Hunger Diet

By Adriaan van Ginkel

 

The food shortage in Venezuela has finally reached our home. Since a couple of days, I feel physically weak. Normally being of sound health, I have my wife worried now. “You should go to a doctor”, she keeps telling me. But I don’t feel sick, really. Some weeks ago, eating less and less – as there is less and less (payable) food to be found – initially had brought me a nice side effect, i.e. I now fit into my suits and clothes I hadn’t worn in ages. No snacks anymore in order to save money. I try to eat my daily fruit so as to keep up my vitamins, as well as meals as healthy as they can be with fresh vegetables and salads. Junk food has disappeared from my diet since long for three reasons: 1) it is ridiculously expensive – check Venezuela’s ranking in the Big Mac Index; 2) it is junk that doesn’t feed you, basically, and 3) you can even ask yourself what the heck you’re eating! Plus, I hardly drink soda drinks anymore, too expensive really. Ice cold water with or without lime juice, coffee, tea or a beer once in a while will do. So, for a good while I felt lighter, leaner, meaner, looking better and my clothes fit! But these last couple of days, I have more and more trouble in getting up, going about and doing my daily routine. Now, the last thing I need in this country with its disastrous health service and lack of medicines is getting ill!

Yesterday, I realized that forcibly skipping one of two daily hot meals has me paying a toll: not enough protein intake. Since milk, meat and chicken have virtually disappeared from the shops, as I told you two weeks ago; fish is getting more and more expensive and harder to find, and even cheese, veggies and fruit are going through the roof in pricing - what I am experiencing now is undernourishment, no less than that. Vitamin pills are a thing of the past now. Sitting on the couch and typing this blog, while I’m keeping watch over two new-found kittens of no more than six weeks we’re busy finding a home for, has me feeling OK. But the moment I get up, start walking and doing things, I feel like an octogenarian grandpa.

My wife, who is a trained nutritionist, came to the same conclusion. My protein intake is less what my body asks for, making me feel weak and lose weight on a daily basis now. But there is no fresh meat available now, only processed meats of dubious quality which really should be avoided if you can. So today we will be busy finding some high-protein shake in the shops, but these too are now harder and harder to find. Apparently, I’m not the only one feeling like a truck ran over me. More and more people in Venezuela are now feeling the pinch of eating less and worse. Venezuela is becoming a country of undernourished people. And for those who can’t afford to buy a can of food supplement – I’m speaking of a majority - the outlook is bleak, especially when it comes to children. 

Yesterday I came across a supermarket bill of June 2012, almost three years ago. We were aghast to see what we were buying then, and at what prices. Everything we bought then costs TEN times as much now. And the items! Apparently we bought pears then, a distant memory now, like apples. The last time I made my renowned Dutch apple pie was two Christmases ago, with raisins and nuts soaked in rum. If I make that apple pie now, it would really cost ten times as much just to make it, if I can find apples and raisins of course. Till 2013, you still could find lots of items in the shops. Compared to the last “normal” year 2006 however the offer was already depleted. But now, things in Venezuela are looking more and more meager and grim. For the vegetarians and vegans among you here’s my message: don’t start cheering. The food supplements, vitamins and payable eggs and vegetables you need to maintain you healthy are absent – no hay. It’s a truly unhealthy panorama in Venezuela, nutritionally speaking. And apple pie? No hay, señor.

Without making any political statements, I think it’s a bloody shame that the country with the biggest proven oil reserves on this planet should be passing through this. I don’t see president Maduro getting leaner, quite the contrary. Same goes for head honcho’s of the opposition parties, by the way. Maduro and his entire government plus families keep looking well-nourished, meaning their tables are well-supplied. No “economic war” raging in the presidential palace or at the homes of the powerful. Calling himself a socialist, the hulky bulky president looks more and more like some fat-faced 18^th century crowned head with a handlebar moustache telling the hungry people they should eat cake. In fact, he was caught some time ago stating in public that Venezuelans were eating “too much” (quote!) and that it was causing food to be scarce (another quote!). Some socialism, you wouldn’t believe it if you weren’t here. 

I can state, here from my humble apartment in some corner in this country, that I don’t see people eat more and more, quite the contrary. If an item is available, it’s too expensive for most. If there’s a subsidized price tag to it, it’s hours and hours in a queue till it’s your turn and your get your item, should you be so lucky and it hasn’t run out before your turn – ¡no hay! It happened to me a couple of times, and yes, I have stood in a queue already for some soap and other things. Toilet paper? Grab a bread knife and saw a kitchen paper roll in three. You can try that at home. Sheer crisis magic!

So if Maduro and his team are squawking about people eating “too much”, maybe they mean the well-connected persons at the presidential dinner table stuffing their faces with goodies while people like me, the true working class who pay their taxes on time, go through the primary stages of malnutrition. Making some predictions on the fact that Maduro’s government seems to be living in total denial of what is happening in common Venezuelan homes at lunch and dinner time, the situation will worsen gradually. I have no doubt about that. And what are the chances of a change at the top, you might ask? Look at Cuba. 56 years already, right, a family living off a chicken weekly? There you go. Men will get accustomed to anything; the Castro’s and the Kim dynasty prove that day in day out. Hang a man from a tree, and wait for a couple of minutes, and you see how he’ll stop kicking. Sorry for this gruesome comparison, but it’s the way it is. 

Looking once more at the picture I put at the beginning of this blog, it represents a distant memory for me now. My wife and I love to cook, and she is a magician with whatever she can find to whip up a great meal. But even for kitchen magicians, times are becoming very meager here, almost war-like, and you depend more and more on your knowledge of the nutritional values of everything you can find. For me, watching a program on the gourmet channel on TV has become a torture, while in the good ol’ days of pears, apples and raisins, I loved it. We are eating healthier in a certain sense, free of yummy things and cut down to the essential stuff. But lacking vital ingredients like proteins, for which you now have to stand in a queue for hours to get them (and even that doesn’t give you enough to feed yourself well - what do you do with ONE poor meager chicken on a weekly basis?), we are crossing a certain threshold at this very moment. 

The blue-eyed kittens – no more than six weeks old – have eaten, been bathed and purged of parasites, and are free of fleas. Abandoned, dumped by some wretched person without a conscience and found by me this morning on the parking lot, they are happy and sound asleep, as I write. More and more people don’t have money to feed their pets anymore and they are abandoned – read kicked out - in an increasing rate to a sometimes horrible fate. With us, the kittens are safe now. We are busy finding them kind and loving homes, like we managed for so many before those two. For them, the future has become a bit more secure now. Looking at those furry little creatures, I sense that there is a lot of good to do here. I will be OK in no time, no doubt about it. As long as our own pets are well-fed, because they bear no blame in this man-made disaster. And then I’ll redouble my efforts in making paradise within this murky living hell that has become Venezuela. 

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© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015