A fractal of lives and perspectives; One incredible conversation

It was with a local Nica named Lenny. Erin and I met a fellow traveler named Toby who we meshed well with, so we invited her to meet up with us to grab a drink before the running of the bulls on Sunday. We were thinking about a local bar called Ranchito Escondido, not far from the house we’re camping at. So we met up and headed in to the dive bar, Erin and Toby being the only women in the bar. Because of this and the fact that they were foreigners, they were showered with attention, which left me the opportunity to get to know the people at the table next to me.

Lenny is a seventeen year old from the barrio with numerous tattoos: one large number 12 on the forearm; his date of birth on the back of his neck; the grim reaper on one calf; a shield and sword on the other. The interesting thing about the tattoos is the fact that there are very few people in central america with tattoes. The ones that do are generally well known as belonging to a gang. If you see someone with a tattoo on their face, it’s a pretty sure sign they’re an assassin with more than a few marks on their tally pole. These are the gangs that enforce curfews in small towns. If you’re out past 9pm in some gang-controlled barrio, then you’re likely to get shot, no questions asked, unless you’re with the gang or pay them a “security fee.” (FYI, most areas are not gang-controlled.)

This is not the type of barrio that Lenny entered when he was 13, but it was a weak facsimile of it. The family didn’t have enough to feed everyone and in the Nica-barrio, 13 is old enough to go out on your own. He didn’t get kicked out by any means, he still sees his family when he can, but it was time for him to “make it on his own.” That was 4 years ago. The reason he ended up with so many tattoos was because he became involved in the gangs. Now, he was quick to make a difference between “maras” and “bandillas”: maras being the hard-core drug related gangs that make the papers, bandillas being more like hoodlums that get involved with things like drugs and extortion, but not on the same level with the maras.

In order to show me the difference between the bandillas and the maras, Lenny told me how he came to get some of his scars. He was then still with a bandilla, who were in a bit of a squabble with another bandilla about turf or respect or something I didn’t quite understand. He was walking home with a couple of other friends when they were approached by the other bandilla, some insulting words were exchanged and a fight ensued. (Apparently, the weapon of choice for a bandilla is a rock. They’ve never seen a gun, could never afford anything even close to it. On top of that, as Lenny explained to me, a gun is for a mara and a rock is for a bandilla. Nobody in a bandilla wants thing to get that crazy, or if they do, they go to Managua and join a mara, where they start the rough life of working their way up that ladder, filled with all sorts of craziness involving police/government corruption, drugs and violence.) So Lenny got pounded in the face with a rock, broke the bridge of his nose (which he was never able to get proper treatment for because of how expensive it was) and knocked unconscious. As brutal as it might be to read this, it’s incredibly more brutal to hear it from the recipient of such treatment. It’s disturbing to remember the faces he made, the gestures, saying, “they held me down and hit me with their rock, (like this), so I hit them in the neck when I could (right here), but they were too many and held me down like this….”

He wasn’t embarrassed by it. He didn’t think it was strange. It was a real part of his life, not distant, but close to the heart and the memory. He knew that other people (like me) lived completely different lives that didn’t cross his, but equally knew that his life didn’t cross ours. We were in parallel worlds that don’t often meet.

A classic fractal

I don’t know what to take from this conversation, to tell the truth. I’m still somewhat digesting the fact that someone who lives just a few blocks away could live such an incredibly different life, with a set of morals and standards that I can only describe as difficult to comprehend. He seems like a remarkably intelligent guy, speaks with great clarity and intelligence, which is not something you often find. He knew when we were speaking that if he used a local slang word, he would explain it, without being prompted. His brutal eloquence was astounding to listen to. I wish that Erin could have heard it, but the spanish was flowing like a rushing river, story after story, explanation after description, equally fascinating and disturbing in it’s ultra-violence. Not even the violence itself so much, but the casual and familiar handling of it. It was like watching an old baker work his dough or an veteran gardener tend to his roses. Except it wasn’t anything that pretty. I am immediately reminded of A Clockwork Orange.

As I said, I’m still trying to figure out the conversation. What does it mean to me? There are so many aspects: the story itself; the social circumstances that create that situation; the motivation that drove Lenny to confide so clearly and explicitly in me; my personal response to the story. The list seems to go on and on in a confusing spiderweb where each thread is a different rationality, a different reality, and they keep intersecting and separating faster than I can identify. It’s a fractal of lives and perspectives.