It has rained heavilly in Venezuela for more than two months now. It has rained like we had not seen in a long time. Some places have been more affected than others. Some people have suffered horrible tragedies, like the one in Tejerias or the most recent one in El Castaño. From Mérida in the West to Sucre in the East, there is not one state that has not reported some kind of damage or losses casued by the heavy rains, landslides, and/or floods.
The streets of Cumaná look under water. Some houses in some neighborhoods are literally so and the storms seem to just line up one after another. We have an expression in Venezuelan Spanish: con el agua al cuello (water up your neck). We were already feeling like that before the rain.
Yesterday afternoon, while we were struggling to keep valuables away from the rain that was leaking trough the roof, I got the news that my mother had fallen down and hurt at least one leg. She is 83 years old and almost blind, with a long history of heart problems. A news like this makes the expression "water up the neck" have a different, yet similarly mortifying meaning. After 24 hours, my mother has not been taken to the hospital because in that town, which is a municipality capital, there is not a single ambulance. Firefighters do not have equipment either and, judging by the description my sister gave me of what they tried to do to get her on a pickup truck, they may also lack proper training. She was screaming in pain and could not be moved. So far, we do not know if she got a broken bone and that uncertainty is eating me alive.
I am going to travel to my hometown tomorrow to see how I can help.
Once again, I can't help but reflect about the maginitude of our crises. In the event of a natural disaster is when we see how behind we are in terms of technological advances and technical or material resourses to respond to numerous and simultaneous emergencies. Most towns in Venezuela lack ambulances or hospital facilities with the most basic services. After the massive exodus of professionals in the last 10 years, now we also lack qualified personel in every hospital. We do not think how bad this government is or how urgently we need to do something about it until we or one of our loved ones suffer the consequences
