As I mentioned in my previolus post/rant, after a nightmare at a nearby hospital and the impossibility of a surgery to fix her broken leg, we took my mother home.

There was a time, back in the days when modern medice was just a faraway legend, when people treated any injury or desease using natural medicine. That included fractures. There were healers or sobadores who especdialized in this art, as they call it.

Well, some of them are still alive and we had no choice but to recourse to one of them. Ten kilometers from our mother's home lives this man who is well-known in the area as a miracle maker. He has allegedly fixed very serious fractures and has helped people who were confined to wheelchairs to walk again.

He has visited my mother four times already. We are hoping she can get better soon. I'll be the first to spread the word if this man does for her what he says he has done for others.

I have been very busy running errands. After leaving home years ago, everything has changed. The town, the people, the house. Everything has deteriorated. I feel like a stranger.

The town still has some of its charm; it brings back memories, but even the natural scenes have changed.

The former deep big clear river has been reduced to this. It gets some water only during a rainy season like the one we are having now. It had been a long time since we last had so much rain.

One of the most drastic changes in town is the presence of police or military convoys.
What used to be a very safe and peaceful town is now part of the battlefields between organized gangs and military forces.
Kidnappings and killings in plain daylight are now common.
People talk about it as if they were talking about the weather.

We also have indigenous people living in the gulf. They had not occupied those lands in decades. Apparently they have been displaced from their lands and are now wandering along the Gulf of Paria. They sell wild ducks and alligator meat (girl holding plastic bag).

After running errands at the hardware store, my brother and I worked on the porch wall. It had not been painted in a while.

It looks more decent now. I will be traveling back and forth more often now that my mother is going to be in bed recovering. I will be doing a lot of repairs/improvements like this one.

In the backyard, we got this gilft form a tall chesnut tree from the neighbors'.

Healthy and delicious nuts.

One of the biggest problems my mother faces in her recovery is msoquitoes and blackouts. We have power cuts every day, especailly at night. Mosquitoes abound here, especially during the rainy season. Sleeping without power and with so much heat is hard, you add mosquitoes and it's just impossible. Nothing is done about these issues (water and phone service are also part of the problems)

It's going to be a long path to recovery for my mother, but we'll be working on providing her with as much as we can to make her feel better. One of my brothers got a rechargable fan; a nephew got rechargeable light bulbs and I am traveling tomorrow to take some part to fix the stove and other things. Life in Venezuela is hard for all now, but you go to a small town in the provinces an you will see a really ugly picture despite the natural beauty.

Thanks for stopping by