The sound of Jackals picking apart a carcass floats in through the bedroom window. A group of dogs are tearing, with frightening proximity, into the trash outside, and I can them dragging plastic containers across the pavement with a ghoulish rattle. Their desperate, gluttonous growls remind me, not of the kind-looking, timid creatures I see in the daytime, but of a deformed, pitiful devils with sagging breasts, mange and crooked spines. I actually don't see why they're fighting. In Mérida, there is a feud between the sanitation workers and the goverment, and disposable trash (pun intended) sits waiting on most every corner. Mérida was once the cleanest city in Venezuela, but now, driving in front of the densely packed ranchos (favelas), a bags run the length of the neighborhood. Everyday in Caracas I saw people in government garb cleaning the streets, and still it was dirty. Here, hundreds of miles from the federal governments buttressed abode, there is less impetus for beautification. Old advertisements stick to the sidewalk like papier-måche. Plastic cups and cutlery are scatter at base of each metal trash can. These features, however, hardly define the city. Sure, some buildings may seem like ramparts and new is not the norm. Yet as I approach El Centro (downtown) my imagination soars as the exhausted "keh-puah" and rattle of buses fill the air. While some complain of the city's deterioration, I revel in its rawness. The stained walls of buildings are not flaws but ancient book ends that may yield a quadrillion undiscovered fictions, the bottles a testament to the happy drunkards that huddle in the street outside the licorerías.
I rode one of the city buses today after searching for work at nearby language schools where they offered me a starting pay of ~90¢ per hour (which includes the extra 10¢/hr in a food stipend from the federal government). To shake the idea of such an atrocious salary, I rode to the Mercado Principal. El Mercado is a four-floor, indoor bazaar, packed with sellers of salt-cod and tropical fruits, maracas, clothes, nuts, and anchovies . The floors are cement and the ceiling, hidden by the hanging wares, seems to hardly exist. I bought tomatoes and potatoes from a lazy-lidded man whose careless grumble left me guessing his prices, yogurt from a woman younger than I that called me "amor", and an empanada from a booth that had the milky-blue eyeballs of a cow floating in vat atop the counter.
Acting as a symbol of my time in Venezuela, the bus ride back was jolting. We, like the Knight Bus, squeezed magically into miniscule gaps in the traffic, slammed the brakes when the car in front stopped, and while the bus driver sang along with tacky love songs, I realized I was not even on the right bus to get back home. As I started my long walk towards the house, I undoubtedly loved my burdensome bags I won in a fearful struggle against the hurdles presented as a foreigner in a foreign city. I feel the same as the dogs outside that have fallen silent, whose messy struggle led to a full belly and absolute contentment.
Frase Del Día: Provocar
Everyday I could use this phrase, "Me provoca Helado", "Me provoca una cervecita" "me provoca toda la comida del mundo". That is to say "I am craving" a hundred things and always must resist, at least some of the time.
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