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I came back from vacation with various souveniers, including:
-Relaxed mind
-Crystals from a coal bed
-Insect photos
-Insect bites
-A massive infection on my knee

I have gotten over the bad stuff and am ready to write again. Anyone who wants to see a photo of my knee from this morning can click here. On my screen that's a bit less than life-sized. It no longer hurts and the infection is going the way of the harlequin frog (that is, it will appear to be extinct even as it hides in nooks and crannies) thanks to my friend Dr. Pfizer. The insect pictures will be up soon.

I guess the most remarkable lesson from a week in the oilfields and steamy jungles is the same lesson I keep learning here and it's one that may get a bit dull for all three regular readers of this blerg: quit fearing.

In our first day on the road, my gringo (as in speaks very little Spanish tall curly-haired big-nosed frisbee geek) friend and I:
-Drove in Venezuela
-Talked to drunken Chavista oilworkers
-Used several ATMs at night
-Entered an oilfield with two drilling rigs in use
-Slept there without asking anyone


Drilling rig in San Joaquin oilfield, early morning Sept. 14

On their own, any one of these make many of my Venezuelan friends freak out with nervousness. And that's before I tell them about
-Meeting the poor homesteaders in the oilfields, and accepting their offered cup of ill-boiled coffee
-Hiking with one (Rafael) over a barbed-wire fence, where he argued with the shotgun-toting oil company guard
-Looking for giant snakes in a pond
-Climbing a ladder to the top of an oil well's "Christmas tree" to pose for a photo
-Examining the oil residue atop a wastewater pond

This is all the first 24 hours, and these are all things that are against the rules. Some are against the law, but most just violate the kind of keep-your-head-down good sense that permeates life in Caracas. Of course, nothing happened. This day of adventuring opened neither the door to perdition nor to salvation. But it did open doors of experience, and for that I'm glad to be free. For a country with such a power-mad bureaucracy in Caracas, it's amazing how little the police state intrudes on everyday life. It also helps, even today, to be a pale-skinned gringo in a nice rental car. The "down with the man" mentality that perfuses the States is almost completely absent here except in rhetoric. There is a nearly complete willingness to accept white privilege and wealth privilege.

Walloped

A car finally struck me. It was a wonderfully Venezuelan experience. Though if I want to tell the story in a Venezuelan way, I guess I need to say -Se me choquaron -Me golpearon^*. "They hit me."

I entered the crosswalk at Av. Francisco de Miranda and Av. Principal de Las Mercedes in Chacaito. This is a six-lane 2-way street with tall office buildings intersecting another street with four lanes in one direction and a little country street (sans sidewalks) on the north side. It's a major intersection, big enough to have a painted crosswalk. Some guy in a pale green (!) sedan, a Mustang or some such, wanted to turn right from eastbount Miranda onto southbound Las Mercedes (click the map to understand. This is right in the middle of the map, south of the golf course.) Like most Venezuelans, he saw me walking the same direction as his car was going, and the other pedestrians in the crosswalk going the other way, and decided to just go, knowing that everyone is looking out for cars and will yield with the grace of merengue dancers avoiding other spinning couples on the dance floor. The rule, generally, is that once the nose of a car is ahead of you, it has right of way. I didn't care. I was in the crosswalk and I have decided that in this respect I'm not going to be culturally relativistic -- cars suck just as much here as they do anywhere else.

At first he let me go, walking along to the right of his car as he edged closer and closer. He nosed ahead of me. I kept walking, and right when I was about to walk around the front right corner of the car, he accelerated while turning, walloping me with his right-side mirror and then knocking my knee with the car's side panel. It was like he just couldn't stand the idea of some other guy taking right of way from him, and he needed to assert his insecurity in whatever way was available.

10 meters more and he was stopped at the back of a line of cars at a long red light. I know what you're wondering, and no, he didn't run over the other drivers for blocking his way. Drivers and pedestrians here respect the power of other cars (and of politicians, businessmen, and pushy bastards on dance floors) quite unduly. There is a willingness to submit to the power of others that I, as a long-time U.S. resident, find kind of pathetic.

As he drove off, some guy near me yelled "Demasiado!", obviously shocked. A couple of women in white told me I should have gotten the license plate and told a cop. I realized I didn't particularly care. I thought about how I coulda keyed the car, or kneed it, both of which I would have done when I was younger and in a country where drivers rarely shoot people for small acts of vandalism. It didn't feel worthwhile. This was one little act of unjust power in a city where these things are rampant. Cops, companies, politicians, and just about every driver will take advantage of any little opening to behave in awesomely antisocial, unfair ways. Drivers always, always cut the line in traffic. And I'm no saint, I use my unjust power at times -- I think about getting searched by security schmucks and how you can wow them by mentioning you have a laptop in your backpack. Suddenly they almost always just let you go on through. And besides, I knew I had won. I didn't submit. I just kept walking. That's all I was trying to do, and I did it. I wasn't even bruised.

Such antisocial behavior was, for me, the biggest shock in arriving in Venezuela, with its banner of socialism. One thing I've found -- most people here are incredibly, over-the-top nice. They will do anything for you. Once you've met their eyes. Before that, there is a substantial minority who will fuck you six ways to Sunday. It is pretty easy to join the "us" side of us and them. But until then, beware.<sup>*

*</sup> UPDATE 9/5: Pepito, in comments, notes that my Spanish sucks. That is true. This is why all of my generalizations need to be taken with a grain of salt. Also why I refused to write or speak publicly about Venezuela in general for my first year here, despite goading from friends abroad. As is, I edited the first paragraph to have a better Spanish sentence. I changed the last one from extreme overgeneralization to regular overgeneralization.

PS: Welcome, drinkers of Inca Kola News. And thanks, Mr. Rock, for the link. Very kind. You sure have friends in many places. Hello Buenos Aires! Hello Krung Thep! Hello Sinaloa! Hello Lyngssa! Hello Burnaby! It occurs to me that the Blogger comment software is a bit of a pain. If anyone wants to return the salutation, it's very simple.