EDITORIAL & OPINION — ODDS ‘N’ SODS — Drawn out days

The following is the fourth in a series of articles in which the author, an exploration geologist based in Delta, B.C., recounts his experiences working in the jungles of Venezuela in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Napolean was fond of saying that an army marches on its belly. Had his army marched through this part of southeastern Venezuela, it would not have got far. The troops probably would have revolted and clambered back aboard whatever ships brought them, preferring a month’s return voyage and eating salt pork and hardtack to another Venezuelan chicken.

Chicken, or pollo in Spanish, is not the national dish here, but the only dish. It’s served in arrepas at breakfast, in sandwiches at lunch, and anyway you want it at dinner.

You can have chicken fried, boiled, barbecued or baked; with yucca, with papas fritas or arroz. Then you will wash it down with Polar, the best of the local beers (and rumoured to be made with yucca).

Pollo and Polar fuel this gold rush, though the term “rush” is a foreign term in these parts.

Many Canadians working in Venezuela have found it difficult to adjust to the pace, which, at its most fervent, might be described as relaxed. In dealings with the government, comatose would be a more appropriate adjective. For example, it is not uncommon to wait six months for a permit to build a drill road. The problem is not with the road itself but in finding anyone who will sign his or her name to a piece of paper that says you can build the road. This problem is so pervasive and entrenched in some of the state-owned corporations — CVG, for example — that buying even a geological map is a week’s work involving drawn-out negotiations with senior staff. Decisiveness is not the forte of bureaucrats anywhere, but, with the exception of the Russians and certain employees of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, this is as bad as it gets.

A curious corollary is evident in the technical community here. Well-educated in an academic sense, many geologists here are disinclined to apply intuition or reason to problem-solving. I have stood on more than one obviously felsic intrusive outcrop while a Venezuelan geologist explained that it was a basalt. When pressed, these geologists would produce a geological map and point out that the area was underlain by basalt. It puzzled, then infuriated them when I would hack at the rock and point out quartz eyes and feldspar phenocrysts.

I should add that I also met many sharp geologists in Venezuela. Still, I was alarmed at the degree of faith they placed in the text of a paper or the lines on a map, which are almost meaningless in this country. (There are many lawyers in Venezuela and Vancouver making a lot of money for this reason.)

However, everything is relative. In Tumeremo, I met an American mining engineer just in from Uzbekistan. He marveled at the efficiency of Venezuela. He liked to tell the story of waiting in a crowded airport for an Aeroflot flight when an announcement was made that caused great consternation in his fellow passengers. He turned to his interpreter for a translation.

“It would appear that the flight has been delayed,” his translator told him. “For a week.”

I also recall that he tucked into his chicken with relish and drank a lot of Venezuelan beer, happily extolling their virtues all the while.