In the Name of Progress

This week in El Batey they’ve been going crazy working on the roads and sidewalks. They say it’s because it’s been needed, and it has, but there’s the added impetus that on June 1st there will be hundreds if not thousands of people here in town for a Catholic festival where they bring a figurine of a saint from here in El Batey to San Juan. It’s supposed to be quite the party. I’m looking forward to it. But back to the roads. So in order to mejorar (improve) the roads they brought in some huge machinery. A road grader to level out the road and then they brought a ton of gravel (well, gravel is an overstatement, it’s more like a bunch of dirt with rocks in it) from down by the river Guanaré which runs through my pueblo. This means that they found a place in the river that had a fair amount of rocks in it and on the side and they filled dump truck after dump truck full of the dirts and rocks and hauled them away from the river. They cleared away trees in the way as need be to make sure they could get more. They hauled loads all day yesterday and all day today. And I think it will continue for the rest of the week at least. Here’s a couple pictures so you can get the idea.