The Work Begins

                                        Photo Credit: Alejandra Abreu

This morning, Conchi comes to retrieve Ale, Jacob, and I from the escuela at 5:40 in the morning. This is the first day since we've been here that the Feria del Centro has been open, and since nearly 5 o'clock this morning, people have been amassing in the parking lot, jostling for the best spot in line.

Inside, the feria is beautifully stocked: huge bins of dried milk and bags of rice stacked nearly as high as the first story of a house. The frutieria, mini-feria, and feria grande are full of fresh yuca, cebolla, lechuga, granadillas, limon. The three of us spent much of yesterday helping to put products on the shelves in mass quantities. There was a lot to do, but the work was relaxed, laid-back. We spoke with each other and met some of our compañer@s. We enjoyed the satisfaction of breaking down boxes and facing everything just so.

All of that is about to change. We are told people run when the feria doors open on fridays, and that it can get ugly, with carts crashing into each other, etc. We don't see this part because we are a little bit late getting out the door; we only see the crowd of people funneling into the entrance, and when we are inside, people already crammed in the aisles.

It is a slower day than most, we are told, but still, we spend the morning frantically stocking lettuce, green onions, and especially cilantro, which we are out of by mid morning, and which we must give to each person by hand. Hence the reason for all the running: one of Cecosesola's attractions is that they tend to always have some of the items that can be in short supply here in Venezuela: milk, cooking oil, black beans (called caraotas) and others. While we built a display 15 bottles high and 60 bottles wide of cooking oil the day before, a compañero tells me that by Saturday afternoon, all of it will be gone. He explains that there are problems with private companies purposely holding some of their products back as a protest against the socialist government, and in this case, these bottles of soy oil, "hecho en socialismo" or made by government/ worker owned factories, aren't enough to fill the gap.

The feria doesn't close until 4:30 today, and many compañer@s stay the entire time rotating through the different jobs as they're needed. But by lunchtime we are all three exhausted. We come back to the school to write, to nap, to shower off the mud from the vegetables. Tomorrow we'll get up to do it all over again, and I'll post some pictures.

Hasta mañana, entonces. 

Oh: and for those of you who are gluten-free, did you know it's possible to make flour from bananas? One of Cecosesola's affiliated cooperatives, Melbuen, has just started doing it. I'll bring a sample when I'm back in March!