Living in Venezuela

A few days ago someone who lives in the United States told me that with the cold there these months, you don’t feel like getting out of bed; you get up to study or work by sheer willpower.

And I told them that many of us Venezuelans are also finding it very hard to get out of bed in the early morning, not because of the cold or because we’re lazy, but because sometimes we are terrified to leave our room and face whatever that day has in store for us.

In a country where nothing can be normally planned, let alone certain!, living day to day is an odyssey full of surprises, far more than an excursion into the Amazon jungle not knowing what strange creature you might run into.

Sadly, this has become our life. It is a kind of endless anxiety about our spouse and their job, our children and their safety, our relatives and friends and their medicines or food, and so on. A kind of anxiety that follows us even into our dreams, when we manage to sleep deeply.

For those of us who have faith it is a little more bearable, because from the moment we get up we begin leaving our worries in God’s hands, praying that He will protect everyone we know from every illness, from dengue, now from Zika, from the drought, from the power cuts, from crime; that no one steals our car battery or our tires; that we find corn flour and laundry soap; that we don’t get mugged; that we don’t get killed!, and on and on and on.

And if something is stolen from you, the odyssey begins of finding a replacement at the lowest possible price, and you also pray that you won’t be robbed in the lines that form before dawn at the tire shops and battery dealers.

If I were a psychologist, I would seriously study the life of Venezuelans over these last five years. No more than that. Just these last five. The book could be called: “How Can a Person Stand Living in Venezuela?”

Perhaps the answer would be that we stand it because our roots are here, our people are here, we have the best climate in the world and the best beaches, we have the Ávila, the food we love (if we can find it), and our little weekly barbecues and get-togethers where we share and relieve the stress.

But above all I think our greatest endurance comes from seeing so many honest young people here who are giving everything they have, studying, working and fighting to build a Homeland that at some point in history will be a reference and an example for the whole world.

We know that Living in Venezuela is anything but easy, and that this year things will get much more complicated. This will be the year of years, just as it sounds! But we must keep going, whatever it costs. No throwing in the towel, unless it’s because it’s already soaked with sweat.

The reward for our efforts will come. We are already seeing the first glimmers of the new dawn that will rise very soon over our beloved Venezuela.

Let us keep going with great fortitude, hope and joy, coping with whatever each day brings when we get out of bed in the morning, and trying to make life happy for those around us. And let us lean heavily on God and the Most Holy Virgin, because they are with us and will keep helping us.

May God bless our beloved Venezuela!