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What life is like in Zulia, by @andiaguilera
There are things we don’t say to avoid causing alarm, but it’s time to talk about how it’s like to live in Zulia without electricity: there’s no garbage collection service here, so everything’s full of trash
There are things we don’t say to avoid causing alarm, but it’s time to talk about how it’s like to live in Zulia without electricity: there’s no garbage collection service here, so everything’s full of trash
Consequently, we’re besieged by flies and rodents… Due to scorching temperatures, we sleep outdoors, on our roofs or with windows and doors open. Bugs, spiders, cockroaches, bats, mosquitoes and more invade our homes.
We sleep with with one eye open because we must also beware of criminals. We wake up exhausted, covered in sweat and bug bites. At my aunt’s, they found a scorpion right beside my cousin’s mattress. In other homes with gardens or lots of plants, even snakes slither in.
Heat strikes. There’s no water. The water we manage to buy or find is for cooking and drinking. Taking a bath is a luxury. Anyone, adult or child, may be dirty or have rashes (most newborn babies, for example). The health and skin of many are compromised.
Scabies are now humiliatingly common among citizens due to the electricity and water crisis we’re experiencing, not due to the recent blackouts, but for the past six months in Zulia. Another challenge is keeping the kitchen and bathrooms clean.
Finding food in Zulia is a trial of endurance in every sense. We have to walk for hours under the sun and stand in huge lines to find stores with vegetables, meat, water or any product that can be paid with a card reader.
Most stores only take cash or dollars, and the remaining places where we could find food were looted or closed for the moment. And the food in fridges? We cook it and share it so it won’t go to waste. But remember, it’s been a week since Zulia had regular power.
We’re running out of protein, so we eat sparingly (we’re always hungry) but everyone eats. We try to have a good breakfast and think about the rest later. Some families are only eating once a day.
People and patients in healthcare centers and their homes are dying due to lack of supplies, medicine and due to blackouts, of course. There are no ICUs anywhere; the hardest hit by this are hypertensive, kidney and oncological patients, as well as newborn babies.
Children don’t go to school and nobody can work. We spend our day as if in the Stone Age, looking for water and food on the streets. Like dirty cavemen, courtesy of 21st century socialism. Store owners are arming themselves or paying for protection.
People fight in the queues. Everyone’s emptying out their stores for fear of looting. We charge our cell phones in our cars and exchange some fuel for a few hours of electricity with someone who has a power plant.
Good people created shelters, others are just taking advantage of the situation.
It’s nearly impossible to find diapers, sanitary pads or medicine after the looting spree, at least in Cabimas, but I imagine it’s the same everywhere in Zulia. There’s no water. We work miracles.
It’s nearly impossible to find diapers, sanitary pads or medicine after the looting spree, at least in Cabimas, but I imagine it’s the same everywhere in Zulia. There’s no water. We work miracles.
There’s no way of knowing what’s going on or communicating because Digitel is out of service. Movilnet is always dead and we can only connect, send text messages or call through Movistar. We’re practically isolated.
Here in Zulia, we don’t even know what day it is. We lost count of the hours we’ve been in the dark. People are desperate and assembling groups to cross over to Colombia, even though the border bridge is closed.
There’s that “tense calm” after the confrontation. In every blackout, when people in Cambimas protest, the order is to unleash the colectivos. Also, there’s always a “jail break” at the nearby prison.
Zulia lawmaker Williams Barrientos, member of the National Assembly's Social Affairs Committee, cautioned that the lack of water due to the electric crisis may cause a national epidemic.
Barrientos explained at the AN that some states in the country have had no water for 19 days, adding that there's already an epidemic in Zulia, (in the northeast and Guajira) with outbreaks of cholera, amoebic dysentery, typhoid fever, type A and B hepatitis, scabies and others.
