Christmas Spirit

Our household has turned on Christmas spirit full blast. everything is covered in garlands and teddy bears! Our kitties are definately enjoying having a tree in their house. They wont leave its side.

Roomies!

My roomates, Emily, Schuyler and I! On miss Emily's 21st bday, hence she has on far too much makeup.

home again

I've been safe home now for about two weeks. I've been doing lots of reflecting, but it's still hard to say how I feel about my experience.
The most meaningful part of my trip was certainly the host family I stayed with in Barquisimeto. It was a big struggle to adjust to their ideas about family, time, language, and responsibility. It soon became more important to me to spend time with my host family than to pursue opportunities in the community. This may sound odd, but I realized it was the only acceptable thing to do. The times I left my family to go to meetings they were completely hurt. They really wanted me to hang out with them everyday, all the time. They wanted to take me places, and show me their community, they wanted me to know their whole family. Their emphasis on family is not something I have witnessed here. Living far away from relatives is unheard of, and their sense of responsibility to their families and community is outstanding.
I believe that this sense of closeness and community responsibility which is so embedded in their culture is what has allowed a revolution. These people really do care about their neighbors, and feel a responsibility to help everyone around them. Their natural hospitality ensures that all will be taken care of, which is a perfect platform for socialism. This country making a move towards socialism is only an attempt to integrate their culture and the reality of their everyday lives into their government. The second component, which is stemmed from their community responsibility is empowerment. Responsibility and accomplishment will always lead to a feeling of empowerment, and these people believe they have the power to run their own communities, not the political power, but the physical and mental power. They are willing to do anything to support themselves and develop their lives and communities. Everything is seen on a community level. So if one person wants a better life, they do not see themselves rising above their community, they see their whole community rising together.
This feeling of empowerment and community combined has led to amazing projects which I saw in many communities. People putting in their own plumbing systems, building solar power systems, recreating the way they buy and sell food, so that everyone can participate and have food in the end, everything done as a community. Most of these people have never been to school, but they will make a decision to build a sewage system for their whole community, and accomplish it.

Community media is another important aspect of the revolution. People have created their own media and their own communications. They can say what they what. A freedom we certainly do not have in our media. They make calls to their governors, questioning about broken promises, about school systems they were told were coming, about transportation that was promised. In many cases mayors and governors make deals with communities, such as; if you build roads we will expand the pubic transportation to your community, but no matter how many roads are built no buses come. In other cases it will be publicly announced that a bill has been passed and money granted to a school program or some such project, and the money never comes. Community built media provides a space for people to correct their government, to let everyone be aware they never got the money, and their problems are not solved. This has moved forward the revolution, and kept officials in check.

Ok, this is all for now...more to come.

aqui, on the playa right now, right now

we went to beach, for two days. it was beautiful. we took boats out to islands, the boat rides were super fun, like roller coasters, and the water was totally clear and blue green perfect. one of the boats capsized, it was not my boat, so it was a little funny.
we played on the beach and tanned and swam about. it was lovely.

¡Epa! ¿Que Pasó?

I´m very homesick this week. I´m a little sick of working at the cooperative, it´s very hard and tiring, and I´feel like I could be doing something better with my time. I´m taking the day off today to try to figure out what I´m doing, and organize a new game plan for my last week here. I need to accomplish many interviews in the next week, with many people.

On Thursday we went to a friends music and arts school, it was very cool. He runs the school, which provides the surounding community with free music lessons, instruments, group playing time, as well as singing, dance, painting, arts and crafts and whatever kids want to do lessons. We got a afro - venezuelano drum lesson, and then a big group of kids performed on drums and sang for us. They also tried to teach us to do the tambom dance (drum dance) which is pretty much immpossible to do if you´re white. I think it was more of a joke so they could laugh at us.
There´s an internaitonal solcialist confrence going on this evening and tomorrow, which we were all planing on attending, however when we got there we realized it was very hard to participate when everything is in spanish, so it didn´t really work out.

I´ve observed that when I hang out with my family, all they do, even their teenage kids, and kids in their twenties is hang out together. all the time. Just with their whole family, everyday. It´s a very different dynamic than i´m used to. They all get drunk together and speak really fast in spanish in the evening, and in the mornign they all clean together.
On the other hand all the wealthy families I´ve interacted with take pride in reflecting American culture, and while their families still live together, they do not hang out, but pass their time driving around in their cars listening to music, and swimming in pools, and eating out, or basically making fun of their house helo while they sit in their pool listening to music, and still always drinking.

Everyone here drinks all the time. They think it´s strange we dont drink all day with them. THey start drinking at about 10 or 11 and continue for the rest of the day. I think more money is spent on alcohol than anything else in this country.

i have the bombest host family. everyone here in barqui is really great. i´m having a really good time. cecosesola the cooperativa is super hard, but super chevre. i think this is going to be such a good part of my trip. my host mama is really awesome. i live with her, her son, alex, who is four, and sooo coool. we play everyday together and color and stuff. he´s awesome. he crawls in my bed in the morning and kisses me goodmorning and tells me it´s time to come play with with him. I´m sleeping in his bed, of course, as there are only two beds. the house is tiny, with no doors, and walls dont touch the corregated tin roof. they have a dalmation puppy. yadyra, my mama, and i stayed up all last night talking in bed. it was really great, i´m actually just really glad to get to bond with someone that much, especially a woman, as they are harder to get attention from here. I´m sick of men flockign to me! i want actual friends.

i have a new phone... my number is 0412 0570 050. you can call me on it. but not too late (3.5 hours ahead of pacif time), cause everyone will be asleep ( the walls between all of the neighbors on the block also do not touch the roof, so it´s like one big house.. you can hear everyone´s conversations and tvs. there are no floors in the house, well ours is concrete, but most people have dirt. we live very close to my friends grace´s host family, who is also really cool. i had dinner with their fmaily tonight, and her host brothers brought us to the internet cafe. they wont let us walk down the block alone. actually my host mom wont walk down the block alone, she´ll go with me or call her neighbor to walk with her.

the coop is very intereting, my job is basically working in a grocery store. I work in the produce in the morning, cutting up veggies and stocking them for about 6 hours. then lunch, then for the next 7 hours work cleaning up the produce area and then stalking adn putting away the canned/packaged foods and soap n stuff. this is 4 days a week, then meetings two days a week, and another day of just stocking food preparing for the market days, thurs, fri, sat, sun. the meetings are the cool part, because everyone in the coop comes and says whatever they want. they also have workshops, with no teachers, so more like focused conversations on things like mutual respect, trust, work ethic... anyone who needs anything can get it from the coop. members are like family. they need a loan for something, or just need money which they will never be able to pay back, they will get it. no one will be hungry or homeless, and certainley not lose their jobs for such things. everyone is freinds with everyone. they all work together. if you get sick of doing one task at work you just go swtich with someone who´s doing something better and switch back when they´re tired. all workers and visitors are fed lunch (a really good huge lunch), then you wash your own dishes.

My spanish has imporoved tons. it´s very hard to only write in enlglish, i keep writing spanish words adn having to earse them!

overall it´s very hard to be here, i´m very tired, it´s simply tiring to be lost and confused every second. but i never want to sleep, because everyone always wants to show me something new. i met like 400 family members in the last week. my whole family´s cousins and aunts adn grandparetns adn everyone, they all live in the same ghetto together. grace´s family as well, who we also went house to house meeting everyone. they are all so nice, they all say, oh if you get lost, or if you need anything, or if you dont like the house you´re in, you can come live with us.

Cooperativas

Today we had a pretty great experience with some cooperatives. Yesterday we traveled to Muchachies, a rural town an hour out of Merida. We rode horses up to a trout farm, and then we poked the fish, toured the coops HUGE medicinal garden, their greenhouse, where they produce vegtable seeds for coops all over latin america, and their natural fertilizer process.
We then went to another coop where we learned about these woman who learned to weave and now have an income for their families.
Then yet another coop which builds solar panels for families of coops in their area to heat their water. this last cooperative will build solar panels for anyone who needs it, and if the family, or their coop can pay they can pay whatever they want or not. each solar panel costs a total of 800 BSF or $160. It provides enough hotwater for three people´s daily needs. The panels are made of one wood box with copper piping all spray painted black, with a pain of glass over it. this is connected to a tank with two hoses, one out the top and one out the bottom. because hot water will rise over the cold water it creates it´s own pump. these people are genius.

photos!!

one of the gals on my trip has a huge amount of photos up http://flickr.com/photos/lmholmes/ at this address, the first 20 pages are all of our first week together.
They include the airports, the churches we stayed at, a tv broadcasting station we saw, a cacao plant, the rally we went to, and many pictures of the city.

Yesterday we all went to Barrio Adentro, which means into the ghetto. It is a public medical center, one of 50 in the town we are in, all under the title Barrio Adentro. They are funded by oil money through the government (so when your oil prices go up more people get health care). Of the 50, 17 are larger with many specialties, such as eye doctors, dentists, ultrasounds, xrays, cardiac centers, and many others, the smaller ones deal with more everyday issues, and emergencies. doctors also go into the communities door to door, and to community centers, as well as schools to provide service to as many people as possible. these doctors are all from Cuba, and they are teaching venezuelan medical students to take their place.
I asked if they had rape victims come in, and they told me they don´t deal with social issues, only physical problems.... same with eating disorders. They do however have extensive counciling programs for peopel with cancer, aids and other serious health issues.

Today we talked with a group called GIGESEX, a gender research group, of scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers and students. Awesome group, dealing a lot with domestic violence, also with sex education in schools, and self image problems amoung girls. Venezuelan woman are supposed to be the most beautiful in the world, a hard standard to live up to. They have the highest per capita plastic surgery rate in the world, along with perfume and makeup sales. these purchases never go down when the economy goes down. They also have a program to promote men to participate as family members and be active parents, which is a big problem in Latin America, but an issue that even the government has taken on with a Padres de la Communidad program.

Police Murders & Politics

A few days ago our group was meeting with an (antichavez) union leader, and while he was presenting three of his workers were killed in a factory take over, and six more shot. Chavez has repeatedly announced that he will support all workers who take over factories, and encourages factory take over and worker organization, even offers programs to help train workers to take on bookkeeping and sales... supposedly. He allowed the workers to be shot, and has done nothing to counter it.

On a lighter note, a day I know you have all been waiting for - I cut my hair. It´s about an inch, inch and a half long, I still have bangs. it worked out well. My host mother was much relieved.

Everyday here is a stuggle, to explain myself. The people of Venezuela are very well educated in politics, of their country and ours. They all ask me about US politicians, about laws and other issues in the states, it´s very hard to disscuss poliitcs in a foreign language. They mostly all ask about Obama (who they hate) it´s hard to explain that yes i understand he is bad, but voting in the US is the lesser of two evils, and there is no revolution option. They ask me why pepole in the US think Obama is socialist, do they know what socialst means? They ask me why people are so pleased with Obama, and why people in the States are so stupid. It´s very hard to make up for a country´s ignorance in one conversaiton. If 50% of our population was as well read and informed as Venezuela, we would be a different people.

More Mèrida

The apartment I´m staying in is very small, and very overdecorated, with Jesus and Popes and nativity scenes EVERYWHERE. There´s a 3D picture of the last pope over my bed that waves at you if you move back and forth. It´s a busride away from my language school, only ten minutes, but sometimes the bus takes over an hour, so we have to get up early and look at the traffic everyday in case we have to walk all the way. I tried to buy a bike, but aparently only small children ride bikes here (how silly they thought i was asking for one my size). Our school looks like everything else from the outside, it´s downtown and just has big high walls, with big wooden doors. But inside there´s a small plaza with tables and plants, and classrooms aroudn the outside. The school teaches english (to little kids) and spanish (to gringos form all over the world). Classes are no more than 6 people.

There´s a vegetarian cafe across form the school, with awesome cafe con leche and empañadas. All the wierd foreign kids from europe hang out there and talk about philosphy.... it´s an interesting place. They have meditation, painting, yoga, poerty, fiction writing, music, singing, and like ten other kinds of lessons offered in the back of the cafe on different days of the week.

We have been to see a speaker everyday in Merida. The first day we met with MUSEC, a socialist group of science students from Las Andes University. They sopke with us about all the free educaiton programs available, and how students are required to do community service, and answered many questions we had about the school, socialism here, and the city of Mèrida. Those same student set up a concert for us with the Mèrida Symphony which plays traditional music of the Andes (mandolins, violins, cellos, and the cuatro, a small four stringed guitar), it was a really great treat.

Another group we spoke with was ECOS, a student group from the same university, which focuses on environment issues in their area. they recently got a law passed to save a type of moss which had become comercericalized as a main component in nativity scenes....? They also are trying very hard to create a recyling system, but it´s worse than failing. No one hear understands that concept at all, yet.

We had a really wonderful opportunity to meet with two reporters from the online paper venezuelanalysis.com who talked to us about some current polotics, and answered many questions. I am going to be doing an indepentdant project with them for a week, very soon. Possibly on propaganda, and the similarities between US and Venezuelan media. They were both very helpful, and when I apporoached them about working with them, they were like well of course, and gave me their contact info. Everyone here is just really nice.

My Spanish classes are going really well. We are doing a lot of review of basic grammar, which is good becasue it ment nothing the first time i learned it, as grammar isn´t nessacary if you can´t put together sentances anyway. But it does get a little boring. My spanish has however improved dramatically, and I am able to have conversations with people I meet, and buys things without embarassing myself too badly.

Last night one of our instructors took us out dancing, at a bar near our school, it was a really great time. The bars all play half traditional or salsa and half reggaton or rock, depending on the bar, but it is always half and half. We danced for hours, and talked to a lot of locals.

Mérida

hola todos! I am now in Mérida, with my host mama, Zulana. She is very wonderful and taking good care of me. Tomorrow I will start attending language school in the mornings, and visiting cooperatives and missions (social programs) in the afternoons.
Two days ago we all got to see Chávez. I was 10 feet away from him, which was very exciting to me, as I´ve never seen my own president. He spoke for an hour about workers rights, it was really interesting to see how people react to him - they adore him.
Some of my friends and I made friends with two guys we worked with one day at a farm, Barulio y Cesar, and they showed us around Caracas, and Barulio took us to meet his whole family! Everyone in Venezuela is so nice and welcoming!

(it appears my camera is having some language barrier with these computers...picures eventually)

Venezuela!

it´s so great! yesterday we saw land being claimed by a poor group of farmers, who took over a large land estate owned by an elite, now 45 families will live and work the land. I have great pictures - but i can not figure how to upload them onto this 98 gateway... it´s been in the 80s and 90s contstantly! Ít´s very very beuatiful here, everything is green.
We are staying in a barrio, or ghetto. they let gaurd dogs into our courtyard at night and there is barbedwire everywhere. But it seems very safe to me.
The people are wonderful, they all ask where we are from and try to be friendly. We are having a great time so far!

Ready, Set GO

I'm very ready to go!!! I leave tomorrow morning at 9:30. And i'm just a little antsy.