Our coun­try has ac­com­mo­dat­ed our Venezue­lan sis­ters as they seek as­sis­tance af­ter flee­ing from their home due to their coun­try’s eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal cri­sis. In keep­ing with WE Mag­a­zine’s aim to em­pow­er women, we sought to have a con­ver­sa­tion with one woman who speaks about her life be­fore com­ing to our shores for as­sis­tance.

Gen­e­sis Gelves is a 29-year-old jour­nal­ist and busi­ness own­er who left her home in Venezuela to seek refuge in Trinidad eight months ago. Pri­or to com­ing to Trinidad, Gen­e­sis lived in Mara­cai and worked as an en­ter­tain­ment re­porter on both ra­dio and tele­vi­sion.

Dur­ing that time she al­so opened a spa and set up a re­al es­tate busi­ness. “The mon­ey for jour­nal­ists in my coun­try is very bad,” she told WE mag “I worked for a ra­dio sta­tion, 98.9FM, for one year as an en­ter­tain­ment re­porter and then went in­to tele­vi­sion.” Gen­e­sis said she did not ven­ture in­to the field of po­lit­i­cal re­port­ing be­cause “it’s a risky area”. “The pol­i­tics in my coun­try is very bad for a jour­nal­ist, the gov­ern­ment can put you in jail if you re­port some­thing that they do not agree with.” She said the re­al es­tate busi­ness was do­ing well for her but the mar­ket col­lapsed un­der the present gov­ern­ment in Venezuela and prices fell steeply. This is no longer her sto­ry as to­day, Gen­e­sis rents with her two close friends and lives a life en­tire­ly op­po­site to what she knew back home.

Why did she choose to come to our shores though? Gen­e­sis ex­plained that as the times got hard­er in 2018, she was urged by an ex-broth­er-in-law in T&T to come here and prac­tice her Eng­lish. With that, she flew to T&T, got her work per­mit and to­day works as a bar at­ten­dant in two bars in the area in which she lives. Her earn­ings are split be­tween pay­ing rent and send­ing monies to her rel­a­tives who still live in Venezuela. She said this is the first time she has worked in a bar and isn’t ac­cus­tomed to how women are be­ing treat­ed by pa­trons. Her first week was de­press­ing since many men made sex­u­al ad­vances to­wards her and of­fered her mon­ey for sex. “This is some­thing I nev­er do. My first week in the bar, I was de­pressed as many cus­tomers came and asked me about sex for mon­ey. This is not my work, I have nev­er done that in my life. Af­ter a week or so the peo­ple start­ed to re­spect me.”

Gen­e­sis be­lieves one of the biggest chal­lenges that Venezue­lan women face (in Trinidad) is the stig­ma that they are pros­ti­tutes be­cause of oth­er women who, in the past, came to T&T to work at broth­els. She is al­so con­cerned about the be­hav­iour of Venezue­lan women (in pub­lic) who may do dam­age, not on­ly to their char­ac­ter but to that of oth­er Venezue­lan women. She said the amnesty pro­gramme of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment should open up some new op­por­tu­ni­ties for her and she is hope­ful that she may get a job as a jour­nal­ist one day. While this is so, she al­so does not mind re­turn­ing to her home­land if the gov­ern­ment changes, but she is still mind­ful that change will not come im­me­di­ate­ly. She stat­ed that life in Trinidad has been good to her.

By Shas­tri Boodan