Against All Odds

by R. A. Lang

  Once in the car, a gun is produced, and the traveller is taken to the nearest ATM. If he’s lucky, he might be dropped off in the middle of nowhere, or he might be retained for future ATM withdrawals, or held for ransom.

  The only trustworthy taxis were the official airport taxis. Those taxis required travellers to prepay prior to departure in case something happened to them once they’d left.

  For those familiar with working in Venezuela, the oil-rich areas are all high risk for expats moving around. Every week, I heard a gunfight somewhere outside as the rival mafia groups tried to gain more territory. I was sure to keep clear of the windows during such events in case of stray bullets.

  One night, there came a powerful reminder of the dangers when I heard a knock on my apartment door in the early hours of Sunday morning. It was our piping engineer, Paul, and he was standing at the door in quite a bad shape.

  He had been shopping just down the road at the local supermarket called Cada 2000. After shopping, he had opened his car door to dump his shopping bags and had a gun pushed against his head and another into his ribs. The muggers forced him into the passenger well and drove him off to a very remote road about three kilometres away, which led to Puerto Ordaz. There were no lights on that part of the road, just rough bush land that didn’t have any paths where people might have been walking.

  It was shortly after six o’clock in the evening, and the sun was beginning to set. Being close to the equator, it only took the sun fifteen minutes to set. They pulled over to the side of the road and made Paul get out. He was forced to remove his work boots and walk towards a small ravine about fifty yards from the road. The muggers had obviously known about the place as it was perfect to dump a body and Paul knew what was coming. As they neared the edge of the ravine, Paul distracted the guy with the gun, punched him as hard as he could, and started running for his life.

  The other two accomplices saw him running in the bad light, so they reversed Paul’s company car back down the road, shooting at him the whole time. Paul, running as fast as he could, ducked and weaved until he was out of sight, just like he’d seen in the movies. With so much adrenalin flowing through his veins, he didn’t feel the pain of all the thorns, glass, or even the barbed wire fence that he ran into in the dark adding to his injuries.

  After two hours of walking in the darkness with just the moon to light his way, he finally got to the nearby town of El Tigre, where he found one of the few Venezuelan police officers in the area. None of the Venezuelan policemen spoke any English and Paul didn’t speak any Spanish, but luckily for Paul, the policeman could see he was in a bad state and agreed to help him by driving him back to our compound. Paul removed his torn coveralls inside my apartment and we could see that his hands, stomach, and feet were all badly cut, torn, and bleeding.

  With the help of Carolina and our part-time live-in maid, we spent a couple of hours removing pieces of wood, thorns, and glass from Paul the best we could. We poured surgical alcohol over his wounds to help prevent any infection setting in and wrapped them the best we could. Fortunately, we had a spare bedroom for Paul to stay in because he didn’t have his keys anymore He had been shopping just down the road at theto get into his own apartment in the next block.

  Later in the afternoon, we went to the local police station and helped Paul obtain a police report and gave him enough money to go to Caracas for a new passport from the British Consulate, because the criminals had taken everything. Carolina cooked for Paul all week while he was around and cut his steak into bite-sized pieces, as he couldn’t hold a knife and fork due to his badly cut hands. Our maid did his laundry on a daily basis so he didn’t have to worry about that either.

  Paul visited us two weeks later. It was a Saturday afternoon and he wanted to invite us out to the local Chinese restaurant as a token of his appreciation for putting him up, feeding him, and taking care of his laundry.

  As always, I had a fridge full of beer, so we sat there chatting and drinking for a couple of hours before Paul said that we should go to the restaurant before it closed.

  Carolina didn’t feel like going with us; she just wanted a take away, so the two of us went out alone. When we arrived at the Chinese restaurant, it had already closed. We thought it was very strange because we had never seen the restaurant closed before, especially in the evening.

  We discovered the next day, once back in the office, that the restaurant had been raided by probably the very same muggers who had taken Paul just two weeks earlier. Everyone in the restaurant had lost any valuables they had on them; the alternative would be getting shot.

  Fortunately we’d missed that. If it weren’t for the beer in my apartment, the same guys could have mugged Paul twice in a fortnight, or shot him, considering the fact that he knew their faces! I thought, this just proves that beer really is good for you.

  That was the final blow for Paul and he left the project and went back to live with his wife in Trinidad. After that, Carolina went to the supermarket with our maid to do all the shopping without me. It was too dangerous for her to be associated with me, because she would become a target to be kidnapped for ransom.

  During the project, life became more difficult because Venezuela underwent a national strike. The biggest problem, apart from the rise in crime, was fuel. The government had limited fuel distributions, so eventually, even the public transport was stopped. I was working an eight week by two week rotation on the project and was well overdue for a break. I was nearing my sixteenth week and becoming really tired working seven days a week.

  Unfortunately, because I was reorganising the mechanical completions for the project by utilising my own copyrighted system, I couldn’t take my first rotation, as I was too involved at the time. We were working seven days per week, which involved an hour’s drive both to and from the site. Towards my second opportunity to take a break, the national strike became a real worry.

  By that time, the oil refineries had also joined the strike. With limited fuel supplies and no public transportation or domestic flights, I was really getting concerned as to whether I’d ever be able to leave the country. The domestic flights to Caracas International airport had been cancelled because all aviation fuel had been reserved for international flights to continue.

  My main concern was getting to Caracas by any means possible to fly out. For something to look forward to, I went ahead and booked my domestic flight to Caracas, along with my international flight back to the little Caribbean island of Aruba.

  Due to the odd flight times, I needed one night in a hotel near the airport in La Guaira, Caracas. My British colleagues took full advantage of my stress and revelled in reminding me that there was no chance I’d be able to take my much needed break. After working twelve hours a day, seven days a week for sixteen weeks straight I was getting desperate. I’m happy to say that they were all wrong.

  The very day I was due to fly out of San Tomé, the strike was lifted. The entire country was about to run out of fuel to run the power stations, so if the strike had continued for just two more weeks, the whole country would have been without electricity. With no electricity to power the freezers in supermarkets, communications, and domestic supplies, the country would have died.

  Carolina wasn’t going with me this time because I wanted a relaxing break, not a family shopping trip. I travelled light; very light. My luggage only consisted of a camera, a toothbrush, and a razor, so I set off for the airport in San Tomé all the same. There were only daytime flights at the single-strip airport because the runway didn’t have any lights.

  My flight to Caracas was on time, so off I went with a smile. When I arrived, I was surprised that nothing had gone wrong yet. I began to get suspicious – something always went wrong, normally due to the local people abusing their authority.

  I passed through arrivals without any problems, and I found the official taxi office right away without anyone waiting. I was in a taxi a few minutes later and thought this is great, as we pulled out
of the airport to take the twenty minute drive to the hotel in La Guaira.

  The peace wasn’t to last, however. After five minutes driving towards my hotel, all hell was let loose. We were on a dual carriageway, and there weren’t any exits we could use to get off. We drove around a bend and came face to face with thousands of Hugo Chávez supporters.

  They had filled all lanes in each direction, and they were rioting and smashing everything in their path. They were excited and angry, very angry. They were wearing red berets, and all of them had used lipstick to draw two red stripes on each of their cheeks. They were all very macho.

  They were wielding machetes, iron bars, and anything else they could use to cause havoc, death, and destruction. My new problem was that they were heading straight towards me and there wasn’t anything I could do to avoid them. It was too late to try to turn around or reverse; all we could do was slowly drive right through the middle of them.

  My pale complexion due to sixteen weeks of all work and no play was not working in my favour, and I risked being torn apart. The driver was well aware of that danger, and he motioned to me to crouch down on the floor in the back of his taxi so it would appear empty. Fortunately, he had a newspaper that he was able to spread apart to better cover me.

  Seizing the irresistible opportunity for some great holiday snaps, I managed to unzip my bag and get my camera out while continuing to hide under the newspapers. The driver noticed my hand coming up with my camera, and he quickly slapped it back down.

  I noticed, through a gap in the newspaper that I was trying to read, that my taxi driver had opened his window. He was slowly waving his left hand out of the window with a closed fist, which indicated his support for the riot. The noise was deafening. It brought back memories of Cape Town years before.

  After a very long fifteen-minute crawl through the enraged group of Rambos, the crowd began to thin out. Finally, we passed through the stragglers at the tail end. When it was safe to look around, I came up from my hiding place to see cars on fire, shop windows smashed, and a trail of debris from where the mob had been.

  Once outside my hotel, I tipped my driver twenty dollars. In those days, he could exchange that bill on the black market for ten times its value in local bolívars. He was happy, but he still needed to return to the airport. I wished him the best of luck, shook his hand, and made my way into the reception.

  I could see stains up the hotel walls from the mudslides in December 1999. They must have been over six feet high. All the walls outside were the same. The receptionist explained that the whole floor had been filled with mud. They had to close the hotel for several months to dig it all out and make repairs. She added that all the streets in that area of La Guaira were the same. On a gruesome note, when the big cleaning operation began, many bodies were uncovered.

  People in Venezuela had avoided eating shellfish for over three months due to all the bodies that had been washed into the ocean and never seen again. A local fisherman in the marina had the sense to tie together all the boats moored there and take the flotilla out to sea for safety. This turned out to be a smart decision when boulders the size of houses came crashing down the hillsides. I couldn’t see the full extent of the damage, however, until I had got to my room later on the fifth floor and looked out from my balcony.

  Because I only had my shoulder bag, I didn’t bother going straight to my room as I usually liked to do to drop off my things. Instead, I went to the bar for a couple of cold beers to chill out after what I’d just been through. I was the only customer at the bar, so I chatted with the barman. He said I was very lucky to have got through in one piece because his countrymen were all loco! That wasn’t exactly news to me, so I told him to tell me something I didn’t already know.

  The next morning, I checked out and had an uneventful trip to the island of Aruba. I checked in to the same hotel I had used before with Carolina. The trip was more pleasurable the second time around because I could actually walk past the shops in the lobby and go straight to my room.

  I had slept well the night before and worked up an appetite, so I wasted no time going to the beach shops for some holiday clothes. I took one last trip back to my room to change into my new tourist guise and headed back to the bar on the pier where they served very nice seafood platters.

  Because I was alone, I had a great time sitting at the bar and talking with an American. He was staying in his timeshare, just a five minute walk from the pier. He ended up joining me for the rest of the afternoon and evening. In fact, I met him and later his wife on the pier almost every night. They, in turn, introduced me to their friends, who also had timeshares along the beach.

  He was the perfect guy to have around on holidays. He liked to party in true American style, making him very popular on the beach pier. Due to his timeshare, he had visited the island three or four times per year for many years. It wasn’t surprising that I met him again the next time I returned in April of 2009, which was when I made the biggest mistake of my entire life.

  Totally refreshed from my singles holiday, I was greeted in San Tomé by a disappointed wife who couldn’t believe I hadn’t returned with arms full of presents for her family.

  The reality of work hit me when I got back to the site office to find that my team of ladies hadn’t really done anything during my absence. The work that they had bothered to do was all messed up, which had drove the commissioning team crazy in my absence.

  The reason was clear: they had all brought their earphones to work with them so they could listen to salsa all day instead of concentrating on the job at hand. Previously, I had removed the speakers from their desktop computers for the very same reason. It was like having a classroom full of disobedient children. Back at the office, I was received with a cold welcome because my presence meant the return to work as usual.

  The peace after the national strike didn’t last long before we encountered yet another problem on the project. The new dilemma directly involved the contractor’s workforce. They could see that the work was nearing completion, so they tried to slow things down to make it last as long as possible. This was a usual trend on Venezuelan projects. The workforce used any excuse to strike, which was more annoying than dangerous. In short, the streets of El Tigre were crowded with construction men who didn’t want to work.

  This continued on and off for a number of weeks until it began to heat up. The main contractor, together with his subcontractors, started to direct their anger in our direction. A false rumour was sent around that the reason they had not been paid was because we weren’t paying their companies.

  This certainly created a volatile situation, and we were told to stay home a few times because there were threats that the workers would storm the site offices. With three thousand angry Latin workers, the concern was legitimate; plus the majority of them held gun permits and carried their guns all the time as a part of their macho image.

  The situation continued on and off for several weeks. With very little construction going on, I had plenty of time to bring all the documentation up to date. With my staff using every possible opportunity to avoid showing up for work, I carried on doing everything myself; that was the silver lining.

  My staff even arranged to go to Puerto De la Cruz for a weekend, even though there was work as normal. They switched off their mobile phones so they couldn’t be contacted until after their holiday weekend. They were all presented with disciplinary letters when they finally came back to work, which made me more unpopular.

  Shortly afterwards, there was a genuine fear that the workforce would riot, so everyone was told to stay home. Only a few members of senior management risked going to the site, including my immediate boss Chris and myself, but we didn’t stay long.

  That day, to avoid any problems on the road to the site, I left my apartment at four o’clock in the morning. I had already made the coffee before Chris arrived shortly afterwards and the site construction manager arrived half an hour later. When he saw the lights on in my
office, he came over and asked what the hell I was doing there. I explained that, after so many false alarms, I decided to take the risk and come in anyway. He wasn’t comfortable and said that he’d keep Chris and me informed if he heard any further developments from security and also our community spies.

  As it turned out, there were further developments, but by the time we found out, it was too late to evacuate down the only main road from the site. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and Chris asked me whether I knew of another way out of the area. As luck would have it, I did know of one way back to El Tigre, but it still meant using part of the main site road. We just had to hope the mob hadn’t already reached it. The road I had in mind was almost impossible to navigate in anything other than a four wheel drive vehicle, but it was the only chance we had.

  I was okay because I had a Toyota Hilux, but Chris was in a Corolla, which I found very funny at the time. We couldn’t waste a minute, so we each took a site radio in case we got split up, locked the office, and hastily headed to the car park. There wasn’t time to scrape off the ridiculously large yellow windscreen sticker making me a perfect target, which was for car park entry, so we left it and drove off. I figured it wasn’t the time to stick to the 30km speed limit either, set by our wonderful HSE guys, and I floored the gas pedal.

  Chris hadn’t driven home using the track I was heading for, so he was close behind me as we raced down the site road to beat the mob to the junction.

  I could soon see my left turn in the distance, but I could also make out the mob approaching it from the other direction. They had completely filled the road. Four wheel drive vehicles aren’t designed to swerve around potholes at high speed, so I flew over them instead, which wasn’t so good for the Corolla, though. Chris was following close behind, and I could only laugh each time I saw him angrily flash his headlights in my rear view mirror when his wheel hubs were almost ripped off with the potholes he couldn’t avoid.