El Mamba

*I haven't posted much lately because I've been focusing my writing on recounting the tales of my journey. I meant to write this story when I first met this boxer, but I did briefly reference his neighborhood previously in the blog here. The following is a rough draft excerpt of a book I plan to write. Any feedback is appreciated.

(Outside the home of Henry “El Mamba” Aurad - Cartagena, Colombia.)

When visitors enter my apartment for the first time, they usually ask about this picture that hangs on the wall. They wonder about the story behind the image, who the fighter is, where he comes from and where he is now. Most people guess "Africa", probably due to the rural village-like background, the fighter’s skin complexion, and the fact that most people don’t know that there are black people in Latin America. The photo was taken in Cartagena, Colombia - traditionally the city of Colombia most populated by tourists.

Cartagena is a fisherman’s port, frequented by foreign maritime merchants for centuries, but with its location primed next to the tropical beaches of the Caribbean, it seemed only natural that gaggles of tourists would come and make it another playground for the world’s economically privileged. But when you mention “Colombia” as a travel destination, the notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, or the infamous kidnappings by the terrorist FARC militia, are the first things that come to mind. Bottom line is: you don’t visit Colombia.

In recent years the rest of Colombia has become relatively safe to travel, but tourists have always stopped regularly to visit Cartagena, so much that Presdient Alvaro Uribe, and the presidents before him, made security in the city a high priority. One can see that from the noticeably increased visibility of military presence, and the fact that one of the President’s palaces resides in the city center. But the Cartagena's misconceived affluence overshadows the immense poverty that plagues the majority of its residents. In truth, it is one of the most impoverished cities of Colombia and sure enough, the city is rigidly divided between the haves and the have nots, or as locals would constantly describe to me as “Cartagena tiene dos caras” (Cartagena has two faces).

Perhaps the most troubling part of these very distinct barriers of class and race was that the socially marginalized neighborhoods juxtaposed themselves next to the luxurious city centers and guarded tourist communities. During my two months in Cartagena, my daily commute from the backpackers’ hostel to the boxing gym constantly reminded me of this rigid divide, as the hostel resided in the city's most affluent area, and the gym resided in a considerably poorer district; its fighters often living in even more impoverished conditions. As a legal caution, but more so as a form a courtesy, I had every boxer sign a consent form that included a disclosure of their home address. I remember when some Colombian friends stumbled upon these forms they'd ask me quizzically, “Why do all these forms have the names of dangerous neighborhoods?”

The particular neighborhood pictured above is “Barrio Olaya”, and the side in which this fighter resided was not even ventured by fellow boxers. Apparently he lived in the most dangerous part of the most dangerous neighborhood. His name was Henry Aurad, but everyone called him “El Mamba” - a ring name embroidered in green letters on the back of a white training tee that he wore each day. When people in the gym heard I was looking for boxers to interview, he approached me with a handshake and a hopeful smile. In all honesty, having already done a good round of interviews earlier, I wanted to be through for the day, but with his respectful patience and the realization that these interviews were just as much, maybe even more, of a time sacrifice to the boxers as they were for me, I couldn't possibly turn him away.

Henry spoke with such fluency and comfort that it was clear to me he had done interviews before. I learned later that he was one of Cartagena’s top prospects, despite his pro-debut loss. I was really looking more for the low-ranking common boxer that never had their story heard, but the thoughtful and intriguing answers Henry gave showed a level of class and intelligence I had not encountered before. It was apparent that Henry had struggled for his achievements, but it was the clarity of his explanation and the awareness of his surroundings that made it so interesting. For instance, I always ask the question, “What do you eat before a fight?” in hopes of showcasing the Spartan-like discipline a fighter must have to make weight for a bout and to highlight the gastronomic sacrifices made during training. Most times I would get a very typical nutritional catalog: rice, plantains, chicken, fruits and vegetables. But not this time.

Henry was the first to tell me that he sometimes did not have enough money to feed himself. He told me that despite being considered one of Colombia’s top prospects, athletes like him could very rarely afford a nutritiously-rich meal or "a Gatorade to restore the electrolytes lost during a training session". But it wasn’t as if Henry’s inability to afford a stable diet came from a lack of personal drive or motivation, (how could it when he participated in the most difficult sport in the world?), but rather because he had other mouths to feed, and sometimes, theirs came before his. In fact, Henry still is one of the hardest working persons I’ve met during all my travels.

A typical day for “El Mamba” begins with roadwork at 4:30 AM, the only hour where the oppressive Colombian humidity allows someone to run. By 7:00AM he arrives at his job as a carpenter and works until his 11:00 AM break. Traditionally, Colombians are given two hours for lunch, but Henry is given three. With his employers being quite supportive of his career in the ring, the extra hour allows adequate time for Henry to make the forty-five minute roundtrip commute to the gym and squeeze in two hours of training. After a quick shower and hurried scramble to the buses, Henry is left with a little less than 10 minutes to actually eat when he returns to work. At 8:00PM he finally returns home to his wife and child in a neighborhood commonly confused to be a rural African village. This was Henry’s daily routine. This was his life.

(“El Mamba” demonstrating his work. From Monday to Friday, Henry works 9 hours daily, earning a monthly wage of 500,000 Colombian pesos, or about $250.00 USD at the time this photo was taken.)
On top of his meager income, Henry is Afro-Colombian and like in most parts of the world, dark skin carries with it a social stigma. In addition to being economically poor, he is also snuffed by Colombia’s upperclasses for being black. For Henry, boxing is his way out. It represents the opportunity to provide some medium of change in his life, whether it is eventually reaching a level of superstardom, or merely being allowed to travel outside the country for a fight.

I asked Henry what he thought about Olaya, if he ever planned on moving to another neighborhood. Surprisingly to me, it took a moment for Henry to hesitatingly answer, “yes,” almost like a politician carefully choosing the words to publicly address his thoughts on abortion. Henry quickly followed his admittance of relocating with a declaration that he would never forget the “barrio”. There is always some level of pride in where someone comes from. People never forget the influence of neighbors, or the uplifting support of a community in the times of adversity. It is what made him.

Boxers are celebrities in their community. Regardless of their ranking in the broader context in the world of boxing, they are still regarded as superheroes. While walking with Henry through the streets of Olaya, bombardments of salutes, handshakes and friendly inquiries of upcoming matches appeared as normal routine. At one point we were followed by a group of school kids screaming, “El Mamba! El Mamba!” for nearly ten minutes. Henry had respect in his community. As a matter of fact, knowing him was probably one of the only reasons I was able to freely walk around carrying around a $1200 digital camera in my hands. But Henry wanted to move out of the neighborhood not necessarily for himself, but for his son. After the immediate validation for his beloved “Olaya” barrio, he gently explained to me that he wanted to give his son a better future than he his own, or as he put it, “I box so my son doesn’t have to.”

(Henry standing with his one-year-old son)
When these photos were taken, Henry was twenty-four years old, and my own twenty-fourth birthday had passed earlier that year. It made me wonder how two vastly distinct lives can coexist simultaneously in the world. Henry quite literally fights for his survival and I am attempting to document that struggle with a piece of equipment that equaled six months worth of his salary. But I think what I admired most about Henry was that these glaring inequalities never seemed to bother him. He never dwelled on the question “why”, but rather on figuring out the “how.” I remember asking him how he felt waking up to his backyard (which literally looked like a bomb had exploded earlier that day) and located just twenty minutes away is an area akin to the commercial suburbs of the United States. “That’s just the way it is,” he would tell me. “I’m not focused on why they are this way. I’m focused on how I’m getting out of it.”

This is the beauty of boxing. You could never pity a fighter. Despite the horribly impoverished backgrounds fighters often hail from, boxers hardly present an image of weakness. One could see from their intense training regimen that their circumstance is never a consequence of an unwilling laziness to help themselves. Instead, boxing eliminates all possible explanation that inequality is a result of personal agency, but rather that opportunities towards upwards mobility simply aren’t distributed equally. You couldn’t place mercy or feel pity to the poor, suffering (insert third-world developing nationality here) that too often occurs when aid workers try and “fix” the inequalities of the world. They wouldn’t take your pity even if it was offered on a silver platter served with a million-dollar fight contract on the side. There always remained a value in pride, and that prideful integrity brought all the piercing realities of the world straight to your face. That is what I love about the sport.

Compassionate Independence

I remember in Spain when many of my American classmates would gawk in ridicule about how their host siblings were commonly over the age of 20, sometimes 30, and still live at home with their mother. "Haven't they learned how to get a job?" was always the mocking question they'd ask amongst themselves.

But to me living with your parents wasn't strange at all. At least in Asian families children stay with the family well beyond their 20s. I remember when one of my best friends from high school was well into his 20's, he chose to move with his mother from their cramped 2-bedroom apartment to a larger 2400-sq ft home, but he didn't do it because he needed a place to stay, he did it to help pay the mortgage. The idea is that your parents cared for you as you grew older, and in return, you care for them as they do the same.

But that's not to say there isn't value in independence. An inability to separate from another person - your parents included - can be as much of a debility to personal growth just as much as an immunity to your loved ones. But I think independence, particularly in the United States, is propagated irresponsibly. We're told to be alone, but never taught how to be alone. This is seen in the distinction between "loneliness" and "aloneness".

The physical state of isolation is present in both conditions, but in "loneliness", we're still seeking companionship. We do this in our need to always go out with friends, to throw parties every weekend, even the need to be married or be in a relationship so quickly. The acceptance of other people somehow translates to a validation to our existence.

"Aloneness", on the other hand, is finding satisfaction in solitude. It is the comfort of being by yourself and appreciating the time for time itself. It is taking every single beautiful thing this world has to offer and appreciating it's simple existence, just as the world appreciates yours. That's what it really boils down to: having the confidence and security in knowing that you mean something in this world, regardless whether or not someone tells you so.

The problem particularly in this country is that we're filled with a false sense of confidence and we view conceding to the will of the collective as a weakness. It's viewed as an attack on independence. We're constantly bombarded with the message that we need to be leaders, we need to be independent, we need to be ourselves, yet we're never really made aware to the fact that leaders are defined by their masses, independence only exists in comparison to some level of conformity, and distinguishing ourselves from a crowd can only happen if that crowd is there to begin with.

The point isn't that these supposedly revered traits of greatness are only attained by few, but rather that we need to understand both to become a complete person. It is relentlessly beating this sense of independence into our hearts and minds that ironically causes the need that same ideology is working against. You see this in the supposedly "successful" people of the world. The celebrity has the need for attention, the multimillionaire has the need for money, the politician has the need for power. Most of it is merely for the approval of others, just through different means.

My mother told me that true contentment in solitude comes at the realization of happiness from helping others. I mean truly helping others. In addition to the false sense of independence in this country, we also promote a false sense of altruism as well. I find it strange that nearly every socially conscious person I've met wants to start a non-profit organization, but never wants to be part of one working towards the same goal. It's like an independent approach towards solving a shared issue.

Rather true contentment and true altruism and in some cases, true philanthropy, begins at reducing our own ego, our pride, and our yearning to own and do things independently. It comes at a very sincere realization of lessening the desires in our own lives and reducing the consumption that results from that selfishness. Sometimes even just learning how to be less focused on yourself and more on others, is enough, at times more, than any amount of time or money you could donate.

It seems that only the side of individuality is adored and sought after, yet this disconnection with ourselves and our communities explains many of the chronic problems we suffer from and also cause in the world. Most opinion polls report the United States to be the world's unhappiness nation despite all the gadgetry we're made to believe bring us joy. People still feel alone and unloved despite all the "romance" flourishing in popular media. Sadly, we've created an empty existence and passed it off as a superficial state of happiness. The problem is that we've never been told to examine ourselves internally. We've never properly learned how to be alone.



*Thanks to my mother and Jamil for inspiring this post.

Enlightenment through deprivation

I've always been intrigued by the ways in which enlightened beings lived. I've been told that samurais would sleep only a few hours a day, monks could go long periods without food, something in their spirit carried them beyond the luxuries in which we deem physical necessities nowadays.

I haven't eaten for 10 days now, meaning I haven't physically chewed a piece of food in more than a week. I've been on a 7-day master cleanse, the diet popularized by Beyoncé for her quick weight-loss to fulfill her role in the movie "Dream Girls". But the Master Cleanse isn't meant for weight-loss, for me it's not even that much about physical cleansing of the body (though that seems to be a byproduct of taking such an insane regiment). But rather, the master cleanse is a cleanse of our triangular relationship to life: the physical, emotional, and spiritual parts of our being.

Not once have I been physically hungry throughout this fast and I've learned the difference between "hunger" and "cravings". Instead what I've found is that gastronomic indulgences are really just distractions to disconnect us from our understanding of self, and in their absence you're forced to confront a number of internal emotions that brew to the surface; without things like "food" to latch onto, they really have nowhere else to go.

During this fast, I decided to learn about the food industry to essentially rebuild my diet after I had "reset" the digestive system, yet despite all the troubling and horrifying facts I've learned about the profit-driven trade, the only thing I could think about was eating the food being described. But what I missed most was participating in the festivities that involved food. The sharing, the laughing, the comradery in the breaking of bread amongst friends and family. Yet at the same time, I couldn't ignore the troubling disturbances that I had read about. Sadly, it made me feel that I could never successfully reintegrate myself back into the lifestyle I once enjoyed.

Ironically enough, the day in which I can finally eat (at least liquefied foods) is actually the first day I don't feel like eating. Something changed along the way. Somewhere I started feeling more and more detached from society and despite all the isolation from others, I was onto something. Maybe that's why the cleanse is commonly promoted for 10 days rather than 7.

Perhaps most troubling was I became more and more comfortable with being alone. Books, writing and work satisfied my needs of companionship. But I think the other component to finding inner peace is learning how to be peaceful with others. Inevitably we learn that as humans, we need each other. You have to learn to accept others for being human just as they have to learn to accept you.

The Power of Pain

We, as humans, are taught two types of thinking: Boast your accomplishments, be proud of who you are. The world is out there for the taking, so make it happen. On the other side of the spectrum we are taught to be humble, to belittle our ego. The world is a place we must share and sometimes we must concede to the ideas of others to make it work. The problem is not that these two views exist simultaneously in the world; the problem is the false belief that the two cannot coexist.

As human beings we are conditioned to avoid pain, both physical and emotional. But there is something magical about pain. It is the loudest and clearest voice we have. It tells our bodies and minds when we are progressively growing, or conversely, when we are overexerting ourselves. In the end, to fully realize both there is really only one requirement: You must know pain. You must go out fearlessly to confront it, and eventually, befriend it.

The reason there is such a polarization between the arrogant and the timid is a direct result to this avoidance of pain. We adhere to the type of thinking that already validates our way of life because that is what is comfortable. If we are arrogant, we will justify our actions with one belief. If we are timid, we will justify our actions with the other. In reality, those two need to be reversed. We need to actively seek out the uncomfortable and the painful, because they are what make us grow. They are what make us balanced.

All the answers lie within our own minds and bodies. Sometimes it’s not a matter of searching, but rather, a matter of listening.

Shameful

Children should not talk back to their parents. Neither should adults for that matter.

Timing

There's a saying in boxing, or well, not really a saying, but more of a cardinal ranking that says "speed" beats "power", but "timing" beats "speed". In physics the equation of kinetic energy is "1/2 mass times velocity squared". I remember my physics teacher pointing out how speed was always more important than mass in the development of energy; a bit counter intuitive for a Western perspective I think. Here "big" and "massive" are heralded over "small" and "mobile", like how Bruce Lee compares the philosophies to a stationary tree trunk to the swaying branches of bamboo. For him, bamboo always won out, because in the winds of a storm, bamboo would sway with the forces, rather than stubbornly pushing against it. After learning that perspective, I began respecting adaptability and flexibility over strength and power.

But in boxing, people commonly look at two things: speed and power. A fighter either hit really hard or punched really fast, and like ranking says, the faster fighter usually had the advantage. But the overlooked aspect which apparently outranks them all is the element of timing. WHEN you land the punch dictates everything. The biggest reason is because landing that a punch disrupts the momentum of the other fighter. Most boxers function on a rhythm, a cadence, and when that pattern is disrupted by a perfectly timed shot, they're forced to start over. Very few fighters can overcome a good timing with sheer force, and the few that do, don't last long as prizefighters.

But timing makes me think about life. How things come into your path and how sometimes good ideas aren't necessarily meant to be adopted when they initially dawn upon you. Sometimes they're meant to be held for later. The same principle applies in business: A good idea can go to shit if the moment isn't right.

Sunday strolls through Seattle

It's amazing how a visitor can open your eyes to a city that you've lived in half your life. If you let the inexplicable forces of nature and destiny guide you, you'll never be disappointed. We waited 30 mins for some doughnuts holes in a place I never knew existed. Had a variety of teas from a Chinese guy that operates a tea shop in downtown Seattle, but lives three blocks away from my parents in Bellevue. Explored a new world of literature and connected with what I would call, a "book expert." It put my book reading skills to shame, but only forced me to work harder. Discovered that you can carry 4lbs of king crab and oysters onto the plane as long as you use dry ice. Topped it all off with a hum bao and "The Story of Stuff". Goddamn it was a good day in Seattle. Good day to be alive.