At a street corner in eastern Caracas, Rosa Elena stepped from her car and started picking handfuls of leaves from a modest tree growing at the roadside.

“This is neem,” she said. “It’s high in sugar and great in a tea.”

Her interest was more than academic: Rosa Elena is diabetic, and when the lights went out in Venezuela last Thursday, she began to worry that the blackout would ruin her insulin supply, which must be kept refrigerated.

Since then she has been making rounds of the city, stockpiling neem leaves, which some people believe can be used to control diabetes.

Rosa is diabetic. Worried about ruined insulin (which must be refrigeriated) #sin luz she is collecting neem plants, high in sugar. #Caracas pic.twitter.com/eJW65J2TAk — Joe Parkin Daniels (@joeparkdan) March 11, 2019

As a crippling blackout drags into a sixth day, Venezuelans are being forced to improvise solutions for a crisis that is affecting every aspect of daily life.

Although there is intermittent power in the capital, some neighbourhoods have been in the dark since last week, and schools and businesses will remain closed on Tuesday.

Food has rotted in refrigerators, hospitals have struggled to keep equipment operating, and people gather on street corners to pick up patchy telephone signals.

At Residencias Karina, an apartment complex in the south-eastern municipality of Baruta – the power was still off on Monday evening, and residents had come together to share expertise and survival tactics.

One elderly resident has lent his generator to the operation, with cables running up the side of the red-brick building into a flat where neighbours charge their phones. To stop the device overheating or getting rained out, they have fashioned a cover out of cardboard and tarpaulin.

In ordinary times, petrol is practically free in Venezuela, due to government subsidies. But power cuts have put many pumps out of action, and fuel is hard to come by. It is illegal to fill jerry cans at petrol stations, so people are often forced to resort to the black market to obtain fuel for generators.

“The government calls it contraband – we call it survival,” said Carolina, one resident who preferred not to give her surname for fear of reprisals.

Members of the Bolivarian National Police escort a tanker as they help organize the distribution of drinking water to residents of San Agustin neighbourhood in Caracas on March 11, 2019, while a massive power outage continues affecting parts of the country. Photograph: Yuri Cortéz/AFP/Getty Images

Another neighbour, Pedro Martínez, was once a farmer in the country’s vast western plains, and has brought his own unique skillset to the team.

“I’m a campesino,” he said. “I don’t know about phones and I can live without them. But I do know how to salt meat.” Martínez has been turning the residents’ supplies of beef into jerky, so food supplies can last longer. “The chicken and the fish people had is already rotten,” he said.

Late on Sunday night, the housing complex was rocked by a string of explosions after an electrical substation caught fire in circumstances which remain unexplained.

“It sounded like a plane taking off,” said Carolina, as the stench of burnt plastic drifted across from the smouldering power plant.

The explosion added to a sense of desperation in a neighbourhood that had already seen outbreaks of looting. Residents have mounted lookouts to warn of the government security forces and paramilitary gangs called colectivos, who they fear will take down their jerry-rigged infrastructure.

🔥Increíbles las imágenes de la explosión de transformadores adyacentes al Concresa. Se escuchó en varias zonas del este de Caracas. Muchos se quedaron sin luz... #11Mar

🎥 @noticiassosvzla pic.twitter.com/RlRWSNRZdD — Christian G.V (@ChrisPrensa) March 11, 2019

“It’s like Jumanji here,” Martínez said. “Except instead of elephants and lions running around it’s the national guard and colectivos.”

Residents have started pumping water from a well behind the front gate, and taking turns to carry supplies to elderly neighbours on higher floors.

Water is in short supply across the city: at a pharmacy in the upmarket commercial neighbourhood of Las Mercedes, the queue for bottled water stretched for several blocks – longer than the line outside some petrol stations.

Moisés de Lima, a homeowner and new father, loaded gallon bottles of water into his car. He was stockpiling in expectation of a prolonged crisis.

“We are in a wartime economy now,” De Lima said, his voice trembling with anger. “This is what this government has done to us, and it has the nerve to just make excuses and play the blame game.”

On Monday night Maduro made a conspiratorial televised address to the nation, claiming the power cut was part of a “demonic” plot dreamed up in the White House by Donald Trump in an attempt to plunge Venezuela into chaos and justify a military invasion and occupation.

Most locals, however, are convinced the cause is years of under-investment, mismanagement and corruption.

“Chavistas have been in power for 20 years and we have had 20 years of energy crises,” said De Lima, who paid for his water in dollars, which swiftly became the de facto currency as cashpoints and card-readers went out of action. “After 20 years, you can’t blame other people for your problems.”

Outside La Carlota military airbase near the centre of the city, locals had descended on a tap outside a local police station, bringing empty bottles, jugs and tubs.

Waiting in line was Jeancary Lugo, a business administrator, who was dismayed by the efforts of some storekeepers to profit from the crisis.

“On Friday, I bought a bag of ice from a store for $1.50. Yesterday they wanted $8,” she complained. “There’s a lot of solidarity here but there’s also people taking advantage. I feel like they are [trying to] rob us.”

Across the road, dozens of national guardsmen lined up, with riot shields and gas masks at the ready.

“Is this what Venezuela deserves?” one person in line shouted at a police officer by the station house.

The officer shrugged. “In the command centre there’s no water either, and electricity comes and goes. We’re all suffering the same,” he said.