The famine

 

"Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past" — Norman Borlaug

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I am sorry. This will not be a happy read at all, not today, and I'd completely understand if you choose to skip it. You see, this world is like that, hard to swallow. Life is. It can be as beautiful or as terrible as we, the supposedly rational-thinking humans, make it. There are things that must be said, regardless of the horror, so we stop making the same mistakes. _{History, you know?}

This journey I am in, which started just a few weeks ago, demands brutal honesty. Wounds that you deny, you cannot heal. So, in the spirit of honoring my purpose for writing here, I'll share a difficult part of my life with you. These words come with the intention of making you reflect on the struggles of millions. Not to pity them, but to realize that there's probably something you could do about it. Yes, you, me. Even if we don't have many resources and probably feel like not all our needs are met, we could help.

When mentioning the year 2016 to any Venezuelan living in the motherland at that point, you'd surely catch a pained face. Maybe not any Venezuelan; there were maybe a few that didn't even know what was going on. But for most, this year has been the most difficult so far. I will not add images throughout this post. First of all, because there's no way I could possibly share my own photos of these hard times; and secondly, because no free stock picture would honor the lives of the many fallen.

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The beginning of the end

You know, there's no way I could possibly explain to you the conditions and events that lead to the 2016 famine. I'm guessing most economists would speculate and theorize, but nothing they could say would portray the reality we lived. Just imagine waking up one day to most of the basic products you'd need completely gone from the markets. It was actually a progressive decay, but brutal nonetheless. There's a particular product we always had in our pantry, the Harina PAN, whose absence that year signified the loss of our identity as citizens.

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What would you do without your identity?

The arepa is the typical Venezuelan dish par excellence. It is consumed throughout the geography of the country. Almost every Venezuelan, from every socio-economic background, would choose to eat arepas at least once a day. It's cheap, easy to prepare, versatile. And yes, you guessed right, you'd need Harina PAN to prepare them. When the basic products started to scarce, many were left without options. I can't really speak for them, so I'll just tell my story.

One day, we couldn't have arepas for breakfast anymore. There was no Harina on the market shelves. Some have said that the industry stopped production to manipulate the masses and make us more docile. I can't confirm or deny, but if that was the strategy, it worked. Almost an entire population shifted its focus to the most primal of needs: eating. I used to spend hours on end standing in line, waiting to see if I could buy food. It was almost always under a merciless sun. It seems as if done on purpose; the harsher the conditions, the more numb we were as a nation. And this is not new to world history, at all.

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The immediate consequences

Standing there in line, I'd see the swarming hate rising. If you walked on the streets with a plastic bag containing the precious items, you'd get the most terrible looks. There was a lot of violence, and it was almost never directed to the truly responsible for our suffering. Of the famine. People, being as horrible as they can be, started to try and take advantage of the situation, and so standing in line became a full-time job for some. They'd cheat and bribe to be the first to buy, and then they'd resell the products clandestinely, for a much higher price.

Imagine pregnant women, or really old people, unable to stand in line, stripped of the possibility of buying what they need, and on top of that being extorted by their own fellow citizens. In 2016, that was our reality. A constant state of war; silent, stealth, but just as deadly. Me, being the oldest of the siblings, had to take upon myself a weight I wouldn't wish for anyone. And I tried to do so without losing who I am.

Back then, my mother was still recovering from her latest pregnancy (she had pre-eclampsia) and nursing my baby brother. My other two siblings were just kids, too. I was 22. We were in need of diapers. We couldn't afford most of the food that could be found in the markets without spending hours in line. Things like toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, and soap were a luxury most couldn't have. Food was the utmost priority.

However, I refined and maintained a practical mindset, and I remember scrapping change and juggling to try and ensure the presence of the basic items in our household. I was in college, in a public school that, by the time, still had a public diner for students. I would take my Tupperware, collect the food and bring it home almost intact, particularly the animal protein, which I didn't eat.

Some weeks, the hardest, all we could buy was a few kilograms of squash, the cheapest vegetable. We would boil it to make broth, and I would eat basically just the water of it, leaving the rest to the youngest and to my mother, who was nursing my baby brother. I would go to sleep sometimes crying from hunger. I had to see my brothers always talking about food with glassy eyes, and on the worst days, they'd cry from hunger too. And right then and there, I promised myself I would do anything to prevent that from happening to my own children.

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The lasting effects

From that time, I recall my mother acting like she was on the clouds all the time. Almost completely detached from reality. I try not to judge her, but it was very hard for me to carry the burden practically alone. She, for example, would go on a buying spree with the little money we have and come home with nothing but greek yogurt. Yes, it's delicious, but it lasted about ten minutes tops. I couldn't try to bring some sense into her without her lashing out at me. Why wouldn't she buy something else, like eggs? I just don't have the answer to that question.

One of the thoughts that hurt me the most then, and still do, is the fact that being a woman who went for a long period of malnourishment, I feared it could have some kind of negative impact on my fertility or ability to have a healthy pregnancy in the future. That possibility terrified me. Now, I know that any sequels have probably, and will continue to, been addressed. And I have hope. And a plan.

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The lesson

To this day, I can't stand the thought of wasting food. Or anything, for that matter. I'm always attentive to the opportunities that could present for helping someone in need, particularly children, who didn't ask to be brought into this mess. And I try not to add to the worldwide problem. One small action at a time. I'd like to ask you to reflect on your day-to-day, and perhaps, consider doing the same as I do.

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^{Source of the image:
📷 by Mario A. Villeda}

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^{I'd like to thank you for reading this. I hope my words resonated with you in some way. If they did, or even if they didn't, I'd like to further connect with you, so I invite you to drop a comment and I'll answer it as soon as I can.}