Esteban's Venezuelan Adventure

I went to the city of Merida three weeks ago. Merida is a beautiful mountain town located at about 1,500 meters of elevation at the Northeastern limit of the Andes cordillera. It is cold at night and moderate during the day year round. The city is surrounded by green, cloud-enshrouded mountains, some of which rise so high that I had to incline my head to see the tops. On the day I arrived, my host Adam was out hiking, so I called the director of the Centro Venezolano de Merida (CEVAM), a lady named Michelle, and she invited me on a tour of the city. Michelle has been living in Merida for 30 years and knows everyone in the community, most especially artists and musicians. The photo below was taken in the house of the gentleman to the right with the guitar. His name is Mario and he has turned the ground floor of his home into a gallery for his incredible collection of toys. Michelle is sitting on the left, singing along with Mario. Mario knows the history of each of the thousands of pieces in the museum, and he gave us a fascinating tour in the early afternoon. Later on, we returned to drink bottles of red wine and eat sausage, bread, and a traditional holiday food called hallacas. One of Mario's friends was a professional guitar player, so I enjoyed an incredible musical exhibition, including an hour-long sing along of Beatles classics. Singing in a toy museum was #7 on my list of things to do in Venezuela, so I was releived when I finally got to cross that one off.
Before going to Mario's toy museum, Michelle took her friend and me to an elegant Posada on the outskirts of Merida to eat lunch and walk through a garden. We ate an opulent, and very expensive meal that featured several courses including the dish below. It was an artistic potato salad topped with two flavors of caviar. There was also a dish of razor thin strips of octopus in a shallot sauce, mango gazpacho, and pumpkin soup among other delicious aperetifs. Michelle really knows how to live the good life.
After lunch at the Posada, we went to see various craftspeople at work. These women carve saints out of blocks of wood. They move their hands rapidly, in what looks like a series of careless, rough motions, but within moments, heads, faces, and hands emerge from a block that could have served as fuel a few minutes before. Outside of one of the artisan shops, I met a guy who invented a new transmission system for motorbikes which utilizes a revolutionary metal alloy, or something like that. Beside a traditional artisan, an amateur engineer dreams up solutions to 21st century problems.










Here is a photo that I took during my hike in the Paramo, or high altitude zone, with my buddy Adam and his roommates. I tried to post this photo in as large as format as possible so that you could discern the details of the vegetation. The plants in the bottom far left of the photo are called Frailejones and as one moves up to higher and higher altitudes, these plants begin to predominate, eventually becoming the sole visible megaflora. At the center of this picture is a pristine, freezing cold mountain stream out of which some other hikers refilled their water bottles.
This photo was taken at the annual CEVAZ barbecue, which they call a 'hamburguesada.' Hamburguesa means hamburger. The barbecue was held at a farm which had a small zoo that featured exotic birds, horses, pigs, goats, and a lonely monkey kept on a leash in a small cage. There was also a pool and a million fun activities. I was playing dominos on the same team as the guy to the far left in the photo, Charles. I was horrible. I also played ping pong and soccer. I was always the worst participant in every activity and did not win a single game of any sort. Nonetheless, I drank a lot of free beer.










Here is a picture of one of the buses, or "busetas," that I board to get to work each day from my new apartment. The bus line is called Ruta 6 or Uni 6 because it also goes to the University of Zulia where I took the medical semiotics course. A few weeks ago, I got on a terribly crowded buseta. All of the seats were double-occupied except for one. In the seat sat a tiny, fat, grey-haired man with a ukelele or some sort of small 4-string guitar. When he turned towards me, I saw that his eyes lacked normal pigmentation and that he was blind. He began to pick out a tune on the 4-string and opened his mouth to sing. Out came a surprisingly delicate and rich voice. On the hot, over-crowded bus, people were smiling as they listened to the lively music.
Here is a picture of my new studio apartment. This is my huge, doorless closet that occupies an entire wall. I pay a woman in the building to do my laundry. She usually hangs it on lines in the yard, but it was raining, so my clothes were drying indoors. On the right is my powerful air conditioner. I paid the owner two months of rent up front in exchange for the purchase and installation. Before this, I had no air conditioner, then a broken air conditioner, then a marginally functional air conditioner. I pray in thanksgiving each night as, shivering, I pull the blanket up to my neck.
Here is my new television set flanked by my friend Mariela and her husband Carlos. Mariela is a teacher at CEVAZ, and she and Carlos are born-again, evangelical christians. A minister from Colorado was coming to give a speech to their congregation, and Mariela was serving as the live interpreter. Mariela speaks English very well, but needed help from a native speaker to understand some of the preacher's words. She came to my apartment with a video of the speech the minister would deliver. I helped them decode for about 3 hours. Afterwards, we ate sushi at a mall.

I am hoping to get internet within the next 2 weeks, so then the posts will start to come again with more frequency. I miss you all, and can't wait to see you around New Years.

The title of this blog entry pertains to at least a couple of the pictures. Sorry its been so long since my last post, but I moved to a new apartment and am still working on getting internet. The rule here is that things move slow, so it might still be a while. I am writing this entry on my laptop at the computer lab in CEVAZ. The picture below is of the freezer at the home of the Peruvians where I lived for my first four weeks here. To make some extra money, they sell these little frozen treats called cepillados for about 20 cents. Cepillados bring a moment of happiness during a hot day, and the Peruvians always sold out their entire stock within 24 hours. The pink ones on the upper row are colita and the brown ones on the bottom are toddy. Colita are made by mixing strawberry soda with milk and toddy are frozen chocolate milk and water. The three on the upper left were made especially for me with apple juice and soy milk. These people really treated me like family.

It's good to occasionally include a really bad picture. These two gentleman are actually quite handsome, but they look horrible here. The guy to the left in the red Manchester United jersey is Efrain. The serious-looking young man to the right is Alexander. Efrain teaches courses and helps out with administration of some of the academic programs at CEVAZ; he has become one of my closest friends here. Alexander is a member of the Peruvian family with whom I lived, and he took me on an awesome but really sweaty walking tour during one of my first days in Maracaibo. He is an undergraduate medical student and has written two unpublished books of poetry. This photo was taken at the CEVAZ Rock and Pop festival. At this event, Efrain and I shmoozed with all of the bands after their sets in order to find local artists that we could invite to the music appreciation course that we were planning. The course starts next week and will be run by myself, Efrain, and two other teachers at CEVAZ. It is only available to advanced speakers of English, so if you're interested and living in Maracaibo, Venezuela, give me a ring and we'll see about signing you up.














This was a posed group shot. The small brown cow to the right kept cracking dirty jokes so I had to pull her aside for a milking session. This photo was taken at a farm that I visited with the grandmother and granddaughter of the Peruvian family. The property owned by the proprietors of the farm is huge, several hundred acres, but they only cultivate a small portion of it for fear of attracting attention of guerilla groups that sometimes make forays into the area. I went during the day when it is quite safe, but the family no longer visits the farm at night, instead entrusting it to local guajiro indians who tend the livestock and maintain the crop of papaya. In spite of all of this, it was wonderful to get out of the city for a while. Oddly, we lunched on chinese food that had been kept on ice during the long car ride from Maracaibo. I had shrimp fried rice with some sort of fried chicken.
Here is the granddaughter of the Peruvian family crouching beside a little boy who is the child of the owners of the farm. She is three and he, four, but he considered himself highly knowledgeable about animal maintenance and delivered several discourses on how to care for horses, sheep, pigs, and chickens. They were watching lambs being driven back into their pen.
When I first landed here in Venezuela, I was really surprised by the number of cars littering the sides of the road leading from the airport to the city of Caracas. How could 50+ cars break down along this relatively short stretch of road? I have since learned that many people here are driving cars from the 1970's that work sporadically at best. New cars cost just as much as they do in the US, and everyone wants one because gas is so cheap and public transportation so bad. Thus, used cars are extremely sought after, and people drive clunkers that would have been sent to the junk heap in the US 40,000 miles ago. This guy was driving me to work in a taxi that stalled out, and I had to walk the rest of the way.














This is a picture of the property of the Sociedad Israelita de Maracaibo. The guy on the far left is entering the Sephardic chapel where they hold services every day. There is also an Ashkenazi chapel on the upper floor of an adjoining building, but this is not used because almost all of the Jews in this city emigrated to Caracas or Miami. There are now only about 60 Jewish households in Maracaibo, less than half of which regularly attend synagogue. After I took this photo, I was told to stop because they weren't sure who I was, but now that I have attended high holiday and shabbat services a few times, the community is starting to warm up.

This photo was taken on a trail at about 9,000 feet of elevation outside of the city of Merida at a park called La Culata, literally "The Butt." Merida is situated in the far northeast of the great Andes cordillera. Despite its location close to the equator, Merida can get quite cold. The farmer in this shot was harvesting potatos from the rocky soil. It was about 2:30 PM, but the light was dim because of the thick layer of cloud that envelops the mountain. The beauty of this land was otherwordly; the strangeness of the specialized plants living above the treeline lent the experience the feeling of taking a voyage to an alien planet. I went to Merida for a 5-day long vacation but unfortunately had my second bout with food poisoning, so spent 2.5 of the days immobilized. However, I plan to return to go hiking and enjoy the cool mountain air.

That's all for now. Next time, more pictures of Merida and life in the new Esteban Miller bachelor pad. Thanks for taking some time to keep up with my experiences here.