Venezuelans create income from home businesses

Santa Rosalía Street in a poor neighborhood in the heart of Caracas used to teem with food carts that sold street fare all night long. The glow of lights as crowds of hungry people handed over their cash and debit cards for a quick meal has fallen dark and silent.

When COVID mandated quarantine shut down street-life in Venezuela's capital city, Dioselis Bello closed down her street food cart and opened up her home for business.

She sells now sells arepas, Venezuela's comfort food, from her kitchen to customers who wait for the home cooked meal to take with them.

Like many struggling to get by, she can't survive without working.

Business isn't like it was working her portable flatiron on the bustling street, but Bello says she's happy to earn a living.

"I can't complain," 49-year-old Bello said. "This way, at least I'm at home and I'm able to work."

To compensate for a lack of customers on the streets because of the lockdown, Bello has a delivery service to deliver her beloved arepas to customers' homes.

Some Venezuelans have improvised a new source of income despite harsh quarantine restrictions aimed at slowing the coronavirus spread.

They turned their homes and other unlikely spaces into makeshift take-out restaurants or shops.

Next door, Isabel Quevedo, 42, started selling candy, bread, cigarettes and soft drinks from the windowsill in her small house where a couple of beds occupy more than half of the space.

She started her business after suddenly being laid off from a clothing store.

Quevedo is able to feed herself and her grandson and on a good day, earns more than the monthly minimum wage she was paid when she worked at the store.

She doubts she'll ever go back to the clothing store.

The first cases of coronavirus in Venezuela five months ago was followed by strict quarantine measures, closing businesses and leaving many without work.

It hit at a time when Venezuela's crushing economic crisis already left most scraping by on a monthly minimum wage equal to roughly 2.60 US dollars.