Tuesday, May 4, 2010

"Tales" of Violence in Colombia

Before I go any further I'm going to post this warning in case anyone in the DEA or legal person of any kind would like to use my words in court.

"The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."

One of my favorite things about traveling is that you can make a "close" friend in a day. You typically cut through the bullshit and will give up secrets you normally wouldn't tell anyone at home.

Even though these friendships are forged over a short amount of time, I think they're just as strong, and in some case even stronger than "normal" ones.

Over lunch that first or second full day in Cartagena with Dutch he told me about his hellish experience in a hospital in Ecuador. He's 23, and has some major kidney stones, after numerous tests in ghetto Ecuadorian hospitals finally deterined.


[Cartagena]

I decided to tell him about my hydrocele, one of my balls has a bunch of fluid surrounding it. Pretty sure it was caused by a hit to the groin during soccer or the time I caught the business end of a metal baseball bat in 5th grade. The doc's won't do surgery on this bad boy until it's causing me extreme amounts of pain, which will probably slowly increase over the course of a few weeks, months, or years because recovery time is 6-8 weeks of hell (so they tell me). Dutch on the other hand is going to feel completely fine one minute, and then the fury of god will be striking him down when he tries to take a piss.

He is going to be in incredible amounts of pain with absolutely no warning. I told him I would rather keep my hydrocele than trade with him, he on the other hand preferred his issue. Comparing our trips to the urologist with someone you have only known for a few hours definitely opens the doors for more conversation.

It also turns out we have both experienced very similar pregnancy scares, the interesting thing is we were both freaking out at the same time for the most recent ones, laying awake in bed during the same nights.

At this point either of us really has nothing to hide from the other, he decided to let me know about his girlfriend in Medellin named "L", and her acquaintances.

One day Dutch was sitting with one of L's coke dealing friends for lunch. The tables were near or on the sidewalk and some guy walks over towards them shouting giving them shit. Words are exchanged with the coke dealer and random guy. The random guy is holding a big pink bunny stuffed animal and throws it at the dealer, Dutch is still sitting at the table, fork in hand, wondering what is going on.

Random guy calls the dealer some word that sounds like gonorrhea (this word is apparently extremely offensive).
Dealer jumps up from the table, pulls out a butterfly knife whips it around in front of this guy's face, whilst holding the knife in his right hand punches the guy in the face (note what that would look like from the random guys view).

Random guy falls down on his back, dealer stands over him and starts stomping on this guys face and throat for a few seconds. Takes his foot off his face, looks at the damage, decides it's not enough and continues to stomp in this guys throat/face a few more times. He flips the butterfly knife back into it's smaller shape so it fits in his pocket, strolls back other to the table, sits down, and goes back to eating.

No comments:

Post a Comment