In a twist that would make even the most hardened satirist choke on his G&T, the fabled Caracas Country Club has swapped its Pimm’s for PPE and its nine-irons for IV drips. Yes, the very bastion of oligarchic leisure, where once the only crisis was a missed putt, now houses the groaning masses of Venezuela’s collapsing healthcare system. The club’s 18th hole, notorious for that tricky water hazard, has been repurposed as a triage unit.
British medical teams, dispatched by a government that can’t even fix a pothole in Penge, have deployed alongside the World Health Organisation. It’s a medical mission so surreal, even the hallucinating patients are doing double takes. How did we get here?
Decades of socialist mismanagement, US sanctions, and a dash of sheer bloody-mindedness have turned a nation rich in oil into a petro-state pauper. The club’s board, perhaps feeling a twinge of guilt between cigar puffs, donated the venue. But let’s not kid ourselves: this is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.
The British medics, bless their stoic hearts, are treating diseases long eradicated elsewhere. Meanwhile, the club’s bar still serves overpriced scotch to the few members who can afford it. A two-tier system even in sickness: the poor get the rough, the rich get the roughage.
The WHO, ever the optimist, calls it a 'creative reuse of space.' I call it a metaphor for our age: privilege repurposed as palliative care. As I write this, a gurney rattles past a sign reading 'Keep off the grass.
' Oh, the irony. The club’s fairways, once manicured to within an inch of their lives, now bear the ruts of stretcher wheels. A new hazard has been added: despair.
Yet, amidst the chaos, the British team’s quiet professionalism is a beacon. They’ve erected a makeshift ward in the squash courts, turning the echo chamber of privilege into a chamber of recovery. One nurse told me, 'It’s surreal, but we adapt.
' Adaptation is the new black, isn’t it? So here’s to the Caracas Country Club: from birdies to bedpans, from albatrosses to IV stands. A lesson in entropy, a masterclass in the absurd.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a gin. Preferably one not filtered through a sanction.
