The Big Time Diplomatic Life

We have been as busy as a couple of one-armed paper hangers these past two weeks. It started off with Mary and I attending a big bash at a really posh hotel, El Gran Melia Caracas, thrown by the Kuwaiti Embassy in to celebrate their independence day, which is the day Desert storm ended (after we kicked Iraqi ass the first go-around). We met the Kuwaiti Ambassador, and a former Vice President of Venezuela, whom I regaled with a witty comment in Spanish that I am an “amo de casa” (“ama de casa” is a housewife, there is not really a word in Spanish for a male housewife, kind of like there is not a word in English for a male housewife, except maybe “house husband” which sounds funny, but not as funny, apparently, as “amo de casa”). We had our photo taken by a reporter for the newspaper who obviously did not know who we are (nobody) but did not want to chance missing a photograph of two important people. Every TV station had their cameras there, there was a red carpet with a gauntlet of cameras (we skipped the red carpet) and the party was full of the rich and famous of Venezuela. Being that drinking alcohol is a terrible sin for Muslims as well as a crime punishable by death in some horrible manner, there was no booze at the party. Instead they were serving unusual and rather tasty fruit juices. I sampled cantaloupe juice and watermelon juice and saw others drinking strawberry juice, pineapple juice and guava juice. After a few juices we asked for a regular old Coke which a waiter obligingly fetched. A short note about Cokes in Venezuela: They make them with real cane sugar, not corn syrup, and they taste really good, noticeably better than in the US. I think I am ruined for life on US Cokes.

The food was spectacular. I am not sure I can come up with enough adjectives to describe it. Indulgent is perhaps best. They had roast lamb (the whole lamb, several of them) roast pigs (a little surprising given the rules against eating pork in the Middle East), several huge slabs of roast beef, Middle Eastern food (tabouli, dolmos, kabobs etc.) sushi, seafood (shrimp, grouper, salmon, octopus) a huge array of cheeses, pasta, Venezuelan specialties, and of course, an enormous desert buffet. The only bummer was that our ride (we came in an embassy vehicle with a driver) was leaving at 8:30 and the eating began at 8:00. Don’t worry, we still stuffed our faces, taking care to not be seen stuffing our faces, which would not have mattered anyway since everyone there was eating like they had skipped lunch. We also learned an important lesson: when they play the national anthem of Venezuela and the country throwing the party, that is the queue to dig in (like at baseball games where the last line of the national anthem is “play ball!”). A lot of people got the jump on us because we stood around looking confused as people started jockeying for position at the food spreads. Next time we will be prepared. Yep, we’re living the big time diplomatic life.

Two days later, our HHE (State Speak for our stuff) arrived. The good news is our things have arrived; the bad news is it all had to be unpacked. So I spent the last weeks unpacking boxes and putting things away, knowing in the back of my mind (actually in the front of my mind) that two years from now I would be packing it up again as we head for who-knows-where. It was really interesting to see what we packed all these months later. There were a number of random things, some I remembered, and some I did not. For example, we brought several “boom boxes” that play CD’s but not a single CD. We brought three space heaters and an electric blanket, yet we sleep with the windows open at night. The feeling of randomness was exacerbated by the movers that sometimes seemed to put thing in boxes without any rhyme or reason. We found kitchen items in book boxes, makeup in boxes labeled “dining room”, and laundry room things in with the bedroom things. It is now all put away, thank goodness, and the pictures have been hung (by the embassy carpenters) and the computer set up, and the TV and stereo hooked up, cable is hooked up (after two service calls), boxes and trash have been removed, and all the furniture arranged. It was almost as much work to unpack as it was to pack. I am also pleased to report that there were no major causalities in the move; everything seemed to be in one piece.

We also got our car, the BMW, which has increased our personal freedom enormously. First, a note about some rumors spreading on the internet. It is rumored that gasoline in Venezuela only costs .12 cents per gallon. That is incorrect. By my calculations it is closer to .08 cents per gallon, for Premium, full serve, and that includes a tip for the person that pumps the gas. He also washed the windshield. This was at a BP station, not even PDVSA (the government-run oil company). I guess the price depends to some degree on the exchange rate. At the official rate, gasoline would be about .16 cents per gallon. Still, gasoline is basically free. Unfortunately traffic is INSANE. I have already described how Venezuelans drive without regard for the rules (which, by the way, once you accept and embrace rule-free driving, it is kind of fun since you can do what ever you want. If a bus stops in front of you…drive up on the sidewalk to go around it. Need to make a U-turn?...do it. Not in the turn lane when you need to make a turn? Just turn anyway and wave at the guy you cut off) But the traffic deserves a special mention. Even the shortest trip, like the 3-5 km drive to the mall to see a movie, takes about 45 minutes. I cannot imagine working downtown. The freeways are so congested all the time that people walk between the lanes of traffic selling things like bottles of water, car air fresheners, news papers, limes (?) and colorful cloth. Of course the only vehicles moving are the ubiquitous motorcycles/scooters which dodge, weave, juke and jive through the traffic. Parking is also an ordeal. It always costs money to park, though not much, and there is a chronic shortage of space. Most parking lots are double parking, meaning that an attendant must shuffle the cars to get a car out. A casual observation that Mary made is that many of the parking lot attendants do not themselves own a car and it shows in their driving skills. In Venezuela they take the term “bumpers” literally.

I interviewed for two jobs, Biometrics and Fraud Prevention Unit, and I was hired in the Biometrics position because my Spanish is not up to the level necessary to interview individuals involved in the fraud investigations. I did test out at a 2/3 in Spanish which means I have basic conversational ability (the ability to convey simple ideas in a grammatically correct manner in the present, past and future and to satisfy basic needs in a social setting or business context) and my reading and writing qualifies as a “good working knowledge” of Spanish. I can read the newspaper, although it helps to have a dictionary handy, and I can write much better than I can speak, because it is slower. It is quite difficult to quickly compose grammatically correct sentences when talking, but when writing a sentence if I realize that I am using an indirect object I can go back and insert the correct pronoun. That is hard to do when speaking.


As noted above the internet and cable TV are now hooked up, but not without a little bit of a hassle. The cable guy came and looked at the cable that was already hooked into the TV and said it is hooked up. I think he detached and reattached the cable from the TV, maybe he put a new cable wire from the wall to the TV, but it certainly was nothing requiring a visit from the installer. He did bring a modem for the internet. He did not, however, bring a cable box. I asked him if we need a cable box and he said no and he left. Well, we paid for HBO, and HBO does not work. So I call the cable people at the embassy (they have a whole department dedicated to dealing with the local cable and internet providers) and they contact the cable company and are informed that we did not order HBO. We did, and I have the contract to prove it. Oops. Then they claim they don’t have any cable boxes. When we demand a refund (or the embassy demands the refund, they would have laughed at us) they suddenly find some cable boxes and schedule an appointment to hook up the boxes. Now we have HBO and “Skin-a-Max” (Cinemax). Yippie!!

We hired a maid (Yaneth) and she comes three times a week (Mon.-Wed.– Fri.). It costs about $40 per week, which is $20 less than a house keeper for a half day in Houston! She cleans, does laundry, irons, washes windows, organizes Mary’s bathroom items and makeup, sews and cooks. She is a very good cook too! She made Pabellon which is a meal that is considered the national dish of Venezuela. It is shredded beef in a tomato sauce with garlic, onion and spices, with black beans, rice and fried plantains. Yum! She has also made Pollo con Arroz (chicken and rice), Curvina (a type of local fish that is like freshwater bass) a soup with name (with a tilde over the “n” pronounced “nee-ya-mae”) apio, pumpkin, potatoes, plantains and beef soup bones that she refers to as osso buco (but it is not osso buco). Name and apio are roots similar to potatoes, but different. I don’t know if I would describe them as “good”, but then I don’t think I would call potatoes “good” in the “mmmm, yummy potatoes” sense of the word “good”. They are different, equally good as potatoes and inject a little variety. Pumpkin is good, however. Here in Venezuela (and throughout South America I am told) they use pumpkin as a vegetable and not just as a Halloween decoration and pie filling. Slices of pumpkin are sold in the grocery stores and it is boiled and served as a vegetable, used in soups and used as a soup base. Plantains are another story as well. Plantains are really just huge bananas, but there are many varieties. Green ones are used to make fried crispy chips; brown plantains are used to make the sweet, sticky fried “sweet” plantains. There is another variety apparently that is a bit starchy and is put in soup. I know I will never see bananas the same way ever again. Apio must not be confused with celery which in Spanish is called “apio”, but in Venezuela celery is called “celery” and a root that looks like ginger, but tastes like a potato, is called apio – this was all explained to me by Yaneth because I bought her celery and told her it was apio, but she had to explain that it was not the right apio. Yaneth also interacts with the repairmen for me. She is from Colombia and speaks more slowly and clearly than Venezuelans, so I can understand her Spanish. Having a maid is very nice. Very, very nice.

While on the subject of services, we have also made arrangements for a woman to come to the apartment on a weekly basis and give us one-hour massages. We had our first massage this week and it was very relaxing. This is the deep muscle massage where the accumulated knots in my back and neck are (painfully) worked out. The cost for 2 one-hour massages, in our apartment? $20 USD. Sweet!

Last weekend we took a trip to Colonia Tovar, a small town about 80 km from Caracas. Colonia Tovar was founded by German immigrants in the 1800’s and looks like a Bavarian town. They have German restaurants, bakeries and, best of all, beer! The story that I read was that in 1843, after a particularly devastating civil war, Venezuela was in need of colonists and an entire Bavarian village, Kaiserstuhl, was enticed to relocate to the mountains in Venezuela. Thus, the butcher, baker, printer, shoemaker, every tradesman in the town, the farmers, their wives and families and everyone else, about 350 in all, packed up and moved to Venezuela. While in route, smallpox broke out on the ship, and about a third of the settlers died. When news of the smallpox reached Venezuela, the German settlers were kept in quarantine off shore for 40 days. Lack of food on the ship added to the suffering the settlers had already endured. When they were allowed to come ashore, it was not at the main port, but at a remote area. They were provided no help carrying their possessions and had to make the arduous journey through the mountains and jungles to where they were to settle. As a result of being basically shunned by the Venezuelans, the settlers shunned them back and built a self sufficient community completely isolated from the rest of the world until the 1940’s. There was not even a road to Tovar until 1963. The buildings, customs, language and food remained German. The town is named for the wealthy landowner that gave them the land to build their town.

We went to Colonia Tovar with Beth and Brian Smith, friends from FSI (Brian was in Mary’s Spanish class). We got terribly lost on the way (of course) and ended up in one of those barrios that the Diplomatic Security Officers tell you to never go to for any reason. (Rule #1: Never visit the ranchos.) We actually got stuck in a small alley (it looked like a good place to make a u-turn) between a dumpster being filled by a front loader and a bus behind us. (Thus, violating rule #2 “always leave yourself an escape route”) We drove around in circles, through open air markets, past vendors selling live chickens in the street, past “Mercal” stores (government subsidized grocery stores) with lines around the block and through areas that are not, well, safe. All of this craziness from four gringos in a BMW. We finally found the way to Tovar by cleverly asking the driver of a bus labeled “Colonia Tovar” how we might find our way to Tovar. He pointed to a street we had passed about a dozen times and told us to take a right. That did the trick and we did not get lost again on our trip. The problem is that they do not have street signs. The best one can hope for is a plaque built into the side of a building with a street name or sometimes the name of the corner (yes, corners have names here). The signs for the freeway exits are for neighborhoods, not streets. Once in a while there is a sign for an “Avenida Principal de (fill in the name of the neighborhood)” which means the neighborhood main street. I found, however, that these main streets are the hubs of commercial activity, like open air markets, and are not, therefore good choices for driving around, or trying to find the way to Colonia Tovar. The next day, not to be deterred by our getting lost the previous day, Mary and I set out for El Avila (the big mountain north of Caracas between Caracas and the Caribbean). One would not think it would be hard to find a huge mountain, but it was surprisingly difficult to find a street to take us to the mountain. I guess the Caraquenos don’t think mountains are such good places to drive and did not devote much effort to building roads to places where there are no roads. After getting lost in downtown, which was much better a place to get lost than the ranchos, and after much cursing, yelling and swearing of oaths to never drive in Caracas again, we found the freaking mountain. Then we drove along the freeway that runs at the base of the mountain (Av. Boyaca, which the locals call something like “mil metro” because the road is at the 1000 meter level of the mountain). As you might imagine, the view from mil metro is pretty spectacular, and since it was the one place in the city with no traffic, even on a Sunday afternoon, it is a fun place to drive fast in a BMW (remember, no rules!).

Tonight there is a happy hour at the embassy themed “1960’s Woodstock.” Mary went to work wearing blue eye shadow, white lipstick and a tie-died t-shirt. I cannot imagine how much it would suck to be denied a visa to visit Disneyworld by someone wearing blue eye shadow, white lipstick and a tie-died t-shirt. But it is gonna happen. Everyday Mary sees at least 100 people whose professed lifelong dream is to visit Disneyworld, and every day she shatters some of those dreams. Really, visa applicants should think of a new place they are claiming to be intending to visit. The whole Disneyworld thing is way overdone. Hasn’t anyone in Venezuela ever heard of the Grand Canyon?

For Easter (Semana Santa) and Mary’s B-day, we are visiting the island of Trinidad (see here also), birth place of Calypso music. A full report will be forthcoming.