One of my life’s big dreams was just fulfilled, albeit fifty years late.

Five decades after being sure that I couldn’t possibly live one SECOND longer without a horse, I finally own one.

I should have named my new horse Manguera, which means hose in Spanish, since I got him by trading irrigation hoses for horse with my neighbor Lelo who needed to water his new corn field. But since “Manguera” doesn’t quite have a ring to it, I decided to call him Mistico.

Mistico was delivered to me by Yeiverly – age 7 months – riding regally atop this lovely black horse, led by her parents – Bebe and Yelimar, ages 17 and 18. Good choices for delivering dreams. These are two of the most dignified people I know.

Today’s internet buzzes with stories of young Venezuelans – actually two sets of them - each proclaiming to be nation’s Dream Deliverers.One set carried guns, tear gas and dresses in olive green. The other carries gas masks, Molotov cocktails and sometimes dresses in nothing. According to your politics, one set is defending or delivering dreams, while the other destroys them. Or vice versa.

But my dream has been delivered by Bebe and Yeli, bearing horse and baby, dressed in rubber boots and tattered jeans. 

My vote goes to them as Venezuela’s Dream Deliverers.

I first got to know this unique couple as they slung mud a few years ago. Not at each other, but at my bahareque (mud) home. Skilled in the ancient art of “mud-stucco” - they gave my home its final smooth layer of mud, adding a grace, a softness, and a harmony it had previously lacked.

I loved watching them work as a team. From dawn to dusk, they hauled and sifted tons (literally) of dirt, mixed it with dried horse manure, stomped it to a smooth sticky paste with their bare feet, then slung it forcefully against the walls. Finally, they smoothed the mud with knowing hands.

At 15 and 16,these young teens were amazingly strong, skilled, hardworking and shockingly free of sexual stereotypes. They were breath of fresh air, an innocent page of Little House on the Prairie coming to life, amidst a backdrop of a nation turning to ashes.

Both seemed to have been born on a horse, so we never had to search for our supply of horse manure! I loved watching them race one another bare-backed down to the river after a long day’s work, ready to jump into the cool waters flowing down from the mountains.

In Mistico’s first few weeks under my care, either Bebe or Yeli or both came daily. They taught me to rope and tie him, to lead him to the kind of grass he likes, add salt to his potato peels. They bathed and groomed him, they shod him and cured him of fleas and parasites. They built his little stable and taught me to call and hug and love him. In the early evenings we rode together down to the river, and we shared with an easiness that somehow comes with the slow gait of horses.

We talked about the rains awaited, the corn ripening, the challenges of surviving off Bebe’s salary in the potato fields – 50 cents a day. About their unsuccessful search for cream of rice for Yeverly, about skipping meals each day, about pulling together with their family of ten to make a soup of zucchini or squash to try to calm the hunger of the day. About wanting to wait for another child and about the total lack of birth control at public health centers. About scrounging harvested fields for left-over black beans or tiny potatoes. But especially, about their love of horses.

Each day as Bebe and Yeli came there was always something in their hands. Some of those scrounged potatoes. Some pepper seeds from their field. A plantain plant. A baby onoto tree. Their generosity , like that of many of my neighbors in my village, in the midst of raw hunger, is truly stunning.

Venezuela’s dreams will not be delivered by tear gas, guns, or Molotov cocktails. This nation, led down the destructive path of group addiction to oil and food imports by governments on the left and right, will not reclaim its dreams on these battlefields.

My vote for Venezuela’s Dream Deliverers is Yeli and Bebe. They know how to grow food. To build homes. To care for children and animals and the earth. To share with their neighbors. To support one another. To live free of stereotypes. To give their strength and passion and hard work and know-how to create a softer, gentler, and more harmonious Venezuela.

Thanks for delivering my dream deferred, muchachos bellos. How I hope that you can deliver it to this nation that I love.

We buried my friend Chuy last Sunday. The kids from Conuco Colibri worked with extra entrega to finish our gardening tasks early – planting corn and building a hugelkultur this week– so that we could attend the funeral together.

I met Chuy 17 years ago when I was rather new to my rural community of Palo Verde. I was teaching a group of kids to play the cuatro. 

Venezuela has given me one of the greatest gifts of my life: music - via this lively, little four-stringed instrument. I have been working to to repay this debt of life by teaching others play it. Now, thirty years - and counting - of teaching, that debt is far from being paid.

But of the hundreds of young people that I have taught to play– Chuy was unique. That is because Chuy was blind.

At the time, two of my children were playing in the El Sistema Youth Orchestra, directed by their friend – teenager Gustavo Dudamel. In the violin section, my daughter Maia often sat next to Paola, a blind fellow violinist. At their concerts, Maia would tap Paola’s elbow to indicate when the next piece was about to begin, or when to rise for the inevitable standing ovation. I always wondered how Paola kept up with the others.

Chuy showed me how. He not only kept up, he led our little cuatro class. He practiced more than anyone, he listened more deeply to the nuances, he imbued more spirit into his strumming. As I placed my hands over his to guide him to learn new chords, a deep connection was forged.

Chuy and I and the other young musicians of Palo Verde played together for many lively Christmas seasons, tromping from mud house to mud house at 5 in the morning and at 8 at night, nine days in a row, playing our cuatros and tambores, drinking hot chocolate together, carrying out the centuries-old tradition of aguinaldos.

In 2004/5 I was absent from Venezuela for nine months, accompanying Maia in her last year of high school in New York. I returned to Venezuela late that spring, with a delegation in tow. It was one of dozens of groups that I brought to Venezuela to see first-hand the hopeful changes taking place in my adopted nation.

As our bus stopped for a drink in the plaza of nearby Sanare, I saw from the window of the bus as a rickety jeep pulled up to the plaza. Suddenly, I recognized the driver. It was Chuy. Chuy? Driving??

My partner Ledys raced out to bring Chuy into the bus. We embraced and with great emotion, Chuy told me and the delegation participants how he had been to Cuba twice over the past six months, and had free eye surgery that restored his sight. Blinded by diabetes as a teenager, now - some eight years later - he was gifted again with sight.

Chuy told me that he had recently seen me on tv, when I had been on Chavez’s weekly Alo Presidente shows. His mom had commented Chuy, that’s Lisa!

No it’s not! he responded. But then: well, actually I’ve never really seen Lisa.

For the next ten years I teased Chuy that he never imagined how beautiful I really was during his blind years of our friendship.

From then on, whenever I brought a delegation to Venezuela, I would invite Chuy to speak to them. His story was such a concrete example of the almost miraculous changes in the lives of Venezuelans, especially those living on the margins, like in my community.

I showed them the dozens of free new houses in my community, funded by the government. I showed them the lovely new free clinics that sprouted up in just about every barrios and village (and took several of them to be treated there themselves).

 I took them to classes where old and young who had been excluded from schools were proudly learning.

But it was Chuy’s story that most touched the heart. And somehow proved that, in spite of the massive media smear campaign against Chavez, those Venezuelans who had been marginalized , forgotten, relegated for decades, suddenly felt that they were empowered citizens, with full lives, healthy bodies, wide-open futures.

Even though Chuy was now a full-visioned person, he never stopped identifying with those who had no sight. He continued to run a radio show with the local association of the blind, attended their meetings and helped support their sale of crafts from his little store. Chuy radiated the solidarity and love of others that is deeply part of the Venezuelan character.

Early on Sunday afternoon, I walked alongside Chuy for the last time through the streets of Palo Verde that he and I had filled with song so many times. Along his coffin as well walked our kids from Conuco Colibri, and the whole village of Palo Verde. Chuy was beloved, and everyone had their own story.

We walked slowly, and sang the old familiar songs. No one wanted to hurry. No one wanted that street to be emptied of Chuy’s cheerful presence.

As the funeral procession approached the lush spring that marks the end of our village, Chuy’s coffin was loaded on a car for the remaining ride to the Sanare cemetary. Everyone - young and old, hopped on flatbed trucks, on top of jeeps and pick ups, squeezing in for the ride to his burial.

Only my partner Ledys and I turned around, and headed back to our little farm, at the far other end of the village. We walked slowly, remembering Chuy. We missed him so much, already.

In that backwards walk I felt the backwards tide of my adopted nation. Chuy’s sight had been restored by the concrete achievements in Venezuela over the past decade and a half. But now Chuy’s eyes had been closed forever as those achievements slip away. 

Our backwards journey as a nation meant that Chuy had been unable to find his medications regularly over the past two years due to massive scarcity of even the most basic medications. He had been unable to follow the most basic diet for a diabetic in that same time frame. 

My heart aches for Chuy. My heart aches for the dreams we held so close. My heart aches for what is to come.

While some raise molotov cocktails ,guns and shields to try to defend or challenge this stark status quo, I’ll continue to raise up my weapons of choice in this necessary battle to forge a new Venezuela. A hoe. A shovel. And a cuatro.

 Among the many disappearing items in Venezuela today, the one that worries the most:  talented young people.

Slowly, we have learned to deal with the other shortages in our lives (i.e. almost everything that is simultaneously essential and hoard-able). What choice do we have if we are to survive?

No corn flour? Grow some. Grind some. No oil. Boil everything. No cooking gas? Gather some firewood. No sugar? Grate a block of raw sugar cane.  No cash at the banks? Trade food with a friend over the fence. No dog food? Cook vegetable scraps. No coffee? Simmer some lemongrass (hmm.. that one is definitely NOT satisfactory).

Some say we are healthier because of this food crisis.  We are eating real food.  We are growing lots of it ourselves. Diabetes and high blood pressure are being purged from our collective bodies. At our best moments we tease that we might just be probably the healthiest nation on the planet. 

Of course, it's not so simple. We are exhausted. And skinny. As I look at my neighbor taking up yet another belt notch to keep his pants from falling to his ankles, I know that malnutrition, then hunger, are only steps. away.  

It's been a testimony to parental love to see   my adult neighbors have all dropped 10, 20, 30  (or more) kilos, while their kids more or less stay the same. (One neighbor tells me that there are many days when he just eats a baby's portion of food - just enough to keep alive - so that the kids will have enough, )

But the rapid disappearance of our young people from our communities is what most worries me, and tugs at my heart. 

I don't have to look far. My own three adult children who grew up in Venezuela and love their country with a passion, have left. The last one to throw in the towel ( for the moment) is my middle son: a talented chef. But trying to set up a restaurant in a nation with no food is like trying to open a water park in the Sahara. 

They are far from alone. 

Statistics are hard to come by, but many estimate that over 2 million Venezuelans have left over the past year or two. That is close to 10% of the population and a much larger proportion of those in their 20's and 30's. The photo on the top of the page was taken of my daughter with her closest friends a few years ago. I realize that 5 of these 6 young women have now settled outside of Venezuela. 

 In addition to my kids, most of their friends have left, and most of the friends of friends. Auto mechanics, graphic designers, doctors, musicians, psychologists, dental students, filmmakers. That is just the list of young people I know personally who have left in the past month.  They have scattered mostly to other countries in the Americas: Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay., Chile. 

With most salaries i Venezuela currently under $100 per month (including professionals) it's hard not to look elsewhere. Add to that the grueling task of finding food. I've finally come to the conclusion that it takes less stress (albeit more energy)  to grow my own food than search for it in stores. But I have land to do so, which is not the case for most.

This story of mass migration is hardly even a story for many places across the Americas.

But it is a new story for Venezuela, a country that had been the destination of immigrants from around the Americas , Europe and Middle East for decades. Venezuela opened its home and heart to those fleeing military dictatorships, wars, and economic travesties around the globe.   I'm one of the many who was taken in my these big-hearted and generous people. 

Today I was saddened to learn about a march planned in Panama this week to reject Venezuelan immigrants. The main complaint, according to the invitation to march, seems to be regarding the abundance of arepas and tequeños (Venezuelan soul food) now being sold on Panamanian streets.

I can't help but wonder how many Panamanians received free eye surgery thanks to Venezuela, or cheap Venezuelan oil to power their cars.  Venezuela under Chavez oozed solidarity for its neighbors in the Americas and around the globe.

Some young people are opting to stay, even when presented with possibilities of moving on. Stay tuned for my next blog post, when I'll share some of their stories, that fill me with hope 

But for now I'll allow myself to mourn the loss of so many vibrant, talented, motivated young people who are leaving Venezuela in droves, giving the best years of their lives to other lands. 

And I"ll pray that my adopted nation  may find reprieve from this storm and set a course that works for all its citizens so that our young and talented youth may return before their  roots sink too deep in other foreign soils. Meanwhile, I send my support to all Venezuelans living in all corners of the world. Please share the best of who we are: fun, generous, loving, hard working and forever in need of an arepa or tequeño.  

I have learned to do a lot of things in my many years in Venezuela, including tossing out bunches of perfectly round arepas in a flash.  Three kids who had the habit of getting hungry three times a day will do that to you.

But these days my arepas are looking a bit wobbly:  less perfectly smooth and rounded. But then, so are Jenny’s and Chichila’s and everyone else’s.  But maybe -  just maybe - these wobbly arepas are one step in the direction of turning our food crisis on its head.

Walk down the street of almost any Venezuelan barrio or village these days in the early evening and you will hear the same sound:  a smooth metallic spinning that means only one thing: the hand grinding of a corn mill. Look up at front porch or balcony and you will see a child or mom or father or grandparent - or all of the above - taking turns to grind the corn for the evening arepas.  It’s a simple action, but packed with meaning.

Arepas are those a hot corn cakes filled with anything (or nothing) that are our ultimate comfort/soul food in Venezuela. But also our ultimate energy food that keep us walking, working, dancing, dreaming.  Arepas are the sun of our food universe here, around which everything else spins.   Without them, well, there is sadness. And – sometimes – there is hunger.

For Venezuelans of recent decades, arepas came from a bag of pre-cooked, dried, refined corn flour, to which you just added some water, salt , performed some minor league kneading and voila: a dozen arepas placed on the grill.  

My kids, like all barrio kids of the past several generations, had the task of going to the corner store to buy a bag of corn flour at our beck and call (for which they usually earned a lollipop). It was cheap, always available and literally omnipresent in all of our lives.  The LAST thing we ever imagined was that it would go missing.

Until it did.  The story of the Disappearing Bags of Arepa Corn Flour offers clues to decipher Venezuela’s food crisis, and for overcoming it as well.

The story goes like this: Venezuela has lots of oil.   That brings in lots of dollars.  Which makes it cheaper to import food (like corn) than to produce it.

Companies that market corn flour import the corn (or much of it),  take all the nutritious stuff out and put what remains  into a plastic bag.  Because corn flour was deemed a basic necessity, the government “sold” dollars to these corn flour companies  to import corn at about 20 cents for a dollar (or less). The one condition was that the company had to sell the product at a very cheap regulated price to the public.

Take two: oil prices drop, dollars become scarce, companies decide (illegally) to use their reduced dollar allotment to import  items more lucrative than corn.  Or, they take the dollars and run (to the nearest foreign bank).  All of which emptied our little corner stores of those omnipresent bags of corn flour. Add to this scene a whole cast of unscrupulous characters who grab up the remaining corn flour and sell it from their back door, for a fortune.

This same corn flour tale can be applied to the other staple items gone missing here in Venezuela: oil, sugar, rice, beans, etc. Except that remember: arepas are the sun of our food universe.

But, like a page out of  Garcia Marquez’ 100 Years of Solitude, we suddenly experienced a collective memory here in Venezuela: arepas are made from corn!  Let me tell you, there is nothing to spur a gardening revolution like hunger.

So, corn started sprouting up, literally, in the most unimaginable places (like in my own backyard!) Then people started digging out their grandparents’ corn grinders that were rusting away in patios as plant holders or bird feeders or door stoppers.

Soon, corn sellers began to appear on the streets, selling bags and bags of it (at reasonable prices) and big pots of corn were set to boil along with the morning coffee (which these days has become the morning lemongrass tea).  And neighbors who didn’t have corn grinders were borrowing corn grinders of neighbors who did.  And suddenly, everyone was growing corn, boiling corn, grinding corn, kneading corn and eating pure corn arepas.  Which come out a bit warped and wobbly since all that rough good stuff is still intact.

Not all of this arepas-from-scratch tale is a cake walk. This takes time and effort and produces sore muscles (as I discovered last week trying to grind the 6 kilos of corn to accompany our weekly gardening kids’ soup). But, it also brings folks together, and it delights the heart and palate and pocketbook.

AND, it undermines the core problem that has been driving this food crisis that is trying to be taken advantage of by so many different interest groups (and governments) that are using Venezuelans hunger for their economic and political advantage .

I recently read a quote posted by a beloved Earlham professor Howard Richards:

The key solution is to make our physical existence less dependent on capital accumulation strengthening other ways to meet the needs of life

As our corn grinders spin, we are strengthening those “other ways”. The road is a long one, but this is one giant step. Eating REAL food that comes from our backyard, or neighbor’s yard, or neighboring community plot, or somewhere in … VENEZUELA!  Maybe this is the real revolution we were hoping for, and thought we were building a few years ago.

Hunger, anger, lines, disappearing kilos and unscrupulous characters still are hanging around in a nagging way, but maybe - just maybe – their grip is loosening.  Stay tuned!

I was going to begin this blog by writing about Fabi. She is the one who inspired me to grow food. 

After helping me dig yet another hole for yet another tree on my  little farm, she asked me why I didn’t get down to business and plant black beans  and corn.  Or something whose turn-around time to becoming food was a bit quicker than another mango or orange tree.  

My excuse was that the only remaining empty land was a sad, scruffy, sandy patch that didn’t even produce weeds.  But Fabi was unconvinced. This is a ten year old who frequently skips school to catch fish for lunch for her family (of ten), while somehow topping the class achievement roster. She manages to DO things.

So, I wasn’t surprised when Fabi showed up the next day at 6 am with a sack of goat manure.  I pulled on my rubber boots and donned my straw hat. And I knew there was no looking back.

Fast forward six months and Fabi and I were knee deep in a mini food forest of bananas, black beans, passion fruit, papaya, broccoli, lemon grass, spinach, pigeon peas, yucca , and much more.  Our two pairs of hands had multiplied by 20, many of them smaller than hers.  Club Conuco Colibri  (Hummingbird Farm Club) was birthed in kind of a natural evolution, a group of kids who just showed up to garden by our side.  Kind of a ragtag 4H club and CSA all wrapped into one. (check out the video of our kids' food garden project in this link.  Although we already met our goal (in one day) the story will inspire you I hope)

 But, Fabi won’t be the protagonist of my first blog post, because well, Fabi has left.  A month ago her mom farmed her out to a godmother in another village.  In spite of the growing harvest of our own mini food forest and Fabi’s fish, there just wasn’t enough food for a family of ten.  How I miss those 80 pounds of sheer determination!

Fortunately, ten-year-old Franger has stepped up to that role, in his usual unassuming way, tens parts action, one part words.  This Sunday afternoon he called me to the chicken wire fence dividing our two yards, as I was planting squash among the pigeon peas. He offered me a spoonful of what he was eating from a well-worn plastic cup: a powder of roasted grated corn with a splash of cinnamon (because, he told me, there is no sugar anywhere). Surprisingly delicious.

Franger is a member of our kids gardening club (somehow that term smacks of white gloves and pink lemonade, but the reality is a bit more ragged and colorful )  That same morning we had poured sweat and muscle into deep-digging a new vegetable bed and hoeing the hills for corn.  We had each eaten a small bowl of soup at midday, made smaller than usual since 40 instead of 30 showed up to garden. I knew that Franger was returning home to slim pickings, like all the kids, and the small bowl of soup wouldn’t go far.

As the late afternoon wore on, all I could think about was the corn gruel. It was so tasty and I felt my body craving the calories it packed after a full day of physical activity. My own cupboard was bare, although the garden had lots of tomatoes :) 

 As the sun dipped low, sending crimson rays over the Fumarola volcano, Franger called me over again, and unceremoniously passed me a little bag of the gruel. Knowing that it came from his tiny share, I was moved. 

I went into my house and mixed the gruel with water and it boiled and thickened. I sat on my front porch and devoured the steaming treat,watching the sunset close the curtain on my mountain backdrop. How good it is to eat when you are hungry.  

Never was there a finer feast, nor a more gracious giver. And that is the story I want to share as I open this blog.

There are numerous political and economic groups who have staked their interest in Venezuela’s hunger. In Franger’s hunger. In Fabi’s hunger. Even in my hunger. Among these groups are unscrupulous elements in the Venezuelan opposition, the US government, the Venezuelan government,  U.S. Southern Command,  armed forces in Venezuela, the IMF, the OAS, ExxonMobil and Wall Street, just to name a few. It is in the interest of many in these powerful groups, that we go hungry here in Venezuela.

In Venezuela, a nation of enormous commodities, hunger has become the commodity that trumps all . In this land that holds the world’s largest oil reserves. That contains a large share of the continent’s fresh water supply and untold pristine reserves of precious minerals.  In this the land that inspired democratic people’s movements throughout the South, In this land of waterfalls and liberators and classical music and beautiful people. In this land that covers my hands and boots at the end of each day.

Hunger is the Queen of Hearts, the Ace of Spades, the all-powerful god that promises to bring people to their knees and drink from their cup. Whether that cup be the overthrow of socialism. The savior of an entrenched political elite. The rise of a new political elite. The enriching of mining companies. Billion dollar drilling rights.  Scandalously lucrative loans. Bursting bank accounts for black marketeers. And so on.   

Except that – so far – the Venezuelan people haven’t bent at the knee to drink from anyone’s trough. At least not yet. Against all odds. Against a battery of State Department staffers, oil and mining company accountants, writers and editors from the mass media (the same ones who were silent when Venezuela was producing more affordable homes and college students and community doctors per capita than anywhere in the Americas ).  

 And the reason this hasn’t happened, well….. it’s all Franger’s fault.

Franger and several million Frangers here in Venezuela. Who grind dried corn to mix with water when there is nothing in the store. Who use and reuse a cinnamon stick instead of sugar. Who pass scarce amounts of food over the fence to a neighbor.  Who rise before the dawn to plant something to eat in the most inhospitable of soils.

I don’t want to deny the many shoulders on which lie the blame for this hunger. That’s for another story. Right now, I’ll offer Franger’s and my shoulders: some 50 years apart in age, but both trying our best to carry what we can in this strange new journey.

Stay tuned for more. abrazos, Lisa