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!"

Coffee!

Last night Novio and I started to produce our own coffee. Well, perhaps that is a bit of a misleading statement. We have not started any kind of large scale production, nor have we sown any coffee seeds, but his dad has a couple of coffee plants in the garden and has a couple of pots of beans that he´d already harvested.I love coffee and drink it endlessly. I also have a fascination with all things coffee related from cafés to coffee cups and the beans themselves and the sacks that they store them in and the haciendas where they grow them. Last year I visited a café hacienda with my sister in Colombia and it was fascinating.

The coffee process from this stage is that we have to crush the beans to get the top layer of shell off, then the second layer. Then we have to separate the clean beans from the outer shell. Then we will toast them and then we will grind them and then we will make delicious coffee.

Filled with enthusiasm we began our crushing...

...which consisted of putting the beans in a pot and using a large and heavy gardening implement. Fairly quickly are initial enthusiasm gave way to sore hands and aching arms. We only managed to crush about a third of the coffee we had. We will undertake phase 2 (the rest of the crushing) tonight.... At the current phase we have acheived what looks like a bucket of pebbles.


Novio´s dad (El Suegro) says that there is nothing better than drinking a cup of coffee that you have grown and harvested and crushed and roasted and ground yourself. I may not have done the sowing or harvesting but with my achy arms and sore hands I think that this is definitely going to be the hardest I`ve ever worked for a cup of coffee. I can´t wait for the first cup!

Nutricious-delicious

Last night I went to the supermarket with Novio and his cousin to buy the ingredients for a Shepherds Pie. I said that today in the morning I would stay at home and cook them a delicious-nutritious Shepherds Pie for when they came home at lunchtime. Alas, the supermarket did not have any butter, margarine or milk so I fear my delicious topping of creamy mash might not be as creamy and smooth as I had hoped for. Novio´s cousin helpfully pointed out that if we went to a Mercal, then we would be able to get the required ingredients at cheap (government subsidised) prices. He may be right, but having struggled through from 6am to 8pm just wanting to go back to bed, the thought of joining the Mercal mega-queue to get my litre of milk and 250g of butter was not an appealing one.

This morning I decided to go into the office rather than stay at home. Novio and I dropped his sister off at the office and then went to buy us some breakfast. We had empanadas which is a very typical breakfast here. It is a flour, water and sugar dough, filled with cheese, meat, fish or beans and then deep fried. Delicious-not-nutricious!! When I was here a year ago, if I ever ate empanadas I used to pay 3-5 bolivars for them. Today we saw some in the supermarket for 10 bolivars, and the ones we eventually bought from an empanaderia were 7. Still, after a year without eating empanada, I was most willing to spend (Novio´s) 7 bolivars to get my mitts on that greasy goodness! Enak enak. (I also rang Freddy and told him the shocking news about the price of empanadas but he assured me that in Caracas in the place under his flat you can still buy a big empanada for 5 bolos. Phew.)

We went to a different supermarket this morning and managed to get some milk, although alas no butter still. The girl in front of us at the til was sporting some very tight lycra clothing and had rather large breasts (not real ones). She also had her mobile phone stuffed into her bra and peeking out of the top. The cleavage is quite a popular place to keep mobile phones here. I´m not sure why it is preferable to a pocket or a bag…maybe it makes pick-“pocketing” harder. Anyway, as the girl finished paying and walked out of the supermarket the boys who pack the bags were all sitting by the window. Novio said to watch them and as she walked past every head swivelled around to follow her out of the shop. I initially was filled with feminist outrage at the objectification of women but actually had to concede that it was an amusing sight. It did reminded me of a conversation I had with an English friend here last year. He´d taken an English conversation class with some girls at the Central University (one of the best in the country) and they´d been discussing plastic surgery. Henry described them as really intelligent, “sassy” women and he said that what they told him was that a lot of men here tend to stray from their relationships and that even though women know that they are doing it, that a lot of them (although by no means all) tend to accept it so that they end up in these kind of semi-bigomous relationships. I don´t know why this is….perhaps just because of the practical difficulties of life as a singleton. I know one friend of Novio´s is in the process of divorcing her husband who was cheating on her. Her mother tells her that she is wrong to do it though – she married him and she should therefore stay with him as she made those vows for life. I´m not sure how they explain why the vows don´t apply to him too though… The next conclusión that Henry and his sassy ladies reached was that women tend to slice themselves up and undergo major surgical procedures in an attempt to meet the “ideal” image of a women and thereby discourage their partner from straying. I know that men everywhere cheat, and I know that women everywhere strive for particular images that are promoted to us as ideal, but here it is done so openly – the cheating and the extreme actions to be the most “attractive”. I´m sure it is only a matter of time before someone helpfully suggests a boob job to me as it used to happen quite often. At least then I would have somewhere new to keep my phone.

Heat and monkeys

It´s wierd but there are lots of things that I had forgotten about here. Or rather, I knew that they were like this in a kind of abstract way, but I´d forgotten what it was actually like. For example, the heat. I mean, obviously it is hot here. But it had been "hot" in England before I left (for 2 consecutive days!!!), but that is nothing like the heat here. The heat here is like a pressure you can feel in your whole body. But I like it....

I think that I´ve managed to get my body clock in time with Venezuelan time now, after waking up wide awake at 6am yesterday, and then wanting to go back to bed just as we had to leave for the office at 9am.

I´d also forgotten the people who sell food and drink outside their houses or in the street. Well, I´d remembered that there were people doing that, but I´d forgotten actually seeing someone with one small ice box and a scrap of old card with "Cold fizzy drinks" scrawled on it. I always remember asking Novio about the people who sell toy monkeys at the traffic lights when they go red. I mean, if they are selling a toy monkey for say, 25 bolivars (and to be honest I am not sure of the market value of a toy monkey in Venezuela these days), they would need to sell 31 each month to reach the minimum wage. But, I ask myself, how many Venezuelans as they pull up at a red traffic light (if they bother to stop for the red light that is), see the man and his monkeys and think to themselves "ah yes, that´s what I meant to do today - buy myself a toy monkey"? (Having said that, I did buy one for F as a present!) If at least 3 people a day are inspired to buy one then that chap might be able to make minimum wage. But I earned well over the official minimum wage last year and I still struggled to make ends meet, and that was just for me, let alone a family as well. I wonder how the monkey man or the lady with the cool box big enough for maybe 4 cans of coke at a time, makes ends meet. I have no idea.

Venezuela de Verdad

8219_653234363175_223408001_10755405_3166425_n, originalmente cargada por venezuelandiaries.

The title of this blog is taken from the billboard in the photo. I took this last year just before I left Venezuela after 10 months living and working in Caracas, and it reads "The real Venezuela".

There are just three weeks to go until I am back in Venezuela. It will have been just under one year since I was last there.

Since I left Venezuela I've obviously talked to lots of people about what it was like to live there.

I find people's ideas on Venezuela vary. Some imagine it as a Caribbean paradise of white beaches and endlessly flowing rum. Others are more interested in Chavez's socialist revolution, and are impressed by his willingness to give a metaphorical two fingers to western governments and his rhetoric on socialism and the vast support that he has from the Venezuelan people.

And from what I saw while I was there, both of these images are correct to an extent. Venezuelans, especially in the north where I was living, do spend a lot of time on beaches which are some of the most stunning I've ever seen, drinking endlessly flowing rum (undoubtedly part of the reason I want to go back!). And there is a lot of support for Chavez's revolution. But is that the whole story?

I also saw a country where people in the cities live in constant fear of being robbed or kidnapped. I heard endless stories of robbings, kidnappings and murder with complete impunity for those who carry them out. I saw pharmacies without basic medicines and hospitals with stray dogs running through them. I spoke to people who told me they have been blacklisted by the government so that they won't ever be able to work in a public office because they had signed a petition against the government. I saw the price of tomatoes at my local market increase 350% in ten months and supermarkets without milk, coffee or toilet roll.

And just before I left, one of my students, who was also a friend, said to me "Please tell people what it is like here. Please make sure they understand." I felt the burden of his request, and apart from talking to those people that I came into contact with I've done little else. So this time, I am going to write about what I see, and try and find out what is the true Venezuela, as lived by Venezuelans today.


What is Venezuela de verdad?

Nb. Obviously I will be writing about Venezuela de verdad, as experienced by a white, middle-class English girl, and do not speak for any other Venezuelan!!!