There’s a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It’s T minus two days, and then I’m off to Venezuela.
“It’s no big deal,” I assured colleagues in a taxi yesterday as we headed for a tour of the National Public Radio offices in Washington, D.C. “I’ll probably go to the jungle, but not the DEEP jungle. It’s not like I’ll need a tracker or anything.”
Chuckles all around.
If only I were still laughing.
Since then, sources have indicated that the jungle, though deep indeed, is accessible for those who truly want the real story. It would be a shame, they said, a real shame, to travel all the way to the edge of nowhere, only to stop just shy of where the fun begins.
Fun. As in grubs for dinner. As in piranhas. As in a good, old-fashioned malaria outbreak, with a bit of Dengue fever thrown in to spice it up.
Of course, this will only be possible if I survive Caracas, my point of entry. There, I’ll likely find near-constant street protests. Tear gas. Commando-style police hauling semi-automatic machine guns. Muggings at night. Muggings during the day. Muggings at 60 miles per hour down a freeway!
Yes, this trip is voluntary.
In fact, I practically begged to go.
Indigenous groups in Venezuela have been promised land rights and cultural protection in recent years – historic changes added to the country’s constitution by President Hugo Chavez.
I wanted to find out more, so I applied to the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. In my application, I wrote that I would travel to where these indigenous groups live and find out whether their lives have changed under the Chavez administration.
My surprise, upon hearing that I’d been accepted, was only topped by the dawning realization that, now, I’d have to actually do the things I said I’d do.
For the past week, I’ve been in D.C., preparing for my trip along with two other fellows (Libby Casey, a radio reporter from Fairbanks, Alaska is headed to Iceland to study renewable energy, and Eliza Barclay, a freelancer based in Mexico City, will go to Tanzania to take a look at spreading malaria epidemics).
I’ll leave early Sunday morning, take a breather in Miami, and land in Caracas just before 3 p.m. From there, I’ll travel the country for five and a half weeks. There will be regular blog updates, with photos and audio clips.
Feel free to leave comments and ask any questions that come to mind. I’ll be more than happy to try to dig up the answers.
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