Brazil trip #1

Things I said I would do if I ever got mugged (you know, the things one says while watching a stressful movie scene): 1. Scream loudly "I am being mugged!". 2. Scream loudlly "Police!" 3. Kick him in the balls. 4. Punch him in the face while holding my set of keys. 5. Throw what he is after across the street. 

Things I did not do when I got mugged by a crackhead with a very large knife: all of the above. In the typical post-trauma, guilt-trip way of thinking of my family, I would spend lots of time thinking about what I could have done: kick his knee? pretend to fall so he would stop holding my tee-shirt so tightly? Only later did it cross my mind that maybe he had another weapon, actually, so what I did do was the only right answer.

Things I did do when I got mugged: 1. Said "oh not my phone there are all my holidays photos in it!! Por favor!!" (our friend got his phone taken from him at Carnaval the night before so at this rate we aint gonna have many photos of the event to show you!). hahaha I tried to plead a poor crackhead for the mercy of my first-world digital memories! hahaha 2. I refused to take it out of my pocket, but then he started counting "one.... two...". 

Which made me realise I was, actually, one second away from disaster. (If not the big one, at least something very painful!). I thought about my partner, helplessly watching from the side, about my family, about our Brazilian friends. I gave him my phone and the little bit of money I had in my porta-dollar.

In the picturesque cobbled streets of this old Salvador neighbourhood, as the sunrise bathed the crumbling, colourful houses and the stray cats slowly walked in the middle of the deserted road, the likelihood of disaster striking was actually higher than I thought.