Esteban's Venezuelan Adventure

What I've been up to

2007-02-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Today, April 3rd, when I arrived at my apartment building, the landlord told me that we finally have internet! So here I am, writing anew. Pardon the absence, and I do hope you enjoy the pics. Today, May 9th, it turns out that my landlord hasn't been able to get the damn machine to work still, so I'm finishing up this tardy entry at CEVAZ, where I work.

The Yupa Boys (December)

I took a trip in December to the Sierra Perija mountains to the South of Maracaibo with a group of entomologists from the University of Zulia. Finally, I got to go to the woods with people who are even more into bugs than I am. At night, I went into the lush woods to catch scorpions and gigantic, poisonous spiders. During the day, we spent time in a village of a tribe of people called Yupa indians. These people learn Spanish as a second language, so only some adult and teenage men could communicate with us. These kids mostly just looked at us and played with the soccer ball we brought them in the field that can be seen in the background. The field had about 4 types of feces on it: horse, dog, pig, and chicken.

The entomologists (December)

These young scientists are discouraged from drinking on excursions by their faculty mentors, so instead they did all sorts of fun activities at night. On this evening, we sat in a circle had a tertulia where each person was allowed to ask someone else one question and they had to answer it. Most of the talk was about love, sex, and heartbreak. The one question rule was invariably violated and I ended up relating a fairly detailed personal history to a bunch of Maracuchos that I barely knew. This trip was just three months into my time here in Venezuela, so my Spanish was challenged and hugely expanded in these four days of uninterrupted immersion.

View of Los Nevados and environs (December)
My fellow Fulbright friend, Elvin, and I took a 6-hour hike from the beautiful mountain town of Merida to the tiny pueblo of Los Nevados, elevation 8000 feet. First, we took a cablecar ride from Merida, elevation 5200 feet up to the top of a mountain called Pico El Aguila, 16000 feet. We then hiked down through stunning, rough landscapes for an entire afternoon, discussing geography and biology, and stopping frequently to fill our air-deprived lungs with air and to pass gas, as I suffer from high altitude flatulence. We finally rounded a corner to see this tiny town nestled amidst giant mountains.
A night scene (December)

In the town of Los Nevados, Elvin and I found a nice inn where you get a room, dinner, and breakfast for $6.50/night. We walked out to the square and met some college kids from Merida, with whom we played dominos and drank a nasty, warm, licorice-flavored liquor called Aguardiente. We were sitting inside a small bar, playing, when we heard music outside. There was a parade! Actually, it was just these three guys playing instruments and some other dudes shooting off bottle rockets, but it was a nice spectacle.

Curacao, Part 2 (January)
My friend Rosie and his family came down to the island of Curacao to visit me. Curacao is about 30 miles off of the Venezuelan coast, so it was a quick 45 minute plane ride from Maracaibo. Unfortunately, I left my camera on a cab during the trip, so lost all of the pics of our time together on the island. I went to the USA directly from Curacao, bought a camera, and then spent one more night in Curacao on my return leg of the trip. In my one day, I walked around the island for several hours. I snapped this shot in an abandoned lot. Tropical climates sure are good for flowers.

AISEC Promotional Photo (February)
Can you pick out the foreigners in this picture? These are my friends from the international exchange program AISEC. They needed to take some promotional photos for AISEC Venezuela, so they asked me to come. If you'll notice, I'm wearing a yarmulke. We took this pic at the Paseo del Lago, a big circular park located just beside Lake Maracaibo. At the Paseo, there are go-carts, a water park, ball fields, and sandwich joints. The police patrol here day and night, so it's a good place to go for an evening or early morning run. In the background of this shot, you can see a broken down, artificial waterfall.

Melting Monsters (March)
My friend Adam came to visit me a couple of months back during his spring break from grad school. He's the only person to actually make it to mainland Venezuela for a visit. As soon as he arrived, we took a series of buses to the city of Tucacas, by Morrocoy national park, home of Los Cayos (The Keys). Los Cayos are a series of tiny desert islands covered in mangroves and surrounded by torquoise water. We took a boat tour and saw a colony of frigatebirds - giant, agressive raptors that are famous for stealing food from eachother in midair. We stayed overnight on the biggest island called Cayo Sombrero. There, we met Miguela, who was staying there for a girls weekend with her mom and aunts. They fed us sausage, salad, yuca, rum, and wine. We ended up staying up until 3 AM, looking at the stars in the completely clear sky. At one point, Miguela, who spoke stunningly good English though she had never taken a course of any sort, told us to act like melting monsters for a picture. This is what emerged.
The Enormous Bladder Stone of Major General Rafaul Urdaneta (March)
In my continuing series on inflamed body parts, here we see the actual bladder stone taken from the corpse of General Rafael Urdaneta, liberator of Zulia, Venezuela. He was famous for decapitating his enemies in battle. General Urdaneta was an excellent soldier and statesman who fought beside Simon Bolivar, The Liberator, in the wars for the independence of Gran Colombia from Spain in the 1800's. Like many old soldiers whose bodies were worn down by the brutality of battle and long marches, Urdaneta suffered from many health problems. This stone, made largely of crystallized uric acid and calcium salts, weighs more than a 1/4 of a pound and is about the size of a coke can. It finally killed the old general when he was 73 years old. Interestingly, Urdaneta lived long enough to be captured in a dageurrotype image on his deathbed.

La Feria de la Chinita

2006-12-07T13:44:00.000-08:00

In this entry, I've posted some pictures from the two week long party called the Feria de la Chinita. I write this blog entry in the kitchen of my buddy Efrain's apartment. He lives here with his wife, daughter, and in-laws. I still do not have internet in my apartment after about 6 weeks of promises from the landlord, but hopefully its coming soon. The photo below was taken on the opening night of the Feria. We were posing on Bella Vista avenue, close to CEVAZ, the binational center where I work. The two girls on the far right and left are Venezuelans who work in the culture department at CEVAZ. The tall girl to my right in the picture is Neka from Nigeria and to my left is Catherine from Chicago. There were probably more than a million people on the streets that night to see the spectacle of the lights, the music on about 15 stages, and to drink beer and eat street food.

Here is another photo from the opening night of the Feria. This one was taken in front of an important municipal building - the seat of the mayor. It was beautifully decorated for the holiday season, and we would have entered but the line was too long. I am holding the typical beer of Maracaibo, Regional light. In Venezuela there are only really two marks of beer - Polar and Regional. All of the smaller breweries have been obliterated or absorbed into the big conglomerates because of the repeated market depressions in this part of the world.
This is a photo taken outside of the famous Pa'que Luis near the Iglesia Santa Lucia in downtown Maracaibo. This was the night of the 'amanecer' in which everybody stays awake partying until sunrise the next morning. This is typical Maracaibo - people of mixed ages hanging around on the street drinking beers late into the night. There were several kids hanging around with their parents and grandparents and together we played Bull and Matador.

Here is the inside of Pa'que Luis. The walls are tattoed with signatures of people, both common and famous. The typical music of Maracaibo and the state of Zulia is Gaita, and Pa'que Luis is an iconic Gaita hangout. Many gaiteros have signed the walls here. Interestingly, one of the most important gaiteros of all time, Ricardo Aguirre, the performer of the famed "Grey Zuliana," was the great uncle of Efrain, in whose kitchen I write this entry. Standing next to me is my wonderful friend Bernaliz, who has worked with great determination but little effect to teach me to dance to Latino music.
After the the all-night party of the amanecer, it is tradition to go to a baseball game in which the local team, the Aguilas del Zulia, always gets crushed by the opposing team because they are suffering from hangovers. By some miracle, the Aguilas managed to win on this day and everyone went crazy at the end of the game, throwing beer, water, and empty bottles into the air. This is a photo taken before the game of a famous Venezuelan baseball player taking a loop of the field. Know who it is? Johan Santana, pitcher for the Minessota twins.

Here is a picture of my buddies from Merida. The guy to the far right is Adam, one of the other Fulbright English Teachers. In the middle is Jon and to the left is Nate. These three have been friends since childhood, en español -panas desde su niñez.- They are from Boston and have the ability to fall into a thick New England accent on command. They have been planning ¨The Trip¨ since they were kids and now they are living the dream. Adam, Jon and Nate were phenomenal company for about 5 days of the Feria, though Nate fell asleep while boiling water and melted my teapot into a poisonous, smoking, melted-plastic mess. This photo was taken in La Plaza de la Republica, right in front of a giant obelisk that I always say is a phallic symbol to whoever is around. After taking this photo, we went to Hooters to watch a salsa band and browse the pechugas. The day following the baseball game, we got tickets to attend a bullfight, or corrida de toros. The stadium is in the design of a Roman coliseum and the show is as brutal and bloody as any gladiatorial match. Many of the people with whom I am friends here refuse to attend the corridas because they are disgusted by the spectacle of slaughter for entertainment. However, the stadium was filled far beyond capacity on this day. The photo below depicts a man on horseback plunging a 6+ inch long metal spearhead into the space between the shoulder blades of the bull. For me, this was the most alarming part of the whole killing. Here the matador demonstrates his complete control over the exhausted bull. There are so many dramatic themes brought forth through the brutal ritual of the bullfight - death, man vs. nature, dumb courage of an animal vs. controlled lethal courage of a man, men in funny green suits with pink socks. It is dance mixed with battle, complete with dramatic music played by a live band. In the end, however, the fight is not even. It cannot be seen from this angle, but there are abour four medium sized lances stuck into the back of the bull, not to mention the damage from the spearhead and two weeks of abuse pre-corrida. I left the stadium nauseated after seeing seven bulls murdered and carted off by the horns. I suppose that I´m glad that I had the experience, but I will never attend a bullfight again. Tonight I take an overnight bus to Merida to stay with Adam, Nate, and Jon. We are going to a pool party tomorrow afternoon in which we are supposed to be the only guys, so that should be estrogenous. I´ll spend a few days in Merida hiking, enjoying beautiful vistas, and hopefully not vomiting. Then I go to Curacao with my good buddy Rosie, and then I´m coming home for New Years! I hope that we get to see eachother when I am home, but if not, get your yellow fever shot and come on down for a visit.

Tropical fruits

2006-11-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

In this entry are a bunch of pics of my apartament along with other miscellany. Here is a picture of the fruit basket in the kitchen. In the bottom of the frame you can see bananas, which are here called cambures. Though a huge number of bananas are grown in Venezuela, most of the good ones get shipped to the US and we are left with smooshy browns. In the top is a huge, gorgeous, cheap avocado. This is one of the great gastronomical pleasures of my life here. Flanking the avocado are two banana-like plantains, which are really more similar to potatoes than bananas. I boil them, fry them, and pan simmer them with sugar. Plantains arrive green but then mature to yellow and ultimately turn black. Different recipes work for different levels of ripeness. The two apples on the far edges of the fruit basket were imported and very expensive, but it was nice to have a taste of home. In the middle of the basket is a large, greenish-yellow fruit, a papaya. Here they call it lechoza. Nearly every day for breakfast I eat corn flakes with soy milk and cut up lechoza. The lechoza contains useful proteolytic digestive enzymes which help in the digestion of soy protein.
Beside my kitchen is a storage room for furniture and mattresses. The wall between these two rooms is a wooden board with mouse-sized holes cut into the bottom corners. I took this picture after seeing two mice run into this hole from under my kitchen counter. One of the mice was poorly coordinated and collided with the wall with a thud before making it through the hole. The mice had chewed through the plastic bags holding rice and flour. I now keep all of my food in the refrigerator or in tupperware containers. The red wire leads to the stove and allows me to spark the burners to life.
Here is a meal that I made from the my favorite cookbook. In the middle is a homemade hummous and baba ghanoush pate and to the right is a black bean dip. The beige colored container to the left is filled with a hot sauce made by the landlord of my building. He gave it to me as a gift after we, mostly he, drank a bunch of whiskey one night. It is excessively delicious and I drizzle a bit on almost everything I eat.

Here is a picture of my private deck. It is really just a piece of roof surrounded by sheer drops and electric fence, but I call it my own. I do calisthenics out here on many nights. The chairs are set up to do dips and I execute pullups on the overhang to the upper left. Through the window to the right is my bedroom/study/living room/den/closet/servants quarters.
Here is a pretty neat picture of the view off the edge of my deck. The adjoining property is an apartment building and apparently the people who live there don't want me to climb over the walls. Needless to say, during parties, I will need to be careful to keep the drunks indoors or they risk severe shocks. As a plus, I can perform low-cost electroconvulsive therapy, a vital service for the mentally ill of the city.
At CEVAZ, the English school where I work, one of my biggest projects is organizing poetry competitions, called 'Slams,' in the upper level adult discussion courses. I put on a two-day class series in which we read and analyze a poem, the students write poems, and then we have the competition. This girl was really nervous and I probably shouldn't have taken her picture when she was exposing a part of her mental landscape to the class, but she did a good job in spite of the interruption. Some students hate being forced to read and write poetry, but most of them rise to the challenge and end up producing good work. In this photo, you can see the three candles that I always bring along to set the mood. I am currently organizing a full-scale public poetry slam for next January with another teacher at CEVAZ.

Here is the wonderful Pilar, the mother in the Peruvian family that housed me during the first month of my stay here. She was putting on a presentation about teaching English to very young children when I snapped this picture. She has a four-year old daughter, teaches more than full time at CEVAZ, and has just started to earn her bachelor's degree in education (or maybe modern languages). She helps me whenever I need to change my phone plan, get a package, or otherwise navigate some segment of the expansive Venezuelan bureaucracy. Without Pilar and her family, my experience here would be much more difficult.
Here is a picture of the Christmas lights on Bella Vista Avenue right around the corner from CEVAZ. This photo was taken on the Friday night on which all of the lights are turned on. This night also inaugurated the two-week festival for which Maracaibo is famous, the Feria de la Chinita. La Chinita is short for 'El Virgen de la Chiquinquirra.' This virgin was a Guajiro indian from Colombia who saw the virgin Mary. Guajiro have slightly elongated, almond-shaped eyes, like Asians, hence the name 'La Chinita.' In the next blog entry, I will post more pictures of the long and wild party that was La Feria de la Chinita.
One brief note before I go. This upcoming Sunday is the presidential election here in Venezuela. The two candidates are Hugo Chavez, the incumbent, and Manuel Rosales, the challenger and current governor of Zulia state. The supporters of Chavez are called Chavistas and the supporters of Rosales, Opositores. Schools are being cancelled on Friday and Monday to prepare for the casting of ballots. Nobody is totally sure what is going to happen. Some poles put Chavez on top and others have said Rosales looks to be the likely winner. Both sides claim the other is going to cheat. I am going to stay at a friend's farm for the weekend, so will have to observe the unfolding of events on television and radio. If you want to know my opinion, you can suck an egg - as of this moment, I am not taking sides.

Singing 'Hey Jude' in a toy museum in Merida

2006-10-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Small pleasures and minor annoyances

2006-10-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Vaso Gigante, Murcielagos, Futbol, Licensiadura, Soya, Saradillos

2006-09-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

Que pasa, chamos? This means, "whats up, chums?" The title of this blog entry provides a rough outline of the topics up for discussion. Vaso gigante means giant spleen; Murcielagos are bats; Futbol is soccer; Licensiadure means diploma; Soya is soy; Saradillos are a particular type of house. My acclimation continues to progress though I believe that my honeymoon period of discovery without disillusionment has ended and the slump has begun. Damn hot weather, people skipping appointments without notice, water and power outages, stupid language. I plan to weather it with beer. The photograph below is of the 'Hospital Universitario,' the big teaching hospital associated with the University of Zulia medical school, one of the best medical schools in Venezuela. I attend a class there each Thursday morning in semiotics, which means going around and looking at sick people and then molesting them with your unpracticed, medical-student fingers. This is similar to what happens in semiotics classes in medical schools in the US. On my first day there, we looked at a woman who had a spleen the size of a chicken salad sub from Subway. It was alarming and sad, but if I am going to be a doctor, I need to get used to seeing people in difficult situations. The first day of class I could understand about 15% of what was said. The second day I understood 16%.

The Hospital Universitario is filled with top notch doctors who are real experts in their field. However, there is no toilet paper in the bathrooms and the air conditioning only works in certain sections at certain times of the day. This picture was taken in an abandoned corridor on the 7th floor. Four bats can be seen - 2 hanging from the concrete ceiling and two in flight.
This is a photo taken in front of the house of the Peruvians with whom I have been living. It had rained, and of course the power was out, so I went outside for a respite from the stale indoor heat. These boys were playing soccer barefoot in the street. They ranged in age from 12-18. The guy in the blue shirt to the far left plays on a semi-pro team and can change direction five times in five seconds. The nets, which get run over by cars on a regular basis, kept collapsing, so the players would add more bricks to the base for support. I like this photo because it also shows the flooding that happens on these poorly draining streets in a rainstorm. The puddles immediately get filled up with mosquito larvae which attract dragonflies, and in turn attract me to watch the dragonflies hunt.

Here I am at a more professional soccer venue. The photo below was taken in Pachencho Romero stadium. Tickets are free as the park is sponsored by Pepsi and the local government. Games start at 5:00 or 5:30 so that at least some portion of the game can be played in twilight, without the presence of the brutally powerful sun. In this game, the Sports Club of Maracaibo took on the Guayana Miners. Maracaibo dominated with a final score of 2-0. The language used by the fans is one of the majors draws of the games. The most urbane fans yell, "Hey ref, you're a dick." Those in the lower classes enumerate sex acts performed by members of the opposite team and launch bottle rockets onto the field.

This is another picture taken at Pachencho Romero stadium. These kids showed up midway through the 1st half with an impressive set of drums. The metal instruments that make a raspy sound are calles Charrascas; the big drum played with short pieces of wood is a Furro; the smaller drum is a Tamboura. This impromptu band would beat out fast rhthms when the soccer club of Maracaibo was on the offensive.

A few weeks ago, I attended a literary convention called the Feria del Libro or 'Festival of the Book' at a private college called Universidad Cecilio Acosta (UNICA). After sitting through an hour long 'critic and author' panel discussion for an acquaintances new book, I was walking around and shmoozing with various people. The guy in the picture below came up to me and said that he overheard me saying that I was from the US. His name is Jorge, and he is a professor at UNICA. Jorge wanted me to come speak at his geopolitics class which was starting in a few minutes. After verifying with another friend that the guy was kosher and not a kidnapper, I went along. After class, we went back to his house and his Mom (everyone lives with their parants) made us ham sandwiches. Jorge is writing his thesis on Venezuela's current and future role in international events, so he is an excellent person to know. For some reason, he wanted to show me his diploma, so I took this picture.

Here is a picture of the cabinet in the house where I have been living. Is this a sticker advertizing the radical, vegetarian left-wing of the Boy Scouts? Nah, soy means "I am."

I took this picture while sitting in the back seat of a Carrito (one of the taxis that follows a proscribed route). The type of house in this picture is an old-style Maracucho house called a Saradillo. Saradillos are most common in a district called Carabobo which is close to the city center. It was hot, so I was surprised to see this guy sitting in his rocking chair between the houses.

So that's all for now. Tomorrow I am moving to my new apartment which is near a popular street called Cecilio Acosta. I am also going to be supervising two poetry slams in upper level English conversation classes at the school where I work. More about that next time. Saludos desde Maracaibo.

Exploring Maracaibo

2006-09-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

Saludos desde Maracaibo! I've now been in Venezuela for three weeks and I am starting to get a feeling for the rhythms of daily life. Maracaibo is known in Spanish as "La ciudad de sol amada" or 'the city beloved by the sun.' This is a friendly way of saying that it is hot enough here to overwhelm the capacities of most normal air conditioners. If I take a nap in my room, I have to be naked with the AC on full blast, and I still sweat - an arousing image. Don't worry, though; this will not stop me from taking naps. The saving grace as I have said before is that Maracuchos have so far proven to be as friendly and open as everyone says. The picture below was taken at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Zulia (MACZUL) on the campus of the University of Zulia. MACZUL is a spectacular facility and is actually the largest art museum in all of South America. The woman to my right wearing the red shirt is Adriana, a new friend who has been taking me to all sorts of art and culture shows around Maracaibo. She used to be a journalist in the arts section of the big local newspaper, Panorama, so she knows everybody. This was the opening of a new exhibition of local artists and we are posing in front of a very cool painting of ferns produced by the woman to the far right. I'm not sure who the old man and little kid are, but I invited them to be in the picture, and they obliged.

Below is another work at the art exhibition at MACZUL. I was not permitted to use my flash when photographing it, but you should be able to get an idea of the contents. It is a sort of collage with pictures of American flags and presidents (mostly Bush) superimposed on pictures of dead people, bombs, Hitler, etc. People's opinions about the US seem to vary a lot here. I was talking to a cab driver the other day about Bush and the USA. The man told me that he thinks Bush is an evil man. "What do you think about Americans, then?" We had arrived at our destination by this time, but I stayed in the car to listen. His feeling was that most Americans are good people, but that we do bear some responsibility for electing our President. I think this is how many Venezuelans feel.

Going along with the comparing-things-to-Hitler theme, this is a tag that I have seen on a bunch of walls throughout the city. In case you can't see it, it is a Jewish star and a Swastika linked by an equals sign. I talked about this image with a friend of mine who is a Venezuelan history professor at a local University. He told me that there is a popular book out right now that compares the tactics of Israel against the Palestinians with those of the Nazis against the Jews. My professor friend told me that this image is anti-Israeli rather than anti-Jewish, but I'd imagine that it's quite easy to confound the two. Suffice to say that I need to be very selective as to whom I tell information about my background.

This is a picture taken at the base of a large cross in the courtyard of the Catholic Church attended by the Peruvian family with whom I live. At the beginning of the service, the Priest welcomed me very warmly to their community. Sra. Socorro, the Peruvian grandmother, told me that they have a reinforced room on the second floor of one of the buildings in the Church complex where they are planning to go if the apocalypse comes. I won't tell you the location of the Church, just in case.

This is a picture of the exterior of a very sumptuous and expensive motel on the outskirts of Maracaibo called "The Aladdin." In Venezuela, the word motel has a very different meaning than it does in the US. Here, a motel is a hotel that people go to to have sex. This is a vital service in a country where most people live in the same house with their conservative, Catholic parents. A taxi driver spent several minutes listing the names of all of the motels he could think of in the Maracaibo metropolitan area. There are A LOT. You can rent rooms on the weekend for as short as one hour, though I'd imagine that proper romance demands at least an hour and a half.

Here I am in front of one of the longest bridges in the world, called El Puente Rafael Urdaneta. It is 8.7 kilometers long from end-to-end. When I drove across it, there was a rainstorm that began abruptly in the middle of the bridge and nearly stopped traffic on the opposite shore of the bridge. On the return trip, the rain stopped again at exactly the same spot.

Here I am on my first night out in Maracaibo. Really loud Salsa music was playing. The gentleman sitting to the left of me is Jorge, the Vice-consul of Columbia in Venezuela, who is in charge of the Maracaibo office of the Colombian embassy. His wife took the picture. The people to the right work for the UN office for refugee aid. I have a big smile on my face because I am drunk off of Solera Verde, a popular Venezuelan brew. These are good people.

This is a picture taken from the inside of a carrito or porpuesto. These little cars are taxis that follow a very specific route just like a bus. Carritos became popular after a series of bus driver strikes and mismanagement of the mass transit system. Some of these vehicles have holes in the floor plugged up with cardboard; on entering, one is told to step carefully. A long ride costs about 45 cents, a short one about 25 cents. Written on the piece of cardboard held in the drivers left hand is the route this carrito follows - in this case Bella Vista. The cardboard also serves to deflect wind onto the sweaty head of the driver as many carrito's are not outfitted with a functional air conditioners. The piece of fabric on the drivers left arm protects him from sun burn.

One last story before I go. There is a word here that means 'stuff, junk.' The word is macundales, which is pronounced in Spanish mack-oon-dah-lace. This word has a very interesting etiology. Apparently, there was a large American shipping company called
"Mack & Dales" that used very solidly constructed wood boxes. In this country, people don't just throw out a good wood box - they recycle it as a storage bin. Because people used these boxes to store a wide variety of items, the name "Mack & Dales" became associated with general junk you put in a box. So clear your macundales off the table, we're about to eat dinner! Ciao, amigos. Estais en mis pensamientos.

Maracuchos

2006-09-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

I entitled this post Maracuchos because that is what the people of Maracaibo call themselves. It is also proper to call them Maracaiberos, but then you sound like some sort of idiot foreigner. It is very hot and muggy here year round. Today, for instance, the temperature got to 104 Fahrenheit with about 80% humidity. There is strong air conditioning in all buildings to make up for this, so it is necessary to bring a jacket with you even though it is 100 degrees outside. I am adjusting well to this new setting largely because of the incredible warmth and kindness of many of the people that I have met here. More about that below. The picture below was taken in the Plaza Indio Mara. The statue is of this Indian Cacique (Chief) who was called Mara. Legend says that the city name 'Maracaibo' comes from the words Mara-cayo. Cayo means 'fall' in Spanish, so the city is named after the defeat of this Indian chief in battle. It was hot as hell in the open sun of this plaza.

The people in this picture were hanging around under an awning. The guy sitting in the orange chair carried a satchel with various brands of cellular phones in it and you could pay him some money to use them for an agreed upon period of time. This guy is said to work in the 'informal sector,' meaning that he doesn't have a job with an established, tax-paying company. About half of the people in Venezuela survive by working in this sort of cottage industry.

This is a view of the street in the district where I have been living. The neighborhood is called "Barrio Nueva Via." I live in the house with the awning that can be seen at the far right of the photo, behind the blue car. The neighborhood is an ethnic mix, with people of many South American nationalities living together. Most people here live with their entire extended family under one roof. Lots of people work construction when they can get jobs or scratch out a living in the informal sector. The young men play soccer in the street a few nights a week. It's a pity I suck at soccer - my bro Dan would be well suited to live here.

This is a picture of the hallway inside of the house where I live. The doorway to the right leads to my room, which has its own bathroom and AC unit! The lady in the background is Sra. Socorro, who is the wonderful grandmother of the house. Her husband Sr. Tito also lives here, along with two of their children, and two granchildren. They are Peruvian, so they know how it feels to be tranplanted to the foreign Maracucho culture. They feed me good food three meals a day. I am borrowing Sra. Socorro's cell phone for the next ten months because she hates it and is generous. This family has told me where and what to eat and drink and where it is safe to go during the day at night; they have taught me how to navigate around the city; they teach me vocabulary constantly. Without them, my experience in this new place would be far poorer.

This is a picture of me with a 105 year old woman named Sra. Martina who lives four houses down from the Peruvians. She claims to be 108, but her son-in-law told me otherwise. She was born in a city called San Joaquin in Falcon State, Venezuela in 1901. She is a poet and has published several books of devotional catholic poetry. Her favorite topic is the famous Saint of Maracaibo, La Chinita. Sra. Martina can still hear, though she is largely blind. She recited some of her poetry for me from memory. She spends her days sitting in front of a fan in her bedroom remembering poetry and moving a worn string of rosary beads through her hands. Sra. Martina insisted on standing for the photograph.

This is Emeka from Nigeria. I met him through a co-worker at CEVAZ (the binational center where I work). He too was looking for an apartment, so we met up to see if we could find a place to split. He found a place during our search, but it only had room for one person. In the course of our time together, he told me some of his story. Emeka came here 10 months ago, planning to stay for a brief time before securing a Visa to Canada. Unfortunately, he got mugged almost immediately after arriving and lost nearly everything. He was forced to live in a very bad part of Maracaibo until he found a decent job working at this Arab restaurant. He told me that he had to fight off muggers nearly every night where he was living, so he was extremely relieved when he found a new place to live. Emeka went out of his way to help me find my own apartment. He understands painfully well how tough it can be to survive in this country. He told me that he wants there to be people here who can vouch for his goodness, and he hoped that by helping out others, word would spread that he is a good man. Thus did a Nigerian stuck in Venezuela explain his own theory of Karma.

One of Emeka's friends was supposed to come pick me up at the Arab restaurant where Emeka works at 6:00 PM to take me to an excellent apartment available for rent. In typical Maracucho fashion, the guy was one, two, three hours late and ended up not showing up at all. During my wait, I wrote a poem. I started talking to some of the employees at the restaurant, and this guy, Victor, had an interest in poetry. He spent an hour edting my poem and he taught me a bunch of cuss words in Maracucho. I would write them here with translations, but the words are really quite rude. If you want to hear them, ask me, and I will cuss you out in Maracucho.

Loitering right near Victor was this guy, Daniel, who is a Guajiro Indian who works at a club across from the restaurant where I was hanging out. We talked about medicinal plants. He told me that it is possible to make a medication of the ground leaves of the plant to his right to help cure headaches. The flowering plant immediately behind him is good for the stomach. The plant above him and to the left is not native or he did not know what it was useful for. Daniel said that he knows the uses of around 60 common plants, but that there are other people who know thousands. He lives in Maracaibo, as do many other Guajiro, but he has relatives who live in the forest along the porous border with Colombia.

That's all for now. Next time: an art show, some offensive graffiti, a drunken night out with the vice-consul of Colombia, a Catholic mass, and whatever other odd things happen to me between now and the next post. I miss you all.

Caracas

2006-09-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

I am writing this journal entry from a small room in a casa in a barrio called Nueva Via. The neighborhood is Familia Cabezas. I am having a fascinating time here, but I miss my life and friends at home very much. I cannot complain too much because I am staying with a wonderful family, I have my own room with my own bathroom and AC unit, and these people know how to feed me a diet high in soluble fiber and free of milk! Soluble fiber! I have a lot of great pictures of where I am living, but I want to show you what Caracas was like because that is where a lot of the action is going on in this crazy country. I arrived in Caracas a week ago, and started taking pictures. This is a picture of a barrio on the outskirts of the city. These barrios are called 'Los Ranchos,' and they are built up the sides of the hills that surround Caracas. Some are better than others, but most are shantytowns built of mudbricks from the hillside. When it rains, whole neighborhoods can slide down the side of the mountain.

This is a picture of the bridge that used to lead from the regional airport to Caracas. You can see in the background the old bridge that fell into the ravine. The new bridge is being built in the foreground, and they have been working on it for about 3 years but only have one column done. Thus, everybody is forced to take a winding bypass that is perpetually backed up. This is choking the economy of the capital.

I took this picture when taking a walk around our neighborhood, a rich district called Las Mercedes. Electric fences are common and the walls below them are strong, high, and topped with razor wire, pointy metal, or broken glass.

On the same walk through this densely populated area, we came upon this huge golf course. This is like putting an 18 hole course in the middle of Washington, DC or New York city. "El Presidente" has recently made campaign promises to take control of the golf courses and use them to build housing for the poor. The courses are surrounded, like everything, by 20 foot fences topped with barbed wire. We only got in because someone left a gate open. There is such inequality here.
These are the other two Fulbright ETA's posing by a huge tree in the golf course. The guy on the left is Adam, who is in the beautiful, temperate, mountain town of Merida. The guy on the left in Patrick, who is teaching in Caracas. These guys are awesome.

This is a billboard promoting the government of "El Presidente." There are presidential elections in 12 weeks. I'm staying out of it.

This is Caracas' mountain, El Avila. Caracas itself is about 3000 feet above sea level. The mountain is 9000 feet at the summit. It is awesome and huge and filled with exotic plants and animals - sloths, spiders!, howler monkeys, the occasional big cat. I was all set to hike to the top with Patrick and Adam when...

Hey! Travellers diarhea! I had the taxi driver pull over on the way to El Avila at McDonalds. This is a picture of the inside of the stall. It was great. I missed the hike, but I will make in the future.

That's all for now. Feel free to post your thoughts, responses, or mean-spirited insults below. I miss and love you all.