I am
not a natural runner. I can wield a hoe or push a wheelbarrow for
hours, but somehow a trot around the block always winded me.
In Venezuela we
don't really need to run anyway. All of us are trying to conserve
hard-earned pounds, not shed them in vain by racing around. Mothers
in my village often get angry at their children when they run,
because it makes them hungrier and wears out their shoes.
Walking,
however, is definitely in vogue in Venezuela. Many of the four
million people who have emigrated have literally walked their way to
other countries.
For
those of us who remain, walking is our main transportation mode. With
an oil change costing a month's salary, and a set of tires worth a
year's wages, cars and buses are left to collect dust (and in our
case, a family of homeless snakes). Even if a vehicle does run,
finding gasoline is a major challenge.
Running short
of gas in a nation that sits atop the world's largest oil reserves is
quite a feat, and the credit goes to the Maduro-Trump Alliance. Ok, I
guess alliance isn’t the right word, since both
leaders intensely hate one another and actively wish each other off
their respective thrones.
But,
this is a relationship that seem to me to serve both
sides extremely well. Trump's economic sanctions
give him political brownie points (and create scarcities of almost
everything essential in Venezuela, including chemicals to refine
gasoline). For his part, Maduro gets to blame all of his nation's
woes on Trump, and thus stay firmly in power.
So,
back to my running. Why on earth do I do it? God knows I get
enough exercise walking everywhere and growing much of my food. I
have no natural running talent. There is not one square
meter of flat ground in my entire town.
Maybe
it's the temporary release from this sadness as I watch my adopted
nation implode. Maybe it clears my mind as I struggle to see the way
out. Maybe it’s a break from hauling water, splitting firewood,
grinding corn, searching for the food I can’t grow. Maybe it's just
a.way of being momentarily alone, in this society that craves
togetherness.
As
I exit my farm for a run I head left, down a steep dirt road, nothing
but mountains around me. Running downhill is actually a
cop-out since gravity does most of the work. However, that does leave
going uphill to the last, when you are already exhausted. I solved
that problem brilliantly by deciding to return always at a walk.
My turn around point is Amadeus's gate, after which steep becomes vertical all the way to the river. I
used to linger there before turning back. The sun setting over the
mountain is lovely. Amadeus's farm, though, is uninspiring - a jumble
of tumbleweeds like most farms around me. I pause there to wonder how
such a hungry (and fertile) nation has managed to almost completely
stop growing food (with the tiny exception of some such as our group of intrepid farming kids). I
know the answer of course, a toxic combo of sanctions, corruption,
ineptitude, indifference. Plus greed: it is way more lucrative for
government insiders to distribute food boxes than to actually
help farmers grow food.
One
evening I lingered too long, and as night began to fall, I was
several miles from home. Darkness comes fast near the equator,
leaving only the moon as a guide over the mountains. (Electricity is
mostly a memory now, so no hope of seeing twinkling house lights in
my village ahead). That day, my faithful four-legged running
companion Cocoa had stayed behind to nurse her pups, And so I
realized that if I didn’t want to be trapped in darkness with steep
ledges around me, I should probably run back home, steeply uphill.
And
so I did, sweating and panting, the encroaching
darkness pulling me forward, fear trumping exhaustion. Looking back,I
realize that if I had not returned, my partner Ledys would have
simply grabbed a flashlight,rallied the dogs and found me in a jiffy,
But at the moment I envisioned sharing a rocky bed with snakes
and scorpions.
.That
uphill run was a turning point. It
filled me with a sense of heady victory .When everything else around
me is not working, at least my body can.
Poco a poco I began to run uphill a
tiny bit more each day, my lungs burning, my heart pounding, my
sweat pouring, my mind clearing
When
I finally reach my gate after these runs, I fall onto the grass, and
catch my breath as the Fumarola mountain gently disappears. I feel
such peace.
I
need that peace, I need that hope, I need that cleansing, I need that
solitude. Those of us who have stayed
in Venezuela are running uphill every single
day.
