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.