around them, helpless to do anything about it, and hopeless to the
entire situation. I wish it was one of those stories where the ending
was a happy one, but it's not.
Once upon a time, there was a boy like any other boy in the town of
Buzi. He comes from a poor family, where it is a necessity for his
mother to work in another country and had to leave him to live with
his aunt in a very rural town. This little boy grew up not thinking
anything of his future, only of his present life, what he needed to do
in order to survive the here and now. He had friends, but most of his
friends possessed the same mentality as he did. They knew of what
existed in their little town and their rural way of life. When this
boy was 14 or 15, he got a girlfriend, who he liked very much. One
day, the girlfriend came and told him that her teacher was going to
fail her in school if she didn't sleep with him, and asked the boy to
help her. The boy became very angry and began to plot ways of getting
even with the teacher. His young mind then decided to go find said
teacher, and this is what he told him.
"You better pass my girlfriend, or I will hide and wait for you on
this very road. I will have my machete with me, and when you least
expect it, I will jump out and kill you." He even went to the school
director and told him this.
Now, the rest of this story is not important, only that he did not end
up killing this teacher. The most important thing to understand is
that this boy took justice into his own hands. What could have
possibly possessed him to do such a thing?
Let's flash forward a little to when the boy turns 19 or 20. All this
time, he's been attending school, but just performing mediocre. He
does what all other teenage boys do in their little town: go to
school, help out their family a little in the fields, and drink. They
sit around and wait for opportunity to come to them, not ever thinking
that maybe they should get off their lazy asses and go find the
opportunity, all the while complaining that life is hard. Why should
they try harder and what can they do when everything is corrupted,
from the president of the country to the little director of their
school?
One day, 2 foreigners arrived in this rural town. One was to teach
English and the other Biology at this boy's high school. Ofcourse, the
boy was still attending high school since he had never had the
motivation to graduate. The boy was curious about these foreigners and
why they were there, so he began to talk to them. The more he talked
to them, the more he liked them and wanted to spend more time with
them. These foreigners taught him about the world outside of his small
little town. In addition to helping him with his English and Biology,
they introduced him to a world where hard work does eventually pay
off. He began to see that things do not necessarily have to stay the
way they are, and that change was possible, and change had to begin
with him.
This boy began to study harder, work harder, and spent all his time
practicing English with his new friends. The foreigners, in exchange,
were eager to help. Soon enough, the boy grew into a man, and the man
graduated, and looked for work outside of his small, rural town.
Although it took some time, he eventually found work and got accepted
into a university in an education program. His English is almost
flawless now, and he has found a way to make money translating
documents using his English knowledge. He was very busy, but he
remembered his small upbringing and tried to help his community as
much as he could. However, others misconstrued this kindness as his
way of showing off his success. Though they went to ask him for money,
his neighbors often comment on how he's so successful at such a young
age. Because the culture is so used to corruption, these people think
that the means of his success is based on something corrupt. They did
not believe that he'd earned all this from hard work and honesty. How
could they think otherwise when they themselves have experienced being
turned down from jobs only to be replaced by someone less qualified
yet wealthier than they were? Even the people in the man's hometown
said he was a show-off.
One day, the man returned home to visit his aunt in the small rural
town. He went to visit his friends and left their house a little after
dark. He was walking home when he was approached by an old friend. He
talked to her a while, and suddenly, her boyfriend, very drunk and
inebriated, came out of nowhere and accused the man of making a pass
at his girlfriend. He claims that the man has come back to show off,
and he didn't like that, so he and his 3 friends surrounded this man
and beat him. The man, who was once the young boy that had wanted to
kill his teacher with a machete on the side of the road, decided that
he no longer wanted to follow that route. He refused to fight back,
believing that he was no longer that person that had to resort to
violence to solve his problems. He committed himself to the justice
system, and decided to go to the police the next day to report the
problem.
Not only did the police do nothing about these drunk guys, but no one
would give him a straight answer. The police told him to find the
security chief of the neighborhood to catch the men and turn them in
to the police, but when the man went to the security chief, the chief
told him this:
"I have no gun. I have no rope. I have nothing to capture these men.
And I'm afraid they will eventually kill me. I cannot help you."
The man went back and forth between the police and the security chief,
and no one could help. Even his foreigner friends stepped up and
talked to the police, yet nothing prevailed. There was no justice in
this little rural town. Unless you have money, you have a significant
position in the community, or you know the right upper crust, your
voice would never be heard. This angered the man very much. Not only
did this crime occur in his hometown, where he grew up, but the police
were people that also knew him since he was young, yet they refused to
help him. Not only did he choose the right path and left it up to the
hands of justice instead of violence to delegate the consequences, he
tried everything he could to help justice. Finally, he decided that
there was no way to win. Those guys were going to get away with what
they did to him, unless he resorted to his own means of justice,
dealing with it himself.
This is a true story, and it makes me sick to my stomach how the
justice system works in this country. It saddens me that one can feel
so helpless and that my friend has to resort to violence to solve his
situation. He actually chose to do the right thing, and the right
thing turned out to be the wrong thing. I just want his story to be
heard. Sometimes in life, there really is no way out.
