I was awoken by my housemate, Baker Nicholaou, at 2am saying we had to go deal with a disturbance outside of the base. So we went over to handle it. We were walking back the the house after with another Nicaraguan when it happened. Two blocks away from our house, on our road about seven guys started splitting off and walking toward us. I thought they were just hanging out when they changed my mind.
One of them came behind me and put me in a choke hold while another guy started at me from the front. I threw the guy off my back and pushed the one in front pretty hard. They tried again and I did the same thing. By then there was at least one other guy on me who pushed me from behind and kicked me on the back of my leg. That was the biggest damage they’d inflict on me. Baker also had several guys chasing him around. He was punched in the mouth, but it wasn’t a very good punch. No blood or anything.By now Baker and I were together on the other side of the group, but our friend was on the ground getting pounded by two others. He was just curled up in a ball. I looked up and around at the five others walked towards us, one of them carrying a bottle. I thought might break the end off and use it as a weapon, but he wasn’t that smart. He just threw it past us, not even at us – a relief. Another walked around me and asked for my money. I told him no and said I wouldn’t leave without my friend, who was still getting beat. They didn’t seem to care too much about my requests so I ran up and pushed the two guys off of him and he got up and ran. I’m not sure what everyone else was doing then because we all ran back to the house. Maybe everyone else they’ve attacked don’t resist.
When we got back, we examined our wounds. Baker had a torn shirt, a couple of very small cuts, probably from being pushed to the ground, I had skinned up hands and knees, but our friend had been stabbed in the back! Fortunately, I think it was probably the smallest cut possible by a knife. The depth was our only concern. Both our neighbors came out to see that we were OK. After a little talk and drinking of water, we cleaned up, put some bandages on and went to sleep thinking about how we could have thrown some pretty good punches in retrospect.
This is just the streets of Nicaragua at 2am, nothing to be concerned about. We’re wiser for it, I got in my first fight and we’re all safe!
Yesterday the guys on the Novas trip and I killed and slaughtered a goat-sheep mix called “peliway”. Not sure of the spelling. We’ll prepare a meal for them and serve it this afternoon as a Valentine’s Day feast. I hope your Valentine’s is just as fun!
The picture is of Baker and me in our house about a week ago. If we took another picture now, I think we’d still give the thumbs up and smile.
