First experiences in Venezuela

I made it to Carorita without any problems. It´s definitely in the mountains. I´m about a mile down a dirt road that apparently goes on for a long way. The nearest real town is La Puerta, about 40 minutes South of Valera in the state of Trujillo. That´s where I am now in an absurdly slow Internet cafe.

Rev. Mendoza has building where he hosts various groups and works in the community. I´ve got one of the bunk rooms with an adjacent bathroom. It´s nice, but I´ll probably have to give it up if a big group comes. The current project is finishing three houses that were started by a UMVIM group about a month ago. The closest one is just about done, as soon as I finish the plumbing. We got it wired yesterday. It´s a different sort of work, but I´m getting used to it, and I´ll probably be quite a good mason by the time I come home. The clinic has been closed because a neighbor bought a load of chicken manure and it was for some reason dumped right outside the clinic. The neighbor is moving it to his field, but only one burro load at a time. When I arrived Francisco had some family in, and I was happy to work on the house. Being in a building full of people I barely understand was a little challenging.

This weekend should be interesting. We are hosting a women´s group from the Methodist churchs in the Maracaibo area. It´s probably fairly revolutionary considering the general mentality of people around here. It´s definitely a male dominated culture. Some guys from another MEthodist project on the coast in San Carlos came in to help. Toby is a gringo but has been here a while, so he can help with some of my cultural questions. I´m looking forward to Monday though when the place will be quiet and I can relax a little bit.

Things are going well. I´m struggling some with the language and isolation, but as one improves, the other should as well. The people are amazingly welcoming. In the evenings, everyone just walks from house to house visiting. Most houses have a driveway, but there is always a dirt footpath linking them directly. I can say what I need to, read the newspaper etc, but I´m still having a hard time parsing conversations.

There is a youth group that Francisco leads. They recently returned from a mission trip to San Carlos. It was surprising to hear them talk about how poor the people in San Carlos were. I guess that from my perspective, it´s hard to distinguish levels of poverty when looking so far from what I´m used to. The people I´m with though aren´t particularly destitute for Venezuela, although they have very little.

This afternoon has been fun though. I took a taxi, ironically a Lincoln Conquistador, to La Puerta to get a few things from the hardware store and use the internet. I had a funny experience in a little store. I stopped for a coke, and she apologized that for some reason, she didn´t have a bottle opener. I didn´t see this as too much of a problem and opened the bottle on a retaining wall outside. I guess this trip will draw on the entirety of my education. I was surprised they weren´t familiar with this technique. Well, I´m off to the hardware store where I´m going to try to figure out how to say "I need a galvanized one inch to half inch female adapter." Hopefully they will be sufficiently fascinated with the fact that a gringo in shopping there that they will forget how annoying trying to talk to one can be.