Living or surviving? Cost of the life in the middle of an economic crisis in the middle of a pandemic.

Hello Hivers! This is a topic very complicated with many layers to develop, because here in my country we live in a crisis inside a crisis. This might be long, but this also will help you to understand what's going on in Venezuela. I know lots of Hivers are from here too and they have told their stories, so this is mine. I'm from Barquisimeto, Lara, Venezuela.

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This is my participation to the OCD Community Boost Contest #6: Highlighting Home Edders I was really into writing about this, because some people may see that as just complaining, but you asked haha, this is my answer to this week question.

What is the cost of living like in your country or region?

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Lest's start for the house, with something good, the people can't be took out of their homes for debts, so, in the middle of the crisis, if you have a house, at least you know you will keep it.

For those who don't have one (like me) right now it's almost imposible to buy a new one, because no one give credits, you have to pay a house, despite the price, cash on hand, so a lot of people at my age can get one, I'm 25, and I have seen that people of my age just find a house if they are already pregnant, because government will help, or family, but for single young adult is nearly impossible.

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In second place, food, well, it is our first place always, food and water. In my region food is expensive, not the most expensive of all the country but still one of the most.

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Salary

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This true when you see at the difference between the prices of food and salary.

The minimum salary is 1.800.000 Bs a month; one dollar, today, this change every day twice, worth 2.161.933,56. So lets divide this: 1.800.000Bs / 30 days = 60.000 Bs/day, in other words, $ 0.03 per day. So it doesn't matter the price of anything, it is expensive and non affordable.

This is one of the more used reference pages Source

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Food

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Yesterday I bought food, so I'll tell you the prices in our currency, now that you know the minimum salary is 1.800.000 per month you can compare it yourself.

Sugar	1.470.500,00
Rice	1.794.500,00
Corn flour	1.492.300,00
Tuna (250gr)	2.850.000,00
Mustard	1.815.431,00
Wheat flour	1.850.000,00
Cook oil	3.155.000,00

That's a total of: 14.427.731,00 Bs and it doesn't include vegetables, proteins, duplicated products or anything else, it doesn't even include taxes and the bag to carry it home. So, How did I bought it?...

I took of some not essential products in my calculations above

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Services

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Food is something expensive but if you have the money you can find it, let's go with the services: even having the money, you may not get the services.

Since 2019 there has been a lot of problems with the electric system, they cut the service due to power rationing, you can't decide pay more to get a better service, in fact the offices are not working so you can't pay at all most of the times. Even in the "rich" zones there are cuts, but they have home electric power plants so they are better than the poor zones. I'm lucky there are almost not cuts in my residence because it is close to a hospital.

The power plants work with gasoline, but there is a fuel shortage too, you have to do huge queue to get gasoline, some more cheap than others, in the cheap one you can get only 120 liters a month, if you want to have more, you have to look where are the gas stations that are getting payment in dollars. You choose, the car o the plant, if you don´t have a car or a motorcycle you can't buy gasoline.

Source

Water is another issue, it's not a constant service, it comes and goes, in some places there is a schedule but in others it's a surprise. In my parent's home we don't have that service, we have to buy it and they bring it in a cistern tank truck.

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Buying expenses, services, and everything else, needs a huge effort, because only people who is not attached to the minimum salary can buy it. This puts in danger people like retired workers, because the minimum salary is the same value for pensions and most of them have not the energy or resources to start again in something new.

People like me have never earned just the minimum but also doesn't have just one source of income. Right now I'm unemployed, but I work with a teacher vectorizing images and with a gallery when they call me, I do jobs related to my profession and area of knowledge but not in a stable place because the relation salary/hours is so unfair and sometimes is not the place fault, they don't sale as much as they should to give a good salary, because of the crisis.

Just to give you an example, a full time college teacher earn the same that a medium time secretary in a high school, $0.9, and a young adult with no studies working in a store can earn up to $120, but me here in Hive and working time to time with my other jobs can pass over that amount. Is that fair? No, but it is what it is.

As you see, even the best salaries are way low even for Latin america average.

Source Minimum monthly salary on selected countries of Latin America in 2021

Due to this situation where a part of the population is doing well buying stuff in dollars and the other part cant even buy bananas, education it's being severely affected: none of the problems above have to do with the pandemic, those have been here and growing since 2012 aprox. even before. With the pandemic all of them got worse because a lot of people lost their jobs (me included) and the ones that worked on the streets, living of the day by day earnings, lost their income source too.

So now we have to talk about other topic, education.

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Right now, as in the rest of the world, the educations is primarily home schooling, this means that electricity and internet are needed, but as I told before, electricity is not stable neither the internet, and the service is limited to central cities and towns (even there, is a bad service). Teacher nor students have the tools and resources to get through this, so there is a lot of desertion, and kids watching professionals being underpaid and informal workers getting dollars, are taking the decision of not continue their studies after high school.

Mine is one of the "good" ones in the city, but still it's not stable

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For me, as a graduated who did work in where she was supposed too, a Bachelor in arts working in a gallery, but had to left it because of the pandemic and was having troubles before for the economic crisis, is very hard to tell kids they need to study, I keep telling them that there is more in studying that just getting a degree, it's about the thinking process, problem solutions, learning to exist in a society, there are a lot of stuff that you learn in school, and after high school the college is not the only choice, they have to keep learning, a career or occupation, but most of them are not listening, they just want to make money fast, and I don't blame them, they are hungry and adults are saying that their studies where not worth it.

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We were supposed to highlight some culture characteristics of our regions, but the truth is that culture is dying here, just a few people will go to cultural events, children don't know about their own regions traditions because their family is too busy trying to survive and the program in the school is so centralized that teachers barely can adapt it to their children; every student group is different and needs an unique approach, but that's very hard, before with the centralized education and now that you can't even see your kids.

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In first place: this is not on our hands.

We, as individuals, can not blame ourselves for not being able to keep up with this economic crisis, we are facing a situation that is only worse in countries with armed wars. We are in a war but without the bullets and bombs (well, insecurity is another topic that has been increasing lately) and the resources are not available to everyone, and, if everyone take the alternative choices, Who is going to do the essential works?.

Adaptation: Good or bad?

Venezuelans are extremely good at adapting, I don't know your experiences with Venezuelans in your countries, if you met the bad ones, sorry, but the good ones, I think for sure you can see how hard workers are and how easily adapt to new situations. That can be good but that's what have us in this situation: elders saw this coming, but they did nothing when they could because they were like "It's not that bad, it will get better, this part is bad but this other is fine, well, now there are more bad parts that good but the last government was worse, now this is worse but what can we do?" and now they blame us the youth for not "fight" when the current government has all the powers in its hands, we did fight but we don't have the weapons, they have.

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Foto: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/ Reuters.

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So, I think we can make this different, a lot of the problems will be less harmful without the small corruptions, without brothers acting against brothers, thinking not just on ourselves but in everybody else. That's something hard to reach, because while I'm acting as a good person, following the rules, there is somebody taking advance of it and using the chances I let pass because they can make other people life harder; fix this situation from the civilians will need a great commitment, I'm sure there is a lot of people willing to do it but there is more than will not.

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To wrap this up, the cost of the life in my region is huge, not just in money but in human effort. Being able to put food on you table every day is a big success.
My parents are part of those earning the minimum because they work to the public system, in education, it used to be the most secure place to be, now it's the more underpaid, but my dad es very handy, so he repair all kind of stuff and that's how he earns enough to have food on their plates. People don't always pay with money, he let them pay with food, so it's easier for them and useful to him because he was going to buy it anyway.

I hope this change soon and the next time I have to write about living here I can tell you a good story.