Bullets

To understand a culture there must be some knowledge of the history of its place. The events that occur throughout a culture’s and country’s gestation are woven into the fabric of its existence, its threads made up of varied lengths and colors. Civil war weaves its ways through the rich fabric of Nicaraguan history: south versus north, pacific versus costeño, Spanish versus Miskito, Sandinista versus Contra. The war ended in the late 1980s but its effects are present everyday. For example, the population demographics of Nicaragua have been molded into a demographic donut: the young and old form the spongy outer ring with a large void in the center where the 20+ to middle age would have existed if not for being leveled during the war. Within this demographic donut you will also find many more women (not so many female soldiers) than men living in current day Nicaragua.

At dinner the other night a friend of mine from the hospital casually slipped a war story into our conversation. As I listened to her words I considered how I don’t have any war stories to drop at a cocktail party or off-handedly mention to a passenger sitting by my side in a taxi. It’s just not part of my history.

She was telling me an anecdote from a previous conversation with a colegue of hers. Both women of the same age, early thirties, both specialist physicians in a far away corner of Nicaragua. One grew up in Managua the capital and the other grew up in Rosita, a mining area of the RAAN.

“Remember the Babamama doll?” asks the physician from Managua.

“No.” says the physician from Rosita, shaking her head, wrinkling her brow as she tries to remember if the doll’s name is familiar.

“How about the Candy doll? Or that one cartoon?”

“No, not that one either.”

“Really?!”

“Look, we didn’t have television, and we didn’t have those dolls. All we had were bullets. We played with bullets,” she says while she laughs and spoons another bite of seafood cocktail into her mouth.

She then went on to tell me how the only toys available at that time were a little black doll for girls and a toy gun for boys. Oh, the irony (or strategy) of sensitizing young boys to guns in a war zone. And to further make her point she says, what mother wants to buy her son a toy gun during a war, but then again what mother won’t buy her son the only toy in town.

She also related stories of air raids. She explained that every home had dug an L-shaped “safe haven” in the back patio in case the town was under attack. Her father cared for their L-shaped trench, flattening its black dirt, ensuring its safety. She went on to tell me about the night that ¨the war came¨in 1988. They were ordered to hole up into their safe haven. As they made their way toward their L-shaped home, they discovered, to their surprise, that the earthen trench was filled with water; there would be no entering! She relays these stories with bright eyes, a laugh at the corners of her mouth. Then she says, “It’s terrible to live through war. It’s terrible,” then quickly goes back to nibbling on her fish cocktail stained red with tomatoes.

Just a little taste of one woman’s history in Nicaragua.