I promised myself not to create more publications about the situation that Venezuelans live every day, but I still believe that, apart from being my job, the only form of income, sustenance and any blog, is also the place where I express what I I see. , listen and think, and lately I have concentrated on making the post as commercial as possible, with the sole purpose of making a profit. But these last days I've seen something I did not want to ignore, something I saw a couple of days ago and ignored, but today I saw it in a more incredible way. I write this because my expressive being wants to do his thing, what the world likes to express, things are currently common but still surprising. And this is not a planned publication, while I'm writing, I do not even know what title I'll publish, or if I'm going to publish an image or not, I just think about writing.
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Until recently I was studying at a university located a little far from the city, whose area has many educational institutions, urbanizations and, obviously, the aforementioned university, where I used to see only students and teachers. In the period of time that I studied there, my life was based on going to the university, returning to my house and calling my brother-in-law (who is a taxi driver) to come to my house and take me to my girlfriend's house , I did not go to the city center, or to other places, the few times I went out, I went to parties, to the house of a classmate when we had to work, to shopping centers (I went by taxi or with a friend who had a car) and the home of relatives. Almost a month ago, I had to stop studying again, almost for the same reasons, for which I stopped studying the first time, both related to the current situation in Venezuela, but that is a separate issue.
After I stopped studying, my life remained almost the same.
A couple of days ago, I was going to a neighbor's party, I was going to turn 15, and it was a very formal party, so the day before the party I decided to cut my hair, but my trusted hairdresser would not be available during all the week, so I had no choice but to go to the city center to find another hairdresser, so I could cut my hair. I called my brother-in-law to take me, but he could not see me that day, I just got ready to go downtown and went to the bus stop. I do not know if many know it, but public transport here is also a serious problem, since the high costs of the spare parts of the units do not allow an immediate repair and tend to remain stopped for a prolonged period (not to say that they remain forever), and there are currently very few.
After almost an hour of waiting for a bus with seats available to go (or space available to at least stop), I decided to walk to another stop where it would be easier to enter a unit. Finally I got what I craved, before going up, I had to wait for the passengers to leave at that stop to stay, and my surprise was to see about 8 people out of about 12 who came down, with bags in their hands that only contained yuccas (in other countries it can be known by these names: aipim, cassava, tapioca, guacamota). I was surprised, but after a moment I simply forgot it.
When I arrived at the center, I went to a square that we call "dirty", which is full of prostitutes and alcoholics, I went there to talk to a friend who worked a lottery agency in that square, and he would get me a hairdresser to accept payment by bank transfer (since cash is figuratively gold because it is not available anywhere, and if you want to pay by bank transfer or point of sale, you tend to pay almost twice the price you would pay with cash, for example, cutting hair of that day, it cost 25,000 BFS, and I had to pay 40,000BFS), so I waited for my friend to get away a little, to accompany me to the barber's place. In the few minutes I spent there, again I saw many people who only had bags with yuccas in hand, I was sure of what was happening.
Days passed and I continued in my routine life. Today I was at my girlfriend's house, and as usual, my brother-in-law went looking for me, almost coming to my house, my mother called me asking me to do some shopping in a store near the urbanization, so I asked my brother-in-law to Take me to the place already mentioned. When I arrived I saw that the establishment was considerably full of people, I placed my order and I stood in line to pay, and you can imagine what was my big surprise, 100% of people who were there, 80% were buying yuccas , and of that 80% less than half had another item that was not cassava. I was totally overwhelmed, I wanted to take a picture, but at the moment I do not have a smartphone or at least with a camera.
What's going on?
Simply the salary is not enough to buy other things, that simple.
With a minimum wage you can not even buy a chicken, since the minimum wage is 248.510BFS and one kg of chicken is 250.000BFS. Many people have become accustomed to eating yuccas alone, or sometimes accompanied by sardines, since it is the most accessible fish, but now it is a bit more to buy, since it is mostly sold in cash and as I said before, the cash is not get.
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It is rough what we are living, but there is a thought and at the same time reality that we can not get out of our heads for a second, and is "today things are serious, and will get worse." The impotence that is felt when you can not help all the people you love is colossal, that has also touched me very hard, because I went through a similar situation a year ago, and today I have one of my best friends going through that , he does not mention it to me, but I know that sometimes it takes up to 2 days without eating, so my parents and I, we try to give him food when he is in the house, because it is something that gets out of hand, and he work, it is not enough to help what he wants at home, or at least to buy the necessary and eat 3 times a day, every day, and it is not unreasonable to say, that sometimes even to buy a kilo of Yucca they have in their house...
What will become of us?
Thank you very much for reading, I thank you very much to read this, because really a post that I have written totally improvised, without thinking anything, as if I were speaking to them in person, narrating something of the day to day in my country.
Until next time.
By:/ Anjomapack