The strike has been organized by a consumer advocacy group and a truckers union and is supported by the general public. There are very few roads in FG making it easy to block all major arteries. In fact, at times there are only a dozen or so people at each of the barricades. The blockades have been in place for a week now, with a few semis and the occasional backhoe parked across the road at major intersections.
No gas is coming in and until recently, no airplanes or boats. No rockets are being launched from the prized launch pad in Kourou. Even more devastating is the fact that fresh baguettes can no longer be distributed. With no fresh bread I’ve been forced to apply Nutella directly to giant chunks of coconut. Woe is me. Such a nuisance would have been cleared up by the authorities in short order in the good ‘ol USofA where public outrage is rarely allowed to inconvenience…the public.
Transportation has become a collaborative endeavour which is as it should be. You can drive to a blockade, leave your car there and either have someone on the other side pick you up or hitchhike. Going long distances sometimes requires calling a friend in each blockaded zone along the way. Alex and I had no trouble getting rides the second our thumbs poked up in appeal.
At the blockades there are tables where men are playing dominoes and stalls where people are cooking for those who get entangled by the strike. A friend of mine who needed to get through a blockade to catch a flight got held up for a while and got fed stewed fish over rice by the strike organizers.
Most notably, every gas station is shuttered. On the radio it is also being reported that there are no bikes left for sale. There also seem to be no bottles of natural gas around for sale and the number of flavors of ice cream is rapidly diminishing (no wassai left damn it). The CNRS house was out of gas before the strike and remains so. I left some rice soaking in water last night in hopes that it would have absorbed it all by morning. This morning it was slightly better than chalk.
No comments:
Post a Comment