Not even in my childhood anyone has ever pointed a gun at me

When I was a kid I went several years to a horse stable once a week to attend a horse riding class. I enjoyed riding, I loved the horses and I considered myself competent at what I was doing in the stalls. There was just one problem - I never fell of. It was commonly known among the girls in the stalls that not until you had fallen of a horse more than 100 times you knew well how to ride. I figured never knew well how to ride.

Just until yesterday I was happily aware of that I still had not experienced every aspect of the Brazilian society. The situation is somewhat similar to the horse riding - if you have ever read a Brazilian guidebook you know what I mean. According to most narratives of the Brazilian reality it is almost impossible to stay in Brazil without being robbed. Since I have made six longer trips to Brazil, lived in more or less problematic areas, traveled to the north and to the south, and still never felt threatened or insecure I was staring to believe that the guidebooks where wrong - until yesterday - when I “fell of the horse” for the first time.

I had made all the classical mistakes. Guiding my parents, my brother and my sister (who has been visiting during Carnival) around Salvador for some days, I had grown unwary and I took steps away from my normally rigorous safety precisions. We had been riding bicycles in the Pituacu Park and eaten a good lunch before we decided to go to the beach for the afternoon. It was the last day of my family’s round trip and we were just going down to the beach we always goo to. My husband had gone home to fetch his surfboard. The sun stood high on the blue sky and the area was well transited and suddenly I had a gun under my nose.

Two boys in their late teens pointed nervously with the old revolver at my family and me and demanded our bags and belongings. The guidebook lines I read before my first trip to Brazil in 2006 stood clear in front of me in this situation. “If threatened with a gun – don’t doo anything hasty. Hand over whatever the robbers would want – the risk of getting shot in this situation is grate since many of these guys rob for drugs and can’t think strait.” I didn’t have time to register the faces of the two; my gaze was on the gun. I told my family that they should hand over whatever they wanted, and in a blink the two was on their bikes, pedaling away with our things.

Oh what a rage! So stupid, so unnecessary, so foolish of me to take that way, so many things that I could have done or said differently! We did not just loos material things but photos and videos that only we can cherish, not to speak of the perfect feeling of being safe. No one has ever before pointed a gun at me, not even a fake one when I was a child!

I always knew that it was all bullshit that I needed to fall of the horse in order to ride well. Instead I was always sure to ride safely and to keep my balance in order not to get hurt. Only a stupid mistake could have made me fall off a horse.

This time although I made a stupid mistake and we had to experience something you shouldn’t have to experience coming to Brazil. I need to apologize deeply for putting my family in this situation!