From Muddy Yellow Earth to Scarred Asphalt.

It was August 1973 when my family swapped the endless greenery of Monte Carmelo, in Táchira state, for the uncertainty of a hillside in Caracas. We arrived at a place which, despite its hopeful name, Vista Hermosa, presented itself as a challenge of yellow earth and reddish clay. There was no tarmac, no cables, no taps; only my parents’ determination to build a home where before there had been nothing but undergrowth and silence.

Our first house was what we in Venezuela bluntly call a ‘rancho’: a single wall of red concrete blocks facing three of brass, under a zinc roof that sang in the rain. We were pioneers on Orinoco Street; just six neighbours scattered across a landscape of rugged ups and downs. I remember my father digging septic tanks in the absence of sewers and the daily one-kilometre walks to a stream to fetch the water that kept us alive.

The transformation was a process of hard work and perseverance. By 1975, the corrugated iron sheets had given way to concrete blocks, and water tanks began to crown the rooftops. The government began digging up the ground to lay pipes, and electricity lit up our nights. Seeing the tarmac reach the main roads five years later was like seeing modernity shake our hands. The neighbourhood grew to over 300 families; Toyota jeeps, those ‘all-terrain’ vehicles that were the only ones capable of tackling our slopes, became the lifeblood of local transport.

By the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, Vista Hermosa was no longer a shanty town; it was a thriving community. We had schools, a church where we could practise our faith, a health centre, and even a secondary school, opened in 1998, which meant our young people no longer had to go down to the valley to study. The arrival of CANTV’s landline service and, years later, ABA internet and DIRECTV dishes, made us feel that the future had finally moved in with us.

However, time and crises have their own narrative. Today, from the physical distance imposed on me by Ontario, Canada, I receive news via my brother Henry, who still lives in our mother’s house. His words paint a bittersweet picture. That progress we saw climbing up the hill seems to be in retreat. The gas service, once straightforward, is now a monopoly controlled by others; the CANTV telephone service, which we fought so hard to secure, has fallen into disrepair, and the façades we once so proudly admired now bear the scars of neglect and lack of maintenance.

It’s a thought that won’t leave me: the neighbourhood we built with our own hands seems to be wearing thin. From the comfort of Ontario, where services run smoothly thanks to our monthly payments and taxes, my heart remains rooted in that street, Orinoco. Vista Hermosa taught me that dignity doesn’t depend on the material of the walls, but on the effort to improve. It pains me to see its decline... yes, there is now fibre-optic internet, but power cuts all the time; the pavements littered with abandoned vehicles because there is no money to repair them... But in my memory it will always be that place where the yellow earth became home, and where we learnt that the sweetest water is the water you carry with effort.

Hi! Everybody (friends), if you've made it this far, THANK YOU! You are welcome to participate; the link with all the information is below. But I also hope to read your comments in the reply box. Thank you for joining us in these waters of HIVE.