The first days.

Hi everyone,

It seems Meeri will be writing in the native language and I´ll write in English to all those simple-minded friends (Fawwaz and other Israeli/Palestinian comrades, Davide, our German ex-room-mates et al.) who´re not yet able to speak our Finno-Ugric language.

To get to Caracas from Hki took 20 hours after a sleepless night before the departure. Yeah, we hadn´t packed our things on time. The trip from the Juan Santamaria Int., Caracas, to Caracas downtown took around three hours, though the normal duration is more or less 45min or so. The traffic jam was a real LA-style show. At that point we hadn´t slept for quite a long time and we were muerto de hambre. Finally we arrived to our host in Altamira, a “good, decent” area in the notorious Caracas. I will tell you about our hosts later.

My main interest at the moment is to prepare myself to the interviews we´re gonna do in Nicaragua. I´ve been reading about the country extensively and the situation there is very interesting. And from my journalistic point of view, it´s quite demanding, too. The revolution in 1979 brought about many dramatic, important changes. However, as pretty much the entire political spectrum outside of Somoza´s inner circle was united against the dictator´s regime and the National Guard, in the post-revolution era the common tensions between various socio-economic and political factions remained. Besides that state of affairs, which would later develop into a civil war with close US planning and involvement, the country which the Sandinistas inherited was having a debt of US $ 1.6 billion. The death toll in the war was around 50 thousand and more than half a million people were left homeless.

We´re especially interested in Sandinistas and their policies. That´s a topic I would very much like to read more about but I haven´t found any resource of substantial critique of FSNL yet. Sure, you can find a lot of those advocating the Contra and/or US government perspective, but normally all they´ve to say is that Sandinistas are communists and have established a police-state etc and oh how wonderful it would´ve been had the brave freedom-fighters, aka contrarevolucionarios, won. So far I haven´t found that much other sources, but I know they exist.

I´m very lucky to have Meeri here. It´s luxurous to have a person like her to brainstorm with, to talk to. We´re helping each other to understand the various issues we´re interested in here. She´s the man.

Right now Meeri, Melanie (our English-German friend we met in Juan Santamaria Int.) and myself are at Comunicaciones Iberoamericanas Internet-café.

Hasta luego,

Bruno.