Leaving

My Venezuelan odyssey is coming to an end. These almost 8 months have passed so quickly living me with an impression of not believing. With all the places I have seen, all people I met and friends I made it was a truly wonderful time. Thank to the Rotary Scholarship I had a great opportunity not only to study Spanish, but also to discover and immerse in Venezuelan culture. As a Rotary scholar I had a chance to participate in many events of the local Rotary clubs. My friends and I were frequent guests of the meetings of Rotary Santiago de los Caballeros club and Rotary Merida club.

From all activities I have done one had a truly special meaning. July the 19th we celebrated the Child Day alongside with Rotaract club. I went to visit a group of 22 kids with the ages ranging between 4 and 16. We brought them gifts. All of them were victims of mistreat and broken families, now living in a place run by nuns with no or very low material help from the outside. To see them smiling that day was one of the most important views of my Venezuelan experience.

I have always wanted to learn Spanish and travel to South America. Thank to Rotary International this dream of mine became true. I would like to thank North Banks Rotary Club of North Carolina for being my sponsoring club and all the trust and hospitality I received. I would like to thank Jeff Fischer, person who introduced me to Rotary, its projects and the Ambassadorial Scholarship being my true guide all the time. And last, I would like to thank my classmates Whitney Eulich and David Glasgow for helping me editing this blog. Also all the people from Iowa Institute for making this time so great.

I love Venezuela

These are some of the reasons why I love Venezuela

Salsa - first and undisputed place on the list. However Venezuela is not a place where salsa was born, this music greatly influences local popular culture. Salsa is a mixture of African and Spanish musical elements adopted by regional musical histories of Cuba, Puerto Rico and other Central American countries. This music expresses spirit of the Latino people like no other part of the culture. One of the most famous Venezuelan salsa performer is Oscar D'Leon and his group Dimension Latina. Track #2 on the playlist (lloraras - you will cry). All attempts to teach me salsa didn't succeed since robots like me obviously can't dance.

Cheap gasoline - Venezuela as a fifth biggest member of OPEC grants its citizens the cheapest fuel in the world. Heavily subsidized prices have been kept fixed at around 0.1 BF* for a liter since 1998, which converting is about 6 cents for a gallon. Within those years with high inflation rate (30,4% only in 2008 according to IMF**), prices of all goods have risen dramatically, living behind the price of fuel, which remains the same. Even current government of Chavez admits that the state cannot afford that, but because cheap gas is considered here more like a right than a privilege several attempts to rise prices caused political instability and riots.

Freshly squeezed orange juice and overall fresh fruit accessibility. Venezuela is a paradise for tropical fruit fetishists (me). Wide range of them including several types of bananas (here called cambures), mangoes, papayas (lechosas) or pineapples can be purchased literally at every corner of the street for very reasonable price. For even greater sensual experience I make trips to a local fruit market - Soto Rosa, where abundant of fruit just overwhelms.

* Bolivar Fuerte, official rate $1 - around 2.14BF, unofficial rate $1 - around 6.5BF which I used for my calculations ** International Monetary Fund

The Liberator

June 24th is a national holiday in Venezuela. This day in 1821 independence army led by Simon Bolivar defeated Spanish Royalist forces in a battle at Carabobo, opening gate of independence for future nations of Venezuelans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians and Bolivians.

Even today Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar y Palacios Ponte Blanco, also known as "The Liberator" is almost considered saint, and his statue is present at the main square of every single town of Venezuela, always called "Plaza Bolivar". Symbolism of the independence war is at present widely used by Chavez and his propaganda in form of fighting against so called "western imperialism". Bolivar has became an icon of the Chavista revolution. So besides the thousands of town squares named Bolivar, authorities of Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela use name Bolivar for averything possible from geographical names such as State of Bolivar, City of Bolivar, or Peak of Bolivar, through many official projects like venezuelan satellite - Simon Boliva, to finish with Venezuelan currency which is of course Bolivar (BF).

Despite or maybe due to the overwhelming amount of Simon Bolivar in everyday life, ordinary Venezuelans don't seem to be too concerned with the country and its hero's past. The official celebration of the holiday in merida, which last part I accidently witnessed didn't gather many spectators, and almost went unnoticed. This can lead to a question of the level of affiliation of a Venezuelans with their own state and heritage.

Bottom 5

When the honeymoon is over you realize that there ARE actually things that really bother you.
I decided to make a short list of most annoying situations I have had to deal with on a everyday basis.

1. Garbage and littering. The amount of thrash left by people on the street is incredible. It's amazing how society here is used to that behavior. Littering has grown so deep into the culture that has lost its pejorative aspect. People litter with no shame!

2. Frequent lack of power or water. For some unknown reason, every once in the while every part of the city is out of power for an hour or two. I was trying to find out why, but none of my Venezuelan friends came up with reasonable answer. Around a week ago the whole city was out of water for about 3 days. Again nobody knew nothing about what happened and how long it would last. Officials didn't release any statement or communicate, schools were suspended...and I was totally surprised seeing nearby car wash working full time (so called - Venezuelan paradox).

3. Protests. Almost every week there are protests that paralyze major parts of the city. Protests usually organized by students, or even high school kids, include tire burning and some kind of manifestation. Protests are so frequent that nobody really cares anymore who and why is protesting. Last week I witnessed a protest organized by local professional soccer team for not getting paid!

4. Jail-like housing. Merida is known to be one of the safest places in Venezuela with relatively low crime rate. Despite that, every house look like a fortress, with tall walls around finished with high voltage electricity lines or sometimes razor-sharp edged glass. It is also very unusual to see windows with no solid bars on them making the view complete. It took me some time to learn my 6 keys I need in order to get in the front door.

5. Customer service or I would rather say the lack of customer service. As a customer in Venezuela you need to have lots of patience. Sometimes buying simple soda or coffee in the local grocery store can be a real challenge here. Overall relationship between businesses or public administration and client is from those "let's make our life more difficult"... I am still trying to find the reason why they need my passport at the local Laundromat every time I wash my pants.

Los Llanos

After the totally spontaneous trip to the beach, my friends and I decided to explore the more southern part of the country - Los Llanos. It is in the heart of the country and significant to Venezuela's culture with music called joropo (track #4 on the play list) as the main contribution. We signed up with one of the local travel agencies for a four night-three day package, that included an ultra professional guide that caches anacondas like worms.

Los Llanos is a region of tropical grassland that covers vast part of central Venezuela stretching from the Colombian border from the West up to the Orinoco's delta in the East. Due to the extreme climate, Los Llanos has hot and arid summers and rainy winters that floods a huge part of the terrain, this huge grassland is sparsely inhabited and the main source of incom is a cattle farming.
This has helped preserve the natural environment and allowed ecoturism to become an important part of the local economy.

My trip to Los Llanos took place in the middle of the dry season, which made all the water animals gather in close to the remaining sources of water. Every single pond was packed with caimans (relative of crocodile) and our safaris did not require extensive efforts. The trip followed the standard pattern of the "Los Llanos tour": boat trip on the local river, piranha fishing (rivers are full of them) horseback riding and of course chasing anaconda so everyone can have a picture.

Before going I heard stories from my Venezuelan friends about the -"tour guide type guy"- that were not really admiring and with my luck our guide fulfilled those characteristics by one hundred percent. Basically all the bad attributes of the machismo, condensed and accompanied with the lack of respect constituted his manners.
Three nights of sleeping on the hammock, an hour of horseback riding with no formal training and infernal temperatures made me want to come back to Merida. Besides, those three days were enough to see and understand "Venezuelan tour guide" in action; just one more could have ruined my reputation of goodwill ambassador.

Choroni

Finally came that day when after all those weeks of hard studying I was able to go to the bus terminal and buy a ticket to do some bigger traveling. Obviously (as the northern type notoriously harassed by the winter) I got tempted by the fact of proximity of Venezuelan beaches and therefore my first big trip was to the playas of the Caribbean.

I didn't have much of the problems with the company, since the word "beach" is a key word here in South America too. We decided to go to place called Choroni-small, totally relaxed place beautifully located on the shore of the Caribbean Sea in the scenery of Henry Pittier National Park. Good (cheap) way to travel here in Venezuela is a bus; and indeed buses here especially on the long distance routes are very comfortable with the exception of it's well known air conditioning overuse. This is one of those things here that everyone knows that is not right, but nobody does anything to change it. So every single person in Venezuela will warn you that it's freezing in the bus and you need a sleeping bag or at least a blanket. It is even common to see people wearing hats and glows.

It was eight hour drive from Merida to Maracay - capital city of Aragua state in the north-central part of the country with quite unpleasant face of heat and uninteresting architecture. From there we took a buseta (small bus working on shorter distances), which took us to Choroni.
The Maracay-Choroni ride was one of the most spectacular I have ever experienced. The road sneaks through the mountains covered with tropical forest of the National Park. Stunning views accompanied by race car like buseta driving at an elevation of the 7000 feet provided both breath taking views and the irresistible feeling of being the next day headline news in the local paper.
Buseta's drivers here in Venezuela are in a category all by themselves. Because public transportation is provided by private and independent bus drivers, buses function more or less like a taxis. They have no real schedule or firm stops. They are just assigned to a certain route and the rest is open. Moreover, in la buseta you can expect to encounter playboy looking driver, loud music (usually reggaeton) and overall atmosphere of the night club with black lights sometimes accompanied with stroboscope. Some would say that these guys pimp out their ride to the maximum. If there is a competition of racing an overloaded buses Venezuelans would be the champions.

Right after arrival and settle up in the posada we went to the beach. To my big surprise the waters of the Caribbean Sea happened to be cold. With my iron rule "I don't go swimming unless the water temperature reaches 76F" I couldn't enjoy the Choroni beaches in one hundred percent. Fortunately I was making up this inconvenience every night with my friends and a bottle of guarapita - famous local mix of rum, passion fruit, coconut and sugar.
Despite the fact that Choroni is a very popular beach destination, the town didn't lose anything from its fantastic, relaxed atmosphere. isolated from everything with mountains from one side and sea from the other, this place lives its own life and only national flag on the main beach reminds that we are still in Venezuela.

Do you know?
About 50 km. (30miles) away from Merida on the altitude of 3.600 meters (12.000 feet) above the sea level we can find one of the most important astronomical observatory in South America. Due to its location-close to the equator- this facility benefits from access to both northern and southern skies. Llano del Hato national Astronomical Observatory is one of the few that is open for public and is known for its cooperation with the local community working in partnership with Universidad de los Andes in Merida.

Moving around

The weather has been disappointing me lately, reminding me of my last time in London, with one small exception - it rains more here. Despite the weather I try to keep myself busy by visiting all interesting places near Merida.

I started with the Hot Springs of La Musuy. Two hours bus drive and another two hours of climbing the Andes and there we are - about 3000 meters above the sea level, where you can touch the clouds. I have never been a huge fan of mountain hiking and other highly exhausting endeavors, but a long and relaxing bath in the aguas termales made me forget all the soreness of getting there. The temperature of the water is high enough to feel very comfortable and some visitors, who choose overnight stay, sometimes decide to spend the night in the water. It is not quite a bad idea since the temperature of the water stays at 35 degrees Celsius and the air temperature drops to maybe 5 degrees Celcius during the night. My friends and I also decided to spend the night up in the mountains (no, not in the water). The sunset I experienced there was truly one of those you live for.

Another place I had a chance to visit was the Cistercian monastery famous for its cafe plantation. For me, a natural born cafe lover, this was like a trip to El Dorado. Again, it was not easy to get there. It was located beyond the regular communication routes up in the mountains, and the only way to avoid 5 hours of walking was to catch a ride with some locals - something very common here in Venezuela. The problem was that there were not a lot of cars passing, but we couldn't complain when the first available transportation appeared. I found my spot in the back of the track hanging tight to a rope, knowing that if I fell during the ride it will be probably 1000 meters down.

Merida means Andes, but only an hour away we can find a completely different world. El Vigia differs from Merida in every aspect: climate - you want to say this is Venezuela, hot, humid with rain forest looking flora around; architecture - houses, whose main function appears to be protecting inhabitants from the rain; and people - more traditional, more Venezuelan I would say. Merida is quite a modern, urbanized place. El Vigia is not. I remember feeling embarased when the family I stayed with in El Vigia told me there was actually no hot water system in the house. Who would need it in the hot weather of El Vigia...? Despite the cold shower inconvinience my El Vigia visit was the warmest. I think there is the truth to the belief that those who have the least, tend to give the most.

Mi escuela

As you may have noticed, I sometimes use Spanish words in my text. After studying and using mostly Spanish in my day-to-day life, Spanish words have started coming to mind naturally and its getting more and more difficult to say or type anything in English or Polish without Spanish slipping out. The Spanish language aggressively takes over! I fear that with time the Spanish words will begin to appear more frequently, and sometime in June i will be writing only en Espanol.
Since learning Spanish is my primary activity here I would like to say few words about my Spanish school. First of all, i would not call this place a school. Everything from the teachers, who are my friends and, in most cases are younger than me, to the overall atmosphere which is very LAID BACK, and not to mention the motto of our immersion program, which emphasizes the sociable, cultural aspect of our studies. More or less our classes resemble loose conversations that could easily take place at the bar or other "social" place. According to our profesora de profesores - Cathy, it works. Not trying to be like a patient who thinks he is smarter than a surgeon, I try to believe her. Moreover, this sounds like learning Spanish with no extraordinary hard work and I like it. I have classes for a total of 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday. I my class I have only one classmate - David, who is also a Rotary student. For a while there were four of us including Whitney - another Rotary student, and Howard - an economics professo, who came to Venezuela looking for confirmation of his socialist beliefs. For some unclear reasons we got separated and Whitney now has classes one on one, and Howard joined a different group of students from the US with ideas a bit more in the line with his political interests. Despite being separated Whitney, David and I spend most of the time together and I am sure in a while will be considered a conspiracy.
Regardless, for the first time in my life I am enjoying going to school. If this makes me an eaven semi-fluent Spanish speaker by the end of July I will call this palce "la escuela perfecta"

El pueblo dijo Si

February the 15th, 2009 was a very important day for the future of Venezuela. That day there was a vote on a on a constitutional referendum to remove the two-term limit from the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999. This would allow politicians to stay in the office for as long as they continue to win elections. That day people decide whether to let current president Hugo Chavez run for the office indefinitely. This is Chavez's second attempt to try to remain in power following the referendum that was held in Venezuela on December 2, 2007 that also included several other proposals that would have given Chavez dictatorship power. Mainly due to waste student protests, spontaneous mobilization and campaign of the opposition referendum of the 2007 was the first Chavez election loss. According to the existing regulations (before referendum) Chavez will leave office in 2012 as his second term of holding the office comes to an end.
The need for constitutional changes brought together Chavez supporters around red Si campaign - well financed, better organized, and warmly welcomed by the authorities. Critics of the proposal changes ran the No campaign; which in most cases consisted of student meetings and demonstrations. As the eye-witness of the pre referendum turmoil always had the impression that police and security forces, however passive and rather quiet, were here to protect and help Chavistas.
The vote was something more than just another referendum. In the country where real opposition to the government barely exists, is disorganized and has few capabilities of reaching the society (most of the mass media are controlled by the government), giving the rulers even a slight chance to strengthen their power is highly dangerous. Many people feel completely dissatisfied with the style and direction outlined by the Chavez-run government; most of those people are former Chavez supporters...but, as the polls showed, there weren't enough who felt the same way.


A little update on my housing situation. I changed my host family. I live far away from the school now, my bed is even smaller, but with people that I really like...and they don't charge me $10 every time I do my laundry.

Do you know?
There are 4 TV channels with national reach in Venezuela after taking RCTV off the air for being critical of the government and encouraging attempts to overthrow Chavez. Two of them - Televen and Venevision - are very sympathetic to Hugo Chavez, and the other two - TVes (state run station that replaced RCTV over the air) and Venezolana de Television - are simply government propaganda. However the RCTV - Venezoela's oldest private broadcaster is still available through cable networks alongside with another opposition station Globovision, luck of possibility of public broadcast (government permission) causes significant shortage of their audience.

Mi familia

The essence of cultural experience abroad is to live the life of the locals. Some travel staying in highly rated resorts worldwide. Top ten of "Travel Chanel" is their guide; with cable TV, great views from the balcony and 3 steps from the beach all being mandatory. I might be wrong, but most of their cultural experience comes from the street view they had taking a taxi from the airport. Some look for relatively cheap, economical stays picking youth hostels. These, usually full of young, hardcore travelers from all over the globe i.e., Western Europe, give you the opportunity to make very intensive 3-day-long friendships since this is only one stop on their one year journey that includes 100 other places on the whole continent.

Others are lucky (me) and have a chance to fully derive the advantages of the local culture and experience the true, local daily life by staying with the host family. My family here in Merida, includes Sra Marisol (who is actually my third consecutive mom following my biological and American), my dad, Sr Enrique, and a little sister, Victoria. Honestly, especially the first few days, I felt completely helpless here with my Spanish language skills close to zero. I relied on my parents like a child. Senor Enrique took me to school the first day of classes to show me the way and I felt like I was a child again. Indeed ignorance the language, and not being able to express yourself takes you back to those days. Because of this reason it is crucial to find the family that would actually be YOUR FAMILLY. From the very beginning I realized that my family is an example of total professionalism in dealing with host students. To be more precise, thay act a little bit bored with the situation, whats more and worse, I am being treated like a naive source of income. Hey! my mom would give me a way better rate for doing the loundry home than at the laundromat. They have hosted students for more than 12 years, it becomes their proffesion, and it seams like there is no room for the sentiments any more. So sad...

Familly meals are important part of the day, and the second meal-lunch consumed around one o'clock is the biggest and most important. Breakfast and dinner are only supplements and are not that unique; most likely being something between a bowl of cereal and coffee with empanadas (stuffed pastry, here in Venezuela usually fried with cheese or ground beef). Lunch is usually the time when all the familly members gather together. So far my Venezuelan lunches include rice, some rice or lots of rice. Alongside the rice go platanos (plantains) - fried, baked or boiled and optional Arepas. An arepa is bread made of corn, emblematic for venezuela and usually homemade. Arepas are as tipical Venezuelan food as hamburgers are in The USA. However hamburgers are quite popular here in Venezuela too (I have seen a few McDonalds) a hamburger bought on the street, is not necessarily made of beef. Any kind of sandwich that looks like a hamburger is simply called a hamburger. Of course a Big Mac is a Big Mac...even in Paris where they call it "Le Big Mac".

Do you know?
Since January 1, 2008 Venezuela has used two currencies. The "bolivar fuerte" is the new currency of Venezuela and coegsists with the old "bolivar", which oryginaly was supposed to be repalced by the bolivar fuerte at the rate 1=1000 due to inflation. According to currency exchange rules here in Venezuela US dollar can be only exchanged at fixed rate of 2.15 bolivares fuerte to a dollar. Since this rate is far, far away from the economical reality black market is growing offering much more adequate rates.

Arrival and first impressions

I finally found some time to put my thoughts together and write few words about my trip. I left Norfolk, VA and real wintertime on Friday January the 16th at 7:55 (the coldest night of the year) to find myself in Miami couple of hours later. I had been to Miami before so that was a chance for me to visit some familiar places of the city. My next flight was to Caracas on the morning of January the 17th.

As I was told by other scholar who had traveled with Venezuelan Santa Barbara Airlines, flights are frequently late and delayed. So, of course was mine. A delay of one hour and 25 minutes made it almost impossible to catch my next flight, which was Caracas - El Vigia (town nearby Merida). That really did not bother me at all because I was so excited about the trip itself and idea that I would be in South America in a few hours. "I will start worrying about what I need to do when I get to Caracas." I said to myself.

Indeed, by the time I went through immigration and customs, and by the time I managed to get from the international to national part of the airport, my plane was gone. This situation put my language skills to test for the first time, when I tried to explain what happened to check-in attendant. To be honest I did not pass the test, but with some help from other Venezuelans , which I met by the check-in desk, I found out I had to wait. Surprisingly, people from the airline, with no hesitation, declared that, since the flight was delayed and it was not our fault, they would be happy to arrange hotel and transportation to and from the hotel for us. Moreover, they would cover all expenses! Que bueno, they literally put me in the taxi, which took me to the hotel and picked me up the next day. I was told not to leave the hotel at night under any circumstances and after hearing the gunshots at about 4am, I reckoned it was quite a tip. The rest of the trip went with no surprises. People from the Iowa Institute were waiting for me at El Vigia; from there we went to Merida by car. A 50miles/1hour drive took us from hot and humid El Vigia straight up to this beautiful place in the Venezuelan Andes.

Since before I came here, I had checked all available resources about Merida, including 10,000 pictures posted on flickr.com I feel like I visit place I already have been to. The location (1600 meters/5250 ft. above the sea level) in the valley surrounded by magnificent picks of Sierra Nevada de Merida and Sierra La Culata creates breathtaking views, and also makes you feel tired after 15 minutes of walking. That scared me at first, but accordingly to other long time visitors to the city, the feeling of being tired should go away in a week or two.
If I was to state the one thing that struck me most in my first few days here, it would be the weather. Yeah, okey, i am lucky to be here during the dry season, but I am pretty sure I will never find more refreshing mornings anywhere on this planet. Astonishingly, it makes me, a person who loves to sleep more than anything, get up at 7am with no alarm clock.
First steps in Merida were my host family and then and there I emphatically realized how bad my Spanish really is...

Do you know?
Venezuela has its own unique time zone. It is 30 minutes fifference beetwen US Eastern Time, moving clock back. The time change is a part of changes implemented by Hugo Chavez that include a new name of the country, coat of arms and flag.