A Trip to The Grocery Store in Venezuela Part 2 // Ulog #8

Trying to Explain the Unexplainable

First of all let me explain why there are not real pictures on this post of a supermarket in my country, I got my cellphone stolen almost 6 months ago, and currently I use my boyfriend’s camera to take pictures is a Samsung Lp120 that it may not sound like much but is the only thing we have to take pictures so we don’t take it out of the house in order to avoid getting that one stolen too, so…

I already did a post like this a while back it was actually my first ULOG ever and I did that one because, every time someone ask me where am from? And I tell them from Venezuela, people always ask me, So, I hear things are bad over there, but I don’t really know what is going on. and I wanted to shared a light into the living conditions in my country from my perspective.

I’m doing this post now because we just went through a monetary reconversion, that according to the government is supposed to solve all our problems, and just wanted to make sure people get that not, is not working is even worse now…

I could try to explain the monetary reconversion implemented by the government but, I would have to make a post 123456789 words long and I would still not make sense, so, I will just leave some news articles here that have all the information you need to know

Venezuela hopes to tackle the world’s worst inflation by deleting zeros from its currency - The Washington Post
Venezuela to remove five zeroes from ailing currency - Reuters

Venezuela on edge as Maduro unveils raft of economic reforms - abs-cbn

_{Is actually really sad how little information there is in English about the economic reforms that has been implemented by our government, not wonder nobody in the world knows what is going on here.}

To summarize all the information that there is above in the news articles a little, here are the major points:

The central bank started issuing new banknotes after slashing five zeroes off the crippled bolivar. wish means that what it used to be 100,000 Bs. is now 1 Bs.

_{The new currency, the sovereign bolivar -- to distinguish from the last, and ironically named, strong bolivar -- will be anchored to the country's widely discredited cryptocurrency, the petro. Each petro will be worth about $60, based on the price of a barrel of Venezuela's oil. In the new currency, that will be 3,600 sovereign bolivars -- signaling a massive devaluation.}

A massive minimum wage hike, in turn, that will be fixed at half a petro (1,800 sovereign bolivars). That is about 28US$ a month more than the previous level of less than a dollar a month at the prevailing black-market rate.
A massive regulation of prices, to "prevent the inflation to go nuts", they come up with a list of regulated products with fixed prices.

Taking all that into account here is what is like to go grocery shopping in Venezuela right now:

I currently live in a small-town call San Jose De Guanipa or as they call it EL Tigrito (“Little Tiger”, don’t ask me why, they are crazy over here), so we don’t have many major supermarkets chains nearby, we go shopping downtown to little grocery stores run mostly by Asians (believe me they own almost all the shops in here).

My budget was of 20 Steems that I converted to Bolivares using an exchange house call @AnyTrades.

20 Steems by that time (3 days ago) at a rate of 74.5 BS. / Steem was 1,490Bs.

That would have been 149,000,000 Bs. Before the reconversion.

It sounds like a lot of money what did I get to buy with all that? Well here is the list of stuff I got with that prepare yourself for the long list.

a dozen eggs worth 80 Bs.
8.8 pounds (according to google that is 4 kg) of fish worth 280Bs.
4.40 pounds (again google…) of pork = 600 Bs.
2.20 pounds of White Cheese = 150 Bs.
one box of chocolate cookies cause I’m pregnant and I deserver it! = 105 Bs.
a Coke of 2L = 120 Bs.
2 rolls of toilet paper = 60 Bs.
a packaged of bread for sandwiches = 90 bs.

All that gave me a grand total of 1385 Bs. And leave me with 5 bs in my bank account that are useless but whatever.

You have to take into consideration that in my house we are 4 people living here, my Boyfriend’s parents, my Boyfriend and I.

Also keep in mind that this food will last for approximately a week or 2 at the most.

So, yeah, I don’t see how is better now with all the reconversion and the economic reforms.

I’m currently pregnant so I don’t actually have a job right now (I’m a lawyer but I’m too far advance in my pregnancy to do any lawyer stuff) all I earn I do it through SteemIt and by the time we need it to buy this food my boyfriend was still on the previous minimum wage, since the new one was going to start by the 7 of this month meaning Friday but it would pay them only a fraction of the salary 25% of the 1800 Bs. a month they stablish.

The other major problem we face is that with the regulations of prices almost all the food has gone missing, and then you go out shopping and can’t find anything like meat or chicken because they are regulated and the producers of those products can afford to sold them at the prices stablish by the government because they are too low to cover expenses.

So yeah that is what is like to go grocery shopping in Venezuela.