Cards by Day, Knives by Night [Nicaragua]

Dusty dirt streets, most heavily pot-holed, crisscross this barrio outside of Managua, known as Velloamacer. The streets are deserted this afternoon, sole witnesses acknowledging the presence of the tiny tin shacks, staggered, with no evidence of order, to the left and right. A steady quiet lack of movement hovers over the neighborhood. I felt uncomfortable.

An instinctual comfort returned a street later when Alvaro and I came upon a group of guys, all handsome, tanned, seemingly without a care in the world. They played cards sitting in dirt, leaning against the faded teal front of a small store. A rusted, tilting pole supported a net-less basketball hoop a few feet away, a diversion between hands.

The group didn’t pay us much attention. They knew Alvaro, my head-shaved guide and bodyguard. They couldn’t miss the strong muscles filling out his skin tight white t-shirt. These guys were gang members, arms tattooed to identify their loyalty.

The quiet of other streets was soon overtaken by their cackles as I began taking pictures, pushing one another aside, gang members lined up in an unstated, yet obvious, pecking order. They became nice guys, friendly guys, fun to be around. They were gang members. They didn’t work. Days were for lounging, silently broadcasting that they needn't work to their neighbors, from the quiet surrounding streets, now at work.

These guys played a different game at night, when bustle, hustle, and noise returned with each street’s inhabitants. It is a group game. It is extortion by knife. Gang members don’t need complex language to make their point known. Just a simple question rising from the bottom of the pecking order, the top bird hovering nearby for effect. “Hey, you want to help us out, don’t you?” No one resisted. To resist was not pointless. It was a known invitation to experience the point of a knife slicing flesh to form a scar, a visible reminder to friends and foes alike.

They were nice guys, handsome guys, friendly guys. They played cards by day, knives by night.

Gone [Santiago Attitlan, Guatemala]

Living through the rainy season was difficult as it was, mud and more mud everyhwere. It must have been an incredible nightmarish roar that interrupted the gentle sound of rain falling upon the tin roof of his home, a roar that suddenly awoke him and his family from their sleep. It was a sound and a rumbling of the landscape greater than anything they had heard before. And it was coming closer.

They survived, unlike perhaps as many as 1,500-2,000 of their fellow villagers around Lake Attitlan. They must have sought higher ground. Did they climb a tree? There are few left. Most were ripped from decades old roots, fodder before the approaching mud tsunami. Did they climb onto the top of their house? Perhaps for a few minutes, though it couldn’t have been for long. The house was left buried, four feet of mud hardening upon it as if a coffin in a grave filled with dirt. How many must have been buried in such graves? They couldn’t have outrun the mudslide. It was far faster than their feet could carry them across fields already soaked with water beyond what they could hold. He must have rushed his family to the top of their animal’s shed, a newer, far sturdier structure than their home. The shed survived, only half buried. They survived, all their possessions buried beneath them.

Six months later this survivor, watched by his sullen wife, attempts to resurrect the belongings of their past. He digs with a small shovel and with his hands through the now hard-packed dirt atop what was once their home. It would mean so much to recover things, to give them back their past. Taking a break from his digging, his eyes penetrated the lens of my camera, zigzagged off its mirrors, and bore through the viewfinder and into the eyes of my mind. His look touched a nerve; it illicited a response. Empathy. For a few seconds before and after the camera’s 1/250th second, I understood his pain, shared his feelings. They were written upon his face. Pain. Anguish. Regret. Hopelessness. Fear for the future. His possessions, his land, anything of wealth, his home… gone.

The Stare [Managua, Nicaragua]

Walking through a small market filled with happy, bustling, exuberant vendors, I was drawn to a darker corner, illuminated only by the stare of this man. Leaving the light behind, I adjusted my camera’s exposure accordingly, and slowly, sensitively strode up to him, motioning with hands that speak no spanish, asking if I could take his picture.

Stare. Eyes focused, yet perhaps not on this world. No response to my motioned question. Stare. I knelt before him, postured in submission in my act of capturing his stare, his spirit. I stole a momentary slice of it. He moved in no perceptable way, eyes unblinking. I stood. Stare. I turned the camera to show him his image. Stare.

I stepped gingerly out of the darkness of the stare, wading through a shadowed area while transitioning to the world of light, a world filled with moving faces, moving eyes, moving bodies. I glanced back. Stare.

Did this man see me? Is he blind? Did he feel feel the burst of the flash? Had life been reduced to a deadening, a dumbness, seeing eyes no longer seeing? Or, perhaps it was a case of, "Oh, just another gringo taking pictures? Why of me? What’s to look at?” Stare.

If They Ask [Antigua, Guatemala]

I like nothing better than to wander side streets of a new place, camera in hand, at my own pace, my full concentration focused on capturing whatever captures my mind’s eye. For taking photographs has always been a way for me to understand the world around me and to share that understanding with others.

Sometimes, this initial understanding happens subconciously. Consciously, I just go through the motions: choose a shutter speed, an aperture, compose the elements within the frame; click.

As I walked down a side street in Antigua, cherishing the wonderfully warm light of early sunset, I rounded a corner and came upon these two boys. That eye of mine in my mind yelled, “Stop! Take a photo.” I knelt down and took this picture first, almost didn’t take it, annoyed that the boy on the right kept pushing himself into the frame, while I really wanted to take a picture of the boy playing the flute. I finally put down the camera and motioned that I only wanted to take a picture of the flute payer. I took a few, got back to my feet, smiled a smile thanking them, and turned to continue on. The other boy deftly inserted himself in my path, hand held out, mumbling “money, money.” I gave him a couple of quetzals. He moved aside, and I wandered on, pleased to have captured photos of the flute player.

What was that all about?

When I returned to my office, and began to edit photos from the trip, I was surprised to see how uninteresting the photos of the flute player were, yet how interesting (to me at least) was this photo of both the boys, the other boy’s hand extended well into the frame in a universal beggar’s plea. This was the real photo, the one that had worked its way into the back of my mind. Now it began to slowly move up the queue of thoughts seeking my full attention. Here was yet another image of begging, though this time, one with beggars of a different sort. These boys were clean, well dressed, one musically talented, the other with significantly developed asking skills. They certainly weren’t homeless. They didn’t look like their lives depended on a next meal. They didn’t smell. Here were two young, ambitious boys, trained actors, skilled at the art of benefitting from the good graces and compassion of others. They were dupers.

Yet they asked. “If they ask...”

God Forgive Me [Antigua, Guatemala]

As with every other trip I’ve taken to a third world country, I was confronted by many beggars in every area I visited in Guatemala and Nicaragua. How am I to relate to these men and women created in God’s image, each of whom is clothed with a uniqueness to which I respond with pity stripped of action. I make a conscious decision to walk on by, sure to make no eye contact, ignoring the hand reaching outward and upwards toward me, as if I have just encountered a no one. I am ashamed.

What incredible arrogance. Moments after purchasing a tasty treat from a pastry shop, I am confronted with a man who is surely homeless. He is a man of incoherence, a long time since having visited a clothing store and a barber. He mumbles. He smells. Everyone seems to know him; most write him off – a crazy person. I don’t write him off. I pass him by. God forgive me.

How many other people have I passed this delightful, sunny morning, strangers I greet with “hola” or “buenos dias,” a simple “gracias” here, a “mui bien” there? These people, they are young, they are old, some pretty, others not, some obviously with more means than others, yet strangers all that evoke no pity in me, that incite no guilt burning within me. These are some ones. God forgive me.

What is wrong? Is my heart so dulled by a merrily walking along, pastry eating lifestyle that I have become hardened, purposely avoiding anything, any no one, who might cause a momentary burp, a bit of indigestion, in my world of the uber-humans?

This man is blessed. He is poor. He is a man who Jesus said needs a doctor. I didn’t doctor him; I certainly didn’t allow him to touch my garments. What if Jesus did? Is this man, in fact, Jesus? How preposterous!

Is he the overlooked whom I did not feed, I did not clothe, I did not house, I did not meet within the prison of his babbling incoherence, his stinking incontinence? I am but a quickly passing storm cloud, fulfilling Isaiah’s long ago forecast: having stopped my ears, closed my eyes, that I might not have to deal with Him.

This man of sorrow is one for whom I did nothing that I would have him do for me. I abandoned him in his need. I rejected him. Will He abandon me in mine? God, please forgive me. Show me how to repent.

Amen.