Jacobo

Jacobo doles out bread at the panadería on the corner of my street. The inside of his mouth reminds me of the surface of scraggle rock—jagged stones spurting from the earth and fighting for space amongst themselves. This arrangement makes him sound like he has marbles in his mouth. So in addition to the fact that he speaks very fast Spanish, each word that leaves his mouth is first subject to sound editing by the zigzag of teeth that block its exit.

When he speaks to me at the store, I squint my eyes and tighten the skin on my face, creating a buffer for words to reach my ears as directly as possible. He repeats phrases two or three times, but never changes his pace or enunciation—for example, “Ji ute ta busano ao mevisas,” which roughly translates to: “Ifa looin summin lemmenah.”

On the rare occasions when I do understand his words, they often paint the picture of a personal experience or acquaintence that I have no capacity to understand in the immediate way he implicitly requests. It reminds me of the way three-year-olds yell out to their mothers in excitement about the picture they’re drawing and ask, “Isn’t it pretty!?” when their mother is downstairs doing laundry.

Lost in traducción

A few days ago, Giulio sent me history's best on-screen bilingual interview. I've now watched it 25 times and feel a need to share with all you Spanish speakers:


What makes this interview is the confidence and authority with which the interviewer BS's her way through all translated responses. She could be saying that the sky is fuscia, and clouds are made of cotton candy; but her body language and intonations suggest she just returned from Harvard's campus, where she completed a two-week long fact-checking mission to substantiate her claim. I have no doubt she will be successful, if not annoying, in life because of that.

Upon being asked, "What is your favorite part of Venezuela?" the musician responds:

"Um.. The people, of course."

Her translation:

"Ok, he tells me that Venezuela hasn’t changed much, that what he likes the most are the landscapes and the motos thats he’s had the opportunity to see on the streets and highways of Caracas. Anyway, very little has changed and he hasn’t had the opportunity to see much."

Earth's growing pains

Last night, all of Caracas experienced a terremoto. I would describe it like being in a small ship at high sea, attacked from underneath by five sharks on sugar highs. When it happened, I was in the midst of yet another outrageous dream involving Lost characters, so it seemed appropriate at the time.

Soup

Being sick in Venezuela is not that bad, because people here are great at taking care of others, especially the weirdos like me who live alone. My boyfriend brought me lovely soup and arepas last night, and another woman made chicken soup for me today. It was so delicious that I just had to know how she made it.

As soon as she started with "you just throw in xyz..." and not "boil water for 15 minutes then add 1/4 cup of onion" I knew I had no chance of replicating this sensation of a meal. But I smiled and told her I "can't wait to make it!!" anyway.

Pintando

Friends Anais and Andreina introduced me to Caracas' regular Mercados de Diseño. Fabulous. Like everything else in Caracas, the goods at the Mercado are ridiculously overpriced, but it's a field day for crafts ideas.

We saw some really colorful painted lampshades, which caused me to run home and round up all the white lampshades in my apartment like cattle awaiting their multicolored salvation.

Painting them with watercolors is especially divertido:

Who doesn't like an unfair and biased comparison?

Its been a while since I cracked the writing whip and I’m bored as H right now, so I’m going to do a little review of life in the USA vs Caracas.

Positives about living in the USA:

1) I don’t worry my pants off upon accidentally swallowing tap water or getting a mosquito bite.
2) I can be a vegetarian without withering into a shadow of a human being for lack of imitation meat and tofu.
3) Easier to be a shady McShadster (I can walk places alone at night).
4) I can have a conversation with anyone and not wonder what exactly we are discussing.
5) U.S. prices for most goods are half the Venezuelan prices, so I can easily convince myself that I am actually SAVING money instead of spending it with every hack of the credit card.
6) Extravagant and gorgeous free public libraries.

The positives about living in Caracas are a bit more difficult to pin down and have more to do with my general sense that Venezuelans are a happier bunch than gringos.

Granted, they know how to make themselves miserable just like the rest of us. I realized on a Miami-DC plane, though, that all the gringos were mired in a cloud of their own late-winter anguish and didn’t want anyone to bother them while sitting in it (hence the blackberry/Economist/headphones combo).

Venezuelans are much more sociable—on planes, on buses, in lines, on street corners, in tow-trucks (during Carnaval, for example, Giulio got to the heart of our truck driver’s recent near death experience within 15 minutes of meeting said gentleman).

Sometimes I think they have an unlimited capacity for social interaction, which probably has to do with the fact that they live with their families until marriage. Alone time doesn’t seem to be quite as valued.

I’ve finally adjusted to most of the Venezuelan value system and the only problem is that I now severely judge others in a way I never thought possible: beau-tay.

A woman sitting in front of me on the plane had slightly unbrushed hair and no makeup. In a most shocking and upsetting moment, the following serious judgement crossed my mind: Her hair is so...not shiny.

"SI" wins

Results were announced earlier than expected last night—54.5% of voters support the removal of presidential term limits in Venezuela, while 45.6% oppose it. Chavez can now be re-elected for life.

My opposition friends seem devastated in a personal way, as if this means the loss of a country they love, because it will only lead to an increase in its negative aspects such as crime and rampant inflation. Some feel that those who voted "SI" are ignorant and naïve for giving this government so much power.

They say they're depressed, shocked, and angry--that there’s “no way back.” Everyone has Facebook here, and people are using it as an outlet to express how disappointed they are in the 32% of fellow Venezuelans who didn’t vote, lamenting that “cada pueblo tiene el gobierno que se merece.”

We saw the opposite reaction at a Chavista rally, however, right after the results were announced. People danced on top of moving SUVs, cramming into the backs of trucks and stroking passing cars with endless rows of “SI” banners. We also saw caravan after caravan of guys on motorcycles with red bandanas placed over half of their faces, revolucionario-style.

One of the older Chavista women who is always at the same corner on Ave. Francisco de Miranda was wearing a red sparkly hat and red spandex pants to compliment her bright red hair. We saw overjoyed hugs and watched reverentially silent crowds huddle around a small TV to witness their idol's post-win speech.

I was personally starting to align Chavez with really persistent men who get repeatedly rejected for dates without noticing or caring, but this was a big win for him.

Fireworks at dawn

I awoke at 5:30 a.m. to massive fireworks exploding in front of el Avila. At first, I thought it was either gunshots or the birthday of a socialite who’d gotten too drunk to set them off at a reasonable hour. Then Giulio reassured me it was the government, encouraging citizens to get up and vote because today is the Big Day.

From a foreigner's point of view, it’s exciting to see a huge capital city rallied like that in a positive way, regardless of the political side of the impetus.

Early morning fireworks over Caracas.

I am, however, secretly relishing that my immigration status relieves me of the duty to stand in line for five hours to cast my vote.

All who vote here must stick their pinky finger in purple ink that doesn’t come off for several days (I don’t know how the beauty-obsessed women deal with it). The specially-engineered ink is a way of ensuring that people don’t vote twice with fake IDs, but I think it’s also a social symbol in a country where people have such extreme views about politics. I don’t know any Venezuelans who come out of an election day without that stamp of participation, and I wouldn't want to be subject to the ridicule a non-purple pinky would spark.

It’s not raining, those who live in the poorer cerros won’t have as much trouble descending from their steeply positioned homes to voting areas. It seems participation will be high in major cities.

The decision on whether or not the president, governors, and mayors are no longer subject to term limits should come back late tonight.

Entrapment

Floating in a sea of slow walkers: this is the Caracas sidewalk. I glance around tensely and see only relaxed arms, slow gaits and drawn out conversations. I find my leader—a random stranger. But he is brave, and probably really late for work; he understands my frustration. I nearly latch onto him, a sweet freedom in this sea of oppressively slow movers. His haste creates a path of liberation as we glide through the dawdling crowd.

We arrive at the stoplight. I am silently grateful, while he is still oblivious to his role as my sidewalk leader. I smell autonomy, seconds away—the light reaches its final yellow moments. Red will come and I will launch myself onto the temporarily open road. Prepárate.

But the Chavistas smell that open road first: I am quickly enveloped by red shirts and signs instructing stopped cars to vote SI. A monstrously large poster, a horn, two jumping ralliers, five men rushing into the streeet carrying a banner: SI SI SI SI! two students with red hair shouting UH!AH!

I reach the other side, defeated and entangled once more in the languid crowd.

A stroll down Dios lane

Today Giulio suggested we go to the MACCSI (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber). While I was excited to see a new part of Caracas, contemplating the meaning of a big black circle on a white canvas doesn’t really turn me on.

But damn, was I pleased with our visit. They had a photography exhibit on mythology from various Latin American countries. I looked at each photo and tried to place myself in that moment—standing alongside, for example, an elderly Quechua tribe leader with a perfectly proportioned feather headdress, gazing at the dreamlike mountainous terrain before him.

Or beside Kalakshé, dueño of the impenetrable jungle of the mountain that provides infinite resources for his tribe. Or next to Awishame, Colombian dueña of the the coca plant, valued for the energy and clarity it provides while engaging in cultural traditions.

I liked the photo they associated with the Mawari, evil spirits of the table-top mountains in Canaima. They are the enemy of man, responsible for the deaths and disappearances of those who dare climb.

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The visit put a little painting seed in my head. So when I got home, I went up to the roof, put on Gustavo Santoalla's Montaña, gazed at my lovely Avila, and made this:

The return of the goat

Vero likes to say things that she knows I don’t understand. Today we had this convo en español:

Me: Matt’s party will be fun.

Vero: Yeah totally. There will be mostly guys there.

Me: Are you gonna bring your new man?

Vero: I'm not going to bring a goat to Coro.

Me: Umm.

Vero: You don’t bring a goat to Coro.

At first I thought: FINALLY! I understand this one. She’s talking about how she doesn’t bring a goat, meaning, higher up fancy man, to Coro.

Coro must be a low-brow bar, where one would not bring a fancy man. Like Matt's party.

No, not at all.

Coro is a place in Venezuela where there are lots of goats. So it’s like saying “you don’t bring sand to the beach.”

Her point: Time for Vero to meet a new man.

Plata

Yesterday, my boss sent me an excerpt from a book written in 1963 by historian AJ Toynbee. He shared it because he believes much of what Toynbee said about Venezuela in 1963 is still true. This part was the most interesting to me:

Venezuela has the makings of an earthly paradise. It would, in fact, be one if a paradise could be stocked solely with minerals and plants, without needing any complement of human inhabitants. Venezuelan human nature is probably no better and no worse than the general run of the mill. Venezuelan wealth, however, is something quite out of the ordinary, and extra-ordinary wealth puts human nature to one of its hardest tests. Can human nature stand this? That is the critical question for Venezuela.

Caracas in 1963

The excerpt got me thinking about what it would have been like to live in Venezuela before the "golden rain from the oil-fields and the iron mountains began to descend on the capital." There is so much wealth here and it's interesting to think about the effect it has on the human psyche.

Toynbee briefly discusses that idea:

In present-day Venezuela, as in the present-day World as a whole, one is conscious of a tension in the air. Was the atmosphere as tense, I wonder, in the days--still not so long ago--when poverty was the Venezuelan people's common lot, and when even the largest landowners were no millionaires?

A tale of two presidents

Today I got the front-seat view of a little movie I like to call "National leaders are absurdly influential on the psychology of individuals."

I opened my office window to a sunny day and felt a movie-like euphoria (complete with birds chirping and babies laughing): Bush is gone and, more importantly, Obama is President.

We'd just watched his speech dubbed in Spanish. Some of his key WOW lines came out more like yonoentiendoniuncoño, but nevertheless I gazed starry-eyed at the screen, still in disbelief that he is President. It’s like a national dream from which we'll wake up next month. (Maybe the wakeup will happen when, three weeks into his term, Fox News demands, “WHERE’S THE CHANGE?”)

I’m reading articles about “getting used to the new president,” as if our national senses have been numbed by two Bush terms and must be reawakened to adjust to positive feelings towards our leader.

While I don’t yet burst with pride every time I explain, soy de Estados Unidos, I can see a light at the end of the awkwardness-as-a-result-of-my-nationality tunnel. And watching his speech from Venezuela made me yearn for the chance to be in Washington and feel the energy of his symbolic triumph.

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Below my office window, though, student marches are starting. Next month, there will be another constitutional referendum to eliminate term limits here. I had the impression that Venezuelans are tired of being bombarded with this kind of thing (what my friend calls crisis fatigue), until I blindly stuck my camera out the window and caught this girl:

They’re mockingly wearing red shirts that say “NO” on the back. Red is Chavez’s color, so when Vero spotted them on the street below, she groaned and got all, ay coño aqui vienen los revolucionarios (“oh f*ck here come the revolutionaries again...”)

Despite the idea that afuera todo es más arrecho (“everything is much better outside of Venezuela”… read that link if you are a Spanish speaker--it is hilarious), Venezuelans I know are way more proud to be from here than gringos are to be from the U.S. At the same time, there is far more political strife here and often, things don’t work the way people want them to (like when you're sitting in traffic for 30 minutes to turn a corner, or when the water dies for five days during your 20-person Thanksgiving dinner and you can’t wash any dishes so the chiripas—mini cockroaches—step up to the task). But in general Venezuelans seem pleased with themselves when they talk about where they are from. This is especially true for some when they completely separate their national identity from their nation's highest representative, as if the two were totally irreconcilable.

I, on the other hand, get more of a “alrighty well, let’s change the subject!” feeling when I have to talk about my home country in general. But I didn’t get that feeling today.

Geduld

I decided on a vegetarian trial run two weeks ago. It’s going OK. I don’t miss meat (aside from the crushing realization upon suggesting we visit the Colonia Tovar because it "has great German sausages!”)

Vero believes this switch means I'm loca, as the food chain is a natural part of life—lions eat deer (or whatever the hell they want), birds eat fish, and so on. But I'm doing it because of what I’ve been reading about Buddhism. The views on meat eating vary from school to school, and I’m not enough knowledgeable to know which makes the most sense to me personally. Mahayana Buddhism, for example, argues that if one pursues the path of the Bodhisattva for enlightenment, one should avoid meat eating to cultivate compassion for all living beings. Reading that line (thank you, Wikipedia) made me want to let go of meat right away, and now I think of it whenever I see meat dishes.

The best part of my switch was the dog that Brit and I fed last night. He (who we later learned was indeed a she, then continued to refer to her as a he) got the best of my freezer’s parilla leftovers. She was sleeping in the garden in front of my building and emerged to greet us, escorted by her nose. One look at her sad eyes and round goofy ears gave me the impulse to do something--anything--give her my spare change? It left me sad and unsatisfied. So we raced upstairs, nuked some frozen pork, and mixed it with corn flakes and a raw egg.

She seemed hesitant towards her meal, circling it and then backing away as if it were still alive and she’d forgotten how to kill. We felt relief when she pulled the pork out of the bag and ate the whole thing. But she left the rest. Sensing my disappointment, and still a little disgusted by my decision to give her a raw egg, Brit reassured me: “Don’t worry--it just means she has good taste.”

We sat on the stoop and chatted while the dog finished eating, content that at least for tonight, she was well-fed. Upon finishing, she climbed to our eye level and looked at us: Do you think you could maybe pet me for a while? So of course we did, before leading her to a fount of fresh water and deciding to purchase a bag of dog chow.

I think I will name her Geduld, which babelfish tells me is German for patience.

Malabo

“Can you go to Malabo on Friday?”

Not exactly the kind question one expects at 8 a.m. on a Monday in the heart of all things suburbia--otherwise known as Bethesda, Maryland.

It was the assignment everyone was suddenly “too swamped” to take. Malabo, in the words of my veteran supervisor, was the "weirdest place on earth.” By his account, six years in sand-stormy Sudan would be more pleasant than a six-day assignment in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

Aside from that sunny comparison, I had at my imagination’s disposal four facts about this location: it’s the only Spanish speaking country in Africa; photography is punishable by jail sentence; the government is renowned for torturing opposition supporters in “Black Beach;” and most of the population is extremely poor while foreign oil extractors live comfortably on Pleasantville-style compounds.

It was just the kind of place I wanted to spend Christmas alone.

My bosses needed a Spanish speaker to coordinate startup for a USAID project there, and it all had to be completed within two weeks, or else I’d be spending the holidays on Strange Island.

Before I knew it, I was floating in a sea of long faces and alligator skin attire at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. About 30 men, not so fresh off their flight from Dallas, looked like they were waiting for the Devil to swing by and escort them back to Hell. Everyone, from the pilot to the rotund man named Jimmy sitting to my left, had one thought plastered on his face: What’s a woman doin' on this plane? Maybe she’s confused and thinks we’re goin’ to New Guinea in South 'merica.

After a few half-comatose and extremely disorienting realizations that the silent, deep indigo view I repeatedly awoke to was indeed the Sahara, and that all my sleepy co-passengers were indeed from America's Heartland, we descended upon Malabo.

The electricity-less terrain we’d just passed made the island of Bioko look like Vegas on steroids, with dozens of oil refinery fires thrown in for good measure (environmentalists seeking an image of natural resource exploitation at the height of its fury need look no further).

On that cold night under heavy rain an immigration officer looked me up and down with an unhurried, menacing grin. He gripped a bulky machine gun and posited his main question--the one thing every border patrolman must know: "Why are you without your husband?"

Welcome to Malabo.

Sensgiveen en Caracas

Last night was an unexpectedly very Thanksgiving-esque dinner en mi casa en Caracas. Turkey, wine, stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, soup—the whole deal. We even went around and each said what we’re thankful for en español. Por ejemplo, Thom and I said we were thankful for all the friends we’d made in Caracas; Steve said he was thankful for water (we had no running water, which made washing dishes/hands interesting...), and Giulio said he was happy for passing all the tests he needs to graduate (eeesooo). The mood was lovely and everyone left five pounds heavier than when they'd arrived.

Back for more

The cleaning lady at our office just sprayed the most oppresive brisas de vainila odor-eater throughout the office. HELLLLPPPP meeee!!!

So anyway, I’m now here on a courtesy visa, which is their way of saying "please get off our backs until we’re assured that Devil Barbie (Sarah Palin) will not be elected" (she just said she'd use military force here--that's fun! I’m really glad that she made that comment. It was well thought-out and reflected her nuanced understanding of relations with this country).

As much as I enjoy temporary corporate housing, it is so nice to be back here. Yesterday, it rained in that four-to-five-inches-on-the-streets kind of way; and when I said I was leaving to walk home (everyone else takes metro or drives), my coworkers wished me a pleasant swim. Even though it was 65 degrees out, they all rested assured that the boss-lady would be stuck at home with the flu the next day.

Instead of the flu, I came back with a Tupperware stocked with amazing cookies. Which leads me to the next point: I am becoming domesticated. Not sure where it’s coming from, but I actually look forward to grocery shopping—and I’m not even buying frozen meals. Last night, I washed and chopped vegetables with my boyfriend and actually enjoyed it—felt a cozy, appreciative relationship with the tomatoes and mushrooms.

Thankfully, domestication hasn’t reached the point of enjoying laundry, which is why I also made sure to purchase several weeks worth of extra clothing while in the U.S.

New favorite word

Carabobeño.

(http://www.el-carabobeno.com/)

The magic wand.

Parks in Ha Noi are the kind of place where it’s difficult to walk ten feet without bumping into a man or group of men who are meditating, resting their untroubled gaze upon some placid body of water, or engaging in a similar mind/body/spirit expanding activity. What struck me about those guys (and other Vietnamese people I’ve bumped into on the street) is that they are relatively very soft spoken until you pull out the magic wand: a camera.

This device turns the shiest of Vietnamese into smiley, jazzy friends who think its so funny that you have a camera! A staff member in a red shirt blazed by me yelling “Hello! Where you from!” as I sat by the pond at the Temple of Literature.

Out of nowhere: a dragon pose.

I searched around me to see if one of his friends was about to snap a pic but no, he was waiting for me to capture his moment of glory—finger claws, snarled teeth and all—to be placed in the photo album he’d never see.

I then asked him where he was from. Time to get shy again. It was probably his lack of English, but the man went from a crazy fun-loving dragon to a self-conscious staff member who suddenly had to run away. Literally, he ran away from me, but at least he was smiling when he did.

CHỈ SỐ VỀ TÍNH NHẤT THỂ TÀI CHÍNH CỦA CHÍNH QUYỀN ĐỊA PHƯƠNG

One of my four favorite things about being in Ha Noi is that I have absolutely no idea what anything means. I’m here developing an index for local governance that I call the Fiscal Integrity Index. I just got it translated to Vietnamese for a meeting with government reps. It looks so ridiculous to me. “Fiscal Integrity Index” apparently translates to the following: CHỈ SỐ VỀ TÍNH NHẤT THỂ TÀI CHÍNH CỦA CHÍNH QUYỀN ĐỊA PHƯƠNG. The one word that I actually understand and brings me solace is my name. But then it's followed by 1209 other words I am totally lost on.

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I do hate the flaming ignoramus feeling when it comes to local languages, so I try to feign apprehension with cab drivers by repeating whatever they just said to me. The other day I met a lovely cab driver who had the most endearingly awkward bowl hair cut. He was so smiley that I couldn't help but want him to think I knew Vietnamese:

Lovely cab driver: Anh bao nhiêu tuoi?
Me: Ah! Yes, anh bao nhiêu tuoi .
Lovely cab driver: Tôi duoc ba mươi lăm tuoi...
Me: Oh--lăm tuoi—haha!
Lovely cab driver: (turns around, confused) hahahahaha!!!