Caracas

I arrived in Merida city by buss at midnight on a Saturday night a little over a week ago. I am enjoying my stay in Merida, and the langueage school I am attending. The four days before arriving here I had been staying with Justin in an appartment he was renting in Caracas. Caracas was a very interesting experience, modern, big, and surrounded by hills with barrios climbing the slopes and spilling over the peaks on a few sides. The other slopes surrounding the city are steep green mountains. While in the city, I took the metro with Justin to the art museums, and ran arrands trying to get cell phones to work. My most valuable experiences in Caracas were two conversations with Caracaños about the city. Justin and I both had the number of a man named Charlie Hardie, from different sources. We met Charlie at a very fancy hotel for desert, where he was staying with a group of college students who were on a school trip, which he was leading while they were here. Charlie had come to Venezuela a little over twenty years ago, as a priest. He ended up living in a tin shack in a barrio with no suer or running water, for 8 years. He is currently very excited because his book is being published soon, which is about his experiences in Venezuela. The publishers have chosen to title it A Cowboy in Caracas.
The second valuable discussion was with the Arthur, who works for global exchange, is from Caracas and speaks english. While we were driving, he talked about the barrios on the hillsides, and the oil strike that occured a few years ago. He explained that the barrios are very similar to those shown in the film, City of God, with gangs fighting over territory for drug sales. As huge as these problems are, there are changes occuring slowly. Health facilities, food, community based media and new housing construction, I will talk about these later, but you can view photos of the housing pilot project on Justin´s blog - http://www.justinvela.com/
He also spoke about comming from a family that opposes Chavez, but his opinon changing when the elite people who opose CHavez shut down the entire oil operations for two months, shutting down the economy for months. I will write about this more late, when I have the correct dates and names, because it (the sut down of the oil know as The Oil Strike) seems to have been very important in influencing people´s opinions about the conservative political party.