Playing With Fire (article from Honduras This Week*)

The intersection between Kennedy Boulevard and Plaza Bancatlan was as normal on Tuesday night; the entrance to the Miraflores Mall was bustling with shoppers, and the air was filled with the horns and sirens of hundreds of impatient drivers crawling their way home from work through the thick traffic. One man, however, stood out from the crowd.

His wiry figure, silhouetted by the headlights behind him, stood stationary in the middle of the crossroads. His body was lit periodically by arcs of orange light as the balls of fire on the end of a pair of chains swung about him as if in some kind of chaotic elliptical orbit.

Cheers erupted from the open windows of the nearest cars as his burning satellites came to rest, hanging benignly by his side. He made his way between the lines of vehicles, his cardboard cup gradually filling with Lempiras, until he reached us, standing on the sidewalk. His young, sculpted, soot-covered face noted our presence, and that of the camera around my neck. He raised an eyebrow, grinned, and held out a greasy hand. “I’m Lenin… they call me the Fire Dragon.”

Street performers are relatively few in Tegucigalpa. Apart from the Mariachi Bands that occupy the sidewalks of Boulevard Morazan during the evenings, artisans like Lenin tend to follow the tourists. “Places like Valle de Angeles, Santa Lucia, the Bay Islands, that’s where the money is made. I make handicrafts – jewellery for instance, and I’m also a tattoo artist. These things are for the tourists. But on the streets of Tegucigalpa, it’s the fire breathing that gets people excited.”

Fishing a plastic bottle of translucent orange liquid out from his bag, Lenin strolled purposefully to the front of a queue of vehicles. “Diesel,” he said, grinning again as he excused himself. Taking a swig of fuel, he waved a flaming stick at the cars opposite, before holding it up to his lips. A ball of flame five feet long roared into life, bathing Lenin in a second-long firey glow. Cue gasps of delight from the transfixed passengers.

On the face of it, it looks like a dangerous business. As children, one of our first lessons is not to play with fire; too often we learn from experience. And like the rest of us, Lenin has been burnt before. “You have to be careful, not just of the flames but of the people watching. I was pushed by a drunk once as I was throwing the flame in a bar, and was quite seriously burned.”

But for Lenin, the pros of a life working on the streets outweigh the cons. “I am a Honduran, born in Tela, but during the 16 years I’ve been doing the fire show I’ve traveled all over Latin America. Next week I go to Panamá. It’s a luxury many Hondurans never experience, but for me, traveling is living.”

And with the travel comes the opportunity to help and work with the children of the streets. It is not the flames that pour forth from the mouth of the ‘Maestro de Fuego’ that are his most striking feature, but his attitude to Honduras’ unfortunates. “I was a working child in Tela. It’s a hard life. But with a trade, they have the opportunity to make life better. So I teach them what I know. I don’t want them asking for money so they can spend it on sniffing glue.” A youth stepped forward carrying the Maestro’s smoking chains. “Tommy is my apprentice at the moment,” explained Lenin. “He’s been with me a week. He’s already spitting fire!”

Lenin has a motto, a mantra by which he lives. I reflected on it as he and his student continued to provide the evening’s entertainment for the drivers of the Miraflores Mall intersection. ‘Live humble, think high’. His dream? To travel the length of the Americas, from Tierra del Fuego at the tip of Argentina to the frozen tundra of Alaska, and everything in-between. Let’s hope his journey shows that his philosophy is as contagious as his sooty grin.

*Honduras This Week is the national English-language newspaper of Honduras. I've been writing for them for a month or so.