The Robbery

The title says most of it, but here are the nitty gritty details of how the robbery went down. Alex, my Colombia U friend, and I were walking to school on our normal route at our normal time at 9 in the morning. The only unusual part about Thursday was that I was carrying two bags full of my personal belongings with the intentions of going away to a nearby island for the weekend, as we didn´t have class on Friday. I brought my camera, cash, credit card, debit card, running shoes, dresses, school books, personal journal, running clothes, swim suits, towel, jewelry, etc.

As Alex and I approached a fairly crowded bus stop near a small shopping center, three men came out from behind one of the many iron gates on the sides of the street. They began to tug at our bags. At first, I didn´t think much about it. Brazilian men have grabbed my hair and shoulders many times, but I just shrug them off and keep walking. These guys (mid-twenties) however, kept pulling on the bags. My eyes fixated on Alex´s- was this really what I thought it was? The robbers then informed us that yes, in fact, we were being robbed. One of them also informed us that he had a gun under his shirt. As the event unfolded, I tried to formulate Portuguese sentences in my head to make a deal with the robbers- take all my money but please leave my school books, notes, personal journal, or other things which would be worthless to them. In seconds, the robbers had gently taken our bags and easily ran down an alley and out of sight.

Being the slightly sheltered Montana girl who has never been robbed, I started to weep incessantly. I wept because of the robbery and because I haven´t released any other frustrations or confusions throughout this experience. Alex, the Boston native and now New York City girl, pouted for about a second before becoming impressively angry and released a long string of profanity. My favorite rebuttal- (Alex to me) "I hope the robbers are happy with our stuff, and I hope they have a fun time sticking all your tampons up their butts!"

After a long day at the police station and on the computer, I came back to my neighborhood to discover that many people I had never seen before knew I had been robbed and offered their condolences.

Then, yesterday, I came home to discover my backpack and Alex´s yellow bag on my bed! Apparently, a security guard had watched what happened and had chased and caught the robbers later that morning. One of the robbers did have a pistol and was not bluffing like I thought. I got a pair of shorts, my school books, personal journal, and Portuguese dictionary back. Alex got her swim suit and books back. There is good here!