I was recently reading a post at I Eat My Pigeon where Liv was talking about the similarities and differences of living in Japan, Ireland and Italy. It dawned on me that I’ve noticed a lot similarities here in Venezuela not with South Florida, but Haiti. At first glance, they appear to be two completely different places, but there’s no escaping the Caribbean/Latin American blood.

Street vendors: Known as buhoneros in Venezuela, street vendors are just about everywhere. From bootleg CD’s/DVD’s to costume jewelry, you can get a variety of items right on the street. In Haiti, street vendors are more abundant and also sell food – aside from licensed hot dog vendors, etc., I have yet to see informal food sales here. My first job out of college was working with street vendors all over Haiti. The motivation of street vendors to make a living reminds me that most people in poverty do not wait for handouts.

Unreliable service people: Your washer and dryer stop working. You ask your neighbor if they know a repairman and they give you a number. You speak to the repairman who says he’ll be there Monday at 10 AM. You plan your day around being home when he arrives. At 11 AM when there’s no sign of said repairman, you call him and he says he was hung up at another job and won’t be there until 12 PM. The day either ends with him finally showing up only to tell you the parts he need will take a week to find OR after waiting another 2 hours for him to show up you tell him to forget about it. This has Haiti written all over it

Rural lifestyle: The first picture is of Caracas and the second is of my hometown of Jacmel. Believe it or not, once you leave Caracas, there are a lot of small towns that look very much like the second picture. You see small homes perched on the side of a mountain and you wonder what’s keeping it from sliding down. You find people sitting on their porch in the middle of the day, greeting the occasional passerby. Everyone knows each other and the days move at a slower pace. Every time I drive through one of these towns I can almost immediately identify characters from my own town: the oldest families, the youth itching to leave, the gossips who know what’s going on with everybody else. It always gives me a bit of nostalgia, but it also feels nice to have this cultural connection in a foreign place.

Somehow this third month just came and went. To make sure that I didn’t forget this month, I took stock of my my latest realizations.

• You can never estimate how long it will take to get something done. What you may think is a simple errand can turn out to taking the whole day to accomplish (more on this in another post)
• Even when conducting business, Venezuelans enjoy personal chit chat
• Finding an apartment to my liking that is affordable is not easy – in other words, housing is limited
• Spanish is not impossible to learn, but I will probably never speak it as well as I speak English
• Venezuelans take their vacations seriously (which seems to be whenever kids are on vacation, too), so booking a vacation in advance is absolutely necessary
• Similar to South Florida, there is always something to do – theatre, concerts, museums. Caracas is culturally rich

These beautiful pictures are of Caracas. I thought they displayed what I sometimes feel about living here – it can be tumultuous, but there’s a lot of beauty.

Subscribe in a reader

Subscribe to Balanced Melting Pot by Email

Balanced Melting Pot on Facebook