Venezuela 05/04/2019
It has been 3 weeks since the darkness took control of our lives and with that total chaos and desperation brings out the worst of us. Nights seem eternal and everyday feels like we’re dying from a sickness that we don’t have an idea what to do to cure it, normal is now the exception and anarchy is what rules our lives since then…..
6am. I woke up this morning after a little bit of sleep; the nights are getting hotter and we have to sleep in the outside, meanwhile the insects make a feast from us and we have to been very aware of outside noises as thieves control the city in the dark. I’m lucky today and there’s electricity and water in the plumbs, I took a shower, save all the water that I can as water is scarce too, make a cup of coffee and go out to find out something to eat for the day, we have only 4 hours of electricity available and having food on the fridge is not a good option so it’s better to buy everyday what I would eat in the day.
My luck ran out as I didn’t find any meat on the grocerie store near me after one hour waiting on a queue to enter. Besides that the dark took over the block where the store is meaning that I could only pay with cash, something very difficult to have as the banks are closed and the few open collapse everyday with the amount of people waiting since the day before to enter and get a little bit of cash because there’s a limitation on the amount to withdraw daily too, the other option is pay with foreign money. As I don’t have any of these two options it looks that today my menu would be a piece of bread with butter and coffee for what remains for all day…… again. It’s has been an odyssey to find food these days as some of the groceries store has been vandalized, others remains closed because they don’t have power plants and the one open decides to not store much food as used before to avoid their stock of proteins and diaries gets damaged from the lack of electricity.
I came home and look for any good news on the internet while I could and nothing came from it, there’s still a time frame of 30 days on this situation and sadly there not an indication that this situation will be solved on that amount of time, I guess it could be months or even years to do it.
10am. Electricity went out and water too, there’s nothing to do for me today just wait for the next morning to have my 4 hours of electricity and try to live again.
This is not a fantasy story or a tale about a war crisis. This is my everyday on Venezuela since march 7th when the national blackout took over my country. My city is Maracaibo and we’re the one who suffers the most on that crisis with a daily diet between 4 to 6 hours of electricity, so it’s very difficult to have a proper life these days. As I wrote on a previous post where I ask if you'll be interested in read a little diary about how's to live like this, this is my Intro chapter... I'll post my first entry tomorrow.... If you find these interesting I'll be very gratefull if you can seed something, if not then I hope you enjoy the readings... thanks! :)
