So, my friend’s 13 year old brother was playing with a grenade last Monday and ended up hurting himself (Duh?). After a year of living in La Fraternidad (13 months and 2 days actually, but who’s counting?) not much surprises me anymore, though someone conveying this information to me in a really casual manner still managed to. It actually took me a minute to process this information, primarily because, well, you don’t hear people talking about grenade accidents that often (and and when you do, you would assume that it would be done in a somewhat exited or surprised tone of voice, not the deadpan, bored sort of way that my friend relayed the information to me). But after I understood what he was telling me, (that a 13 year old had gotten hold of a grenade and apparently not thrown it far enough when detonating it) I realized that I had actually heard the explosion the day before and just written it off as more kids playing with fireworks (which are usually the least of my worries, seeing as just as often the bangs I hear outside my house are the local drunk firing his pistol around). As soon as I had grasped this information I went in search of other people to confirm the story (because as a have learned, people make up some wild rumors here, and it is best to double or triple check all information). After asking around a bit I was able to ascertain that he had indeed been playing with a grenade and was indeed hurt (though accounts on how hurt varied greatly, from mildly injured to dead). In the end I was able to clear the facts up when I saw him in front of his family’s house and went to talk to him. It turns out what had happened was that he had found one of the crow dispersal grenades that his brother-in-law had stolen from the army during the coup two years ago (his brother-in-law is a cop, and a serious moron for this and many other reasons, and had been stationed in the capital working alongside the army following the coup). Apparently he mistook it for one of the smoke or tear gas grenades that the brother-in-law also has laying around the house (pilfered at the same time), and has in the past detonated in their yard, and mine for that matter (on one occasion he even ran around in tear gas smoke with my land lord until they were both crying and dry heaving, then they visited my house and just being in their proximity made me start to cry and have a painful runny nose). When he threw it, (like all of five feet, and then stood there looking at it) it landed on a pile of old cans and scrap metal that were in the corner of his families yard. Thus when it blew up he got sprayed with little pieces of metal all up one leg and arm, and a bit on his face. Luckily none of the shards got in his eyes or cut too deep, but he still had to go to the medical center and get them all pulled out and then get bandaged up (when I saw it, it basically looked like someone had blasted him from a distance with a shot gun). So this story has a relatively positive ending, in that he neither killed himself nor was permanently maimed (also I have learned that my town will always continue to find new and exotic ways to dumbfound me).
