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.