d forgotten was the Venezuelan penchant for keeping the world and his dog up to date on what is going on in their lives by scrawling it across their windscreens. It´s like an extension of the facebook status update. The updates can be anything from celebrations: "my daughter is graduating" or "my grandson is starting school" to more everyday occurences: "we´re going to the beach". The funniest one that Guillermo told me he´d seen said, "At last! My mother-in-law is dead!"