Greetings, everyone

Some days ago I got another generous gift from someone who was in one of English classes at Traduce Academy (I posted about the first time he gave us fish here). Even though we did not share much (the course was cancelled by Covid-19 after a month or so into it), he has some contacts, access to precious fish, and he has had the great gesture of helping others out in these days of great difficulties. Thank you, Reinaldo.

As I walked the town with my wife, holding a big orange cooler, (each of us holding one handle), I started to think about so many unfulfilled promises for our generation here. We live in a town by the sea with all the potential to become a fabulous touristic spot, able to combine noisy modernity and quiet colonial past, and yet we must be one of the poorest areas in the whole country.

_{Cumaná Plaza, downtown Cumaná. A once promissing mall, most of its stores are now empty.}

We passed fruit vendors selling fruits we got used to, to the point of indifference; fruits many people in many parts of the world would kill for and can only dream about. Now even the most common fruits are very expensive. We could not resist these ones, so we bought some.

_{Juicy pineaples and ciruelas de huesito (Spondias purpurea/Jocote or red mombin), very common at this time of the year.}

But then we walk by children hand-fishing from the gutter full of sewage water. This is more common than you can imagine.

It is with a heavy heart that I dare to invade their privacy. I wish I could tell them, leave that; I'll give you some food, but I am barely making ends meet.

I am walking to get some free fish, which otherwise I would not have been able to afford. Some people do desperate things when they do not see help coming. A different street, same pitiful spectacle.

Some of them just play with the fish they find here. But I have seen entire families getting the fish and frying them at some improvised fire by an abandoned building.

You walk some more and you get to the Manzanares River, when it is about to meet the Caribbean Sea. Not sure if a a result of the phenomena that have been observed worldwide, but the river looked particularly clean that day. It is usually dark brown.

This bridge is probably the most dangerous part of the walk. The barrios surrounding this area are the kind of places people have nightmares about. This is the kind of contrast that grabs me and repells me at the same time.

We got to La boca del río, which is a fish market by the river mouth. We had already been told which kiosk we would pick up our fish from.

The fish was already cleaned, which was cool.

On our way back home we ran into a couple of friends who we knew were in dire need, so we gave them some of the fish. Last time, we shared among memebrs of my wife's family.

But then you run into this kind of people. They should be institutionalized, medicated, helped by mental health professionals, but we do not have any of that.

They live in the streets, some of them do drugs, some are violent. One does not know what to do in those cases, except feel useless and selfish.

Some of them end up being funny in the most bizarre of ways.

This disregard for decorum must be contagious. Look at what we found on our door when we got home:

Nature has its way to remind us to pause, look, and appreciate the simplicity of beauty.

As I said at the beginning, walking the streets fo this town can be a challenging experience. We have neat ample sacred places like this church, and then there are the god-forsaken intertices that sophocate you and make you wonder, to echoe Hughes, what happened to so many dreams deferred?

_{Santa Inés Church from the corner of Traduce Academy}

We are already seeing some sparks of social explosions.

Thanks for your visit

All images from personal files, taken with a BlueR1 Smartphone

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