Making it in the Concret Battlefield: I

Hello dear readers! Im back after a long couple of weeks, and i have decided to give you and show you no matter where you are from an inside look of how does one live its daily basis in the Most dangerous city in the world...Caracas, Venezuela! This section will not be me crying about it, rather it will be a section to show how a city that by the 70's was one of Latinamerica's top 10 tourist destination, in the past 20 years it began tu tear itself a part like a failed state (yeah like The Dark Knight Rises) you can see this is not me talking crap, this is a city that has an average of 130 homicides per 100.000 people, in 2016 alone in a city of 7 million people almost 6.000 people were murdered, and yet for what its worth i love this town despite all of it you will see why in later posts, so here we go!

Today i will tell you about public transportation specifically bus system and in general, the subway and cabs deserve their very own post! First of all what you must know is that local buses are the most used trasnport system in the entire Greater Caracas Metropolitan Area, by 2014, 3 million people used daily buses to move in Caracas, so you would think that with such a demand of the service you would picture that Caracas is full of buses, yeah that was the case until this past 2017, due to the economical crisis in the country, the public transportation is no exception, high costs of tires and mechanical spares has taken its toll, in september 2017, from 85 thousand buses registered in Caracas, 55 thousand are broken down and collecting dust in workshops since its a fortune to have them fix, again, you might think that with such a high level of users a lot of money comes in, well hear this, the ticket as of today is set in 1000 Bolivares, thats the equivalent of 0.0047 USD! Now imagine a bus driver that trasnports daily around 25 thousand people in his bus, thats 25 thousand times 0.0047 $, that gives a days work a total of 14 cents! Now imagine that the drive blows a tire, a tire's average cost is of 3000000 Bolivares, in USD thats 14.5 $! That means that in order tu buy ONE tire he has to save the money of 105 days of hard work!!! Thats how bad thing are for bus drivers!

Now for us common folk that must take from time to time the bus we face now the situation that more than 2/3 of registrated buses are broken down, which makes now people literally fight not for a seat in the bus but for barely getting inside the bus, a regular bus stop can have over 400 people in line waiting, and in a city that doesnt give you a break, all of those 400 people wanna get in one way or the other, fights and brawls and insults have become a normal situation, and to be 100% to you guys, its a heartbreaking nasty scene to see fellow countrymen attack each other for just getting in, it makes you sad and makes me think what we as citizens of this city have become, the Government has its fare share of guilt no doubt about that, but we share the blame for letting the crisis get the worst of us out, this is not what we are rather its what the Government (that consistently denies the bus drivers the permit to increase the price of the ticket) wants us to become, i am no stranger to being in line after waiting for 30 minutes for a bus and also being late for work, it happens, you find people that insult you, that try to push you so you wont get in, i have lived all that i told you about here, sometimes an insults escapes my mouth but i pray to God to help me contain myself in this cases and make me be strong enough not to let the hateful sitizen the government wants me to be but rather the citizen that my country demands me to be!

Thank you for reading,
God bless!