My Brother (PART IV)

It was very hard to see my brother leave on that truck full of singing men. They were all very anxious and scared to see if what happened during service was as they had been told. The stories about the army are terrible and on the first week, we found out they were true. We had the privilege of visiting him on Sundays so we went to see how he was. I have never seen him as skinny as he was that day. He was completely sunburned but the hardest part was seeing his spirit. He knew he had to deal with that for the next year, he knew this was serious, he knew he had to stop fooling around, and that this was real. That is real life.
In the army they called a partner of his “gomelo” because he lived in Bulevar Niza which is a middle class neighborhood. They thought he had studied in Colegio Nuevo Reino de Granada which is a popular school they had all heard of. This was excellent for him because they would have devoured him if they knew what his life really was and where he came from. He just told them he lived up on the mountain because they did not know what Rosales is and he certainly did not want them to know this.
The first few days, their superiors want to prove their higher rank and to earn some respect. This is why they purge the men so they clean their system and feel like shit for the whole week. They were woken up at 3:30 in the morning by a loud whistle and several screams because they were in a huge room with 200 bunk beds. From there they proceeded to the bathroom where they had 30 minutes to shower. This may sound great but not when you have to share 10 showers with 200 other men and everybody has to finish within the 30 minutes. All of this with freezing water from the mountains. When they took longer, those that hadn’t finished had to crawl their way out of the bathroom with one of the superiors smacking their back with a wooden board. Their apparel had to look impeccable so a tiny wrinkle or a boot with a dull area was severely punished. The boots who were brand new had to be as shiny as possible but they had to make them shiny with only their spit. My brother said he took at least 2 hours making them shiny but after these first times, it got a little easier. The food was terrible and very scarce so he was hungry for the 20 hours a day he was awake. He told us the thing he missed the most were the hamburgers. Every single week we go to El Corral so he missed this so we came up with a great idea. The second Sunday we were able to go, we infiltrated a burger with large fries and a coke and it was a glorious moment for my brother. He devoured that burger.