Now here’s the thing. Growing up in London, I’ve always been the sort of girl who’s never let fear dictate where I go or how late I get home. Thinking about it now, I’ve never been afraid in my home city. Where I grew up, in one of the less salubrious areas of South East London, getting home from the bus stop or the train station required a walk through one of the three council estates that bordered our road, up dark alleys and past burnt out cars, and I never thought twice about it (although it must be said some of my friends didn’t like it late at night). In London I’ve always done what I wanted without a second thought, and then schlepped home alone on the nightbus from whatever part of the city I’ve ended up in. And, I must admit, I’ve always harboured a bit of contempt for those girls who make a song and dance about being raped-and-mugged-and-murdered and insist on taking taxis or being accompanied everywhere, whose movements are impeded by unsubstantiated dark fantasies of faceless ruthless men lurking in the shadows waiting to jump out and get them.
Here in Brazil, as I’ve previously written, one has to readjust one’s level of security. The crime rate here is exponentially higher than the UK, and the type of crime that occurs is often much more violent than the type we’re used to – in the big cities, it’s having your car stolen at gunpoint (happens once every twelve minutes in Rio) rather than having your ipod snatched outside a tube station. But it’s sometimes hard to tell how much is over-wrought hysteria and how much is good sense. Like the Australians who will gleefully tell you about all the different ways Nature can kill you (snakes, spiders, jellyfish, bushfires, sunburn, riptides, sharks, ripped to bits by dingos, kicked to death by an ostrich etc) it often seems that Brazilians and other travellers here take a macabre pleasure in relating the myriad of ways that you can be done over here. Whilst it’s obviously always worth heeding good advice, I’ve found myself more horrified here by the potential for self-imprisonment that results from trying to protect oneself from the possibility of becoming a victim – which in Sao Paulo, means living behind a wall that grows ever-higher, inside a circle of private security, and taking helicopters everywhere so that one’s feet never need to touch the dangerous streets.
I read an interesting thread in the online Guardian the other week about crime statistics and people feeling unsafe. In the UK, officially crime has fallen, but people report feeling more unsafe than they did in the good old days. A lively online debate had ensued following the column, with many contributors expressing a real fear of the faceless hoards waiting outside to kick them to death.
What struck me was that, despite Britain being infinitely safer than here, the fear, and the faceless enemy it relates to is exactly the same. An obvious statement, but fear is not rational, and bears absolutely no relation to actual risk of something bad happening.
Post-robbery-number-one, we are, to our dismay, feeling the fear. We’ve talked about it endlessly, and are agreed that the likelihood of the same thing happening again are very remote, that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time etc etc etc. But all this mental pacification, unfortunately, has absolutely no effect on how your body decides to react. Fear – or the reaction to feeling under threat – is a decidedly physical sensation. From one day to the next, normal life is different. You realise that whether you want it or not, your attention is focused in a different place. Anything unexpected results in a surge of adrenalin – your muscles buzz, your stomach lurches, your pulse hammers. In the days past robbery number one the triggers for this included anyone running, shouting, loud noises, or even people looking at us too intently, which, when you’re a gringo girl in a city approaching Carnival, happens about a million times a day. Before you do anything, you assess and minimise the security risk. Without any choice in the matter, you start to live in an inescapable cage of your own making. With only each other for support, it was difficult to get over this incessant unpleasant distraction. Taking the approach of getting straight back on the horse that’s thrown you, we took the approach of acknowledging the fear, steeling ourselves and carrying on with doing the things that we’d been doing before. But it did cost us, and wear us out, and, sadly, it changed our perspective, and inevitably, the enjoyment we were getting from our days. And, most definitely, rather than any of the material things that we’ve lost, it is this that I feel angry and sad about. I mourn the loss of being carefree, and being the type of girl who never worries unduly about being safe. It´s a funny thing, feeling unsafe. Just like you never appreciate feeling well until you get ill, you don´t realise what safe feels like until you start feeling under threat.
This is turning into rather a depressing post, but not to write about it, as I haven’t so far, has been a censorship which has disabled me from writing about anything at all, affecting, as it has, our experience so totally.
And so to wrap up; the depressing details of robbery number two: In a bid to escape the city, we flew (indulgently) in a tiny little Cessna to Boipeba, a remote island a little down the coast. Arrived at our spectacular pousada, situated between two huge expanses of utterly unspoilt beach, lounged for a bit in the hammock on the veranda overlooking expanses of gorgeous land-and-sea-scape, and went off to explore the town. A tiny population, open doors everywhere, everyone knows everyone, inordinately safe, as everyone told us, within a couple of hours we’d made friends with a couple of local Rastafarians who, after giving us a cookery lesson, had shared with us the utterly delicious moqueca they were making. We met the local Capoeira mestre and got ourselves invited to a really incredible roda, which then turned into a party at the local Pagoda, up on a hill above the village. We came back to the village worn out by the incessant Portuguese of the two friendly Capoeristas who’d been accompanying us, insisted that they didn’t need to walk us home, (because, as they agreed, it’s safe here – there is no crime) and set off back to our pousada. And five minutes later, we were jumped, on the beach, by two young men who snatched my bag and A’s camera, and ran away.
Mightily shaken up, but mercifully unhurt, the next day at the police station we were reunited with all our belongings minus the valuable ones (I was very very pleased to see my notebook again), but we had to ask ourselves the question of whether we were stupid. In the eyes of the five or so police who gathered to investigate our case (they have great uniforms here but absolutely nothing to do) and the locals we’ve talked to, no, we weren’t, because this has never, ever, ever, ever, ever happened here before. The last crime the police had to deal with – nothing as serious - was before Christmas. I think our robbery number two has possibly shocked and affected the local community, who have all been mightily upset about it, more than it has us. We’ve been repeatedly assured that it’s impossible that it could be anyone from here, as such a crime wouldn’t go unnoticed or be tolerated. Unfortunately, for the first time, as Boipeba becomes a more popular destination for rich tourists, people are coming in from nearby Valenca to target them, and then disappearing on the boat out again. Whether this is self-pacification we’ll never know. But we feel incredibly saddened, as well as mightily unlucky, to be setting the precedent for a new era in Boipeba.
We’ve ended up staying here longer than planned, because this is honestly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life. We’ve made friends, we spent a day horse-riding round the island, we have our delicious breakfast on a terrace in a garden filled with tropical birds, the sea is calm, the weather delicious. Giving ourselves a break, we have been mostly working on trying to extend our suntan to the frighteningly white parts of our body exposed by our new, smaller Brazilian bikinis (mine is a frankly hilarious tropical affair which we have christened Welcome To Miami, which I guess only has relevance in you’re familiar with Will Smith music videos from the early 90s but which results in us breaking into song a lot). The last day of Carnaval here, no exaggeration at all, involved a donkey pulling a cart with a loud stereo on it being led around the main square, a gaggle of about 30 dancing people (including the obligatory transvestite or two) creating a rather shambolic bloco in front and behind. The most complex dilemma our days currently pose us is “shall we go to the internet café now or later”, which is usually resolved according to how much more sun we can take. There’s no bank here, and so we are eaking out our remaining cash as long as we can, unwilling to undertake the mission of leaving (we can’t quite justify another expensive airtaxi, which means it’s a boat and a bus and another bus and a ferry and a taxi to get back to Salvador.)
Here in Brazil, as I’ve previously written, one has to readjust one’s level of security. The crime rate here is exponentially higher than the UK, and the type of crime that occurs is often much more violent than the type we’re used to – in the big cities, it’s having your car stolen at gunpoint (happens once every twelve minutes in Rio) rather than having your ipod snatched outside a tube station. But it’s sometimes hard to tell how much is over-wrought hysteria and how much is good sense. Like the Australians who will gleefully tell you about all the different ways Nature can kill you (snakes, spiders, jellyfish, bushfires, sunburn, riptides, sharks, ripped to bits by dingos, kicked to death by an ostrich etc) it often seems that Brazilians and other travellers here take a macabre pleasure in relating the myriad of ways that you can be done over here. Whilst it’s obviously always worth heeding good advice, I’ve found myself more horrified here by the potential for self-imprisonment that results from trying to protect oneself from the possibility of becoming a victim – which in Sao Paulo, means living behind a wall that grows ever-higher, inside a circle of private security, and taking helicopters everywhere so that one’s feet never need to touch the dangerous streets.
I read an interesting thread in the online Guardian the other week about crime statistics and people feeling unsafe. In the UK, officially crime has fallen, but people report feeling more unsafe than they did in the good old days. A lively online debate had ensued following the column, with many contributors expressing a real fear of the faceless hoards waiting outside to kick them to death.
What struck me was that, despite Britain being infinitely safer than here, the fear, and the faceless enemy it relates to is exactly the same. An obvious statement, but fear is not rational, and bears absolutely no relation to actual risk of something bad happening.
Post-robbery-number-one, we are, to our dismay, feeling the fear. We’ve talked about it endlessly, and are agreed that the likelihood of the same thing happening again are very remote, that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time etc etc etc. But all this mental pacification, unfortunately, has absolutely no effect on how your body decides to react. Fear – or the reaction to feeling under threat – is a decidedly physical sensation. From one day to the next, normal life is different. You realise that whether you want it or not, your attention is focused in a different place. Anything unexpected results in a surge of adrenalin – your muscles buzz, your stomach lurches, your pulse hammers. In the days past robbery number one the triggers for this included anyone running, shouting, loud noises, or even people looking at us too intently, which, when you’re a gringo girl in a city approaching Carnival, happens about a million times a day. Before you do anything, you assess and minimise the security risk. Without any choice in the matter, you start to live in an inescapable cage of your own making. With only each other for support, it was difficult to get over this incessant unpleasant distraction. Taking the approach of getting straight back on the horse that’s thrown you, we took the approach of acknowledging the fear, steeling ourselves and carrying on with doing the things that we’d been doing before. But it did cost us, and wear us out, and, sadly, it changed our perspective, and inevitably, the enjoyment we were getting from our days. And, most definitely, rather than any of the material things that we’ve lost, it is this that I feel angry and sad about. I mourn the loss of being carefree, and being the type of girl who never worries unduly about being safe. It´s a funny thing, feeling unsafe. Just like you never appreciate feeling well until you get ill, you don´t realise what safe feels like until you start feeling under threat.
This is turning into rather a depressing post, but not to write about it, as I haven’t so far, has been a censorship which has disabled me from writing about anything at all, affecting, as it has, our experience so totally.
And so to wrap up; the depressing details of robbery number two: In a bid to escape the city, we flew (indulgently) in a tiny little Cessna to Boipeba, a remote island a little down the coast. Arrived at our spectacular pousada, situated between two huge expanses of utterly unspoilt beach, lounged for a bit in the hammock on the veranda overlooking expanses of gorgeous land-and-sea-scape, and went off to explore the town. A tiny population, open doors everywhere, everyone knows everyone, inordinately safe, as everyone told us, within a couple of hours we’d made friends with a couple of local Rastafarians who, after giving us a cookery lesson, had shared with us the utterly delicious moqueca they were making. We met the local Capoeira mestre and got ourselves invited to a really incredible roda, which then turned into a party at the local Pagoda, up on a hill above the village. We came back to the village worn out by the incessant Portuguese of the two friendly Capoeristas who’d been accompanying us, insisted that they didn’t need to walk us home, (because, as they agreed, it’s safe here – there is no crime) and set off back to our pousada. And five minutes later, we were jumped, on the beach, by two young men who snatched my bag and A’s camera, and ran away.
Mightily shaken up, but mercifully unhurt, the next day at the police station we were reunited with all our belongings minus the valuable ones (I was very very pleased to see my notebook again), but we had to ask ourselves the question of whether we were stupid. In the eyes of the five or so police who gathered to investigate our case (they have great uniforms here but absolutely nothing to do) and the locals we’ve talked to, no, we weren’t, because this has never, ever, ever, ever, ever happened here before. The last crime the police had to deal with – nothing as serious - was before Christmas. I think our robbery number two has possibly shocked and affected the local community, who have all been mightily upset about it, more than it has us. We’ve been repeatedly assured that it’s impossible that it could be anyone from here, as such a crime wouldn’t go unnoticed or be tolerated. Unfortunately, for the first time, as Boipeba becomes a more popular destination for rich tourists, people are coming in from nearby Valenca to target them, and then disappearing on the boat out again. Whether this is self-pacification we’ll never know. But we feel incredibly saddened, as well as mightily unlucky, to be setting the precedent for a new era in Boipeba.
We’ve ended up staying here longer than planned, because this is honestly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been in my life. We’ve made friends, we spent a day horse-riding round the island, we have our delicious breakfast on a terrace in a garden filled with tropical birds, the sea is calm, the weather delicious. Giving ourselves a break, we have been mostly working on trying to extend our suntan to the frighteningly white parts of our body exposed by our new, smaller Brazilian bikinis (mine is a frankly hilarious tropical affair which we have christened Welcome To Miami, which I guess only has relevance in you’re familiar with Will Smith music videos from the early 90s but which results in us breaking into song a lot). The last day of Carnaval here, no exaggeration at all, involved a donkey pulling a cart with a loud stereo on it being led around the main square, a gaggle of about 30 dancing people (including the obligatory transvestite or two) creating a rather shambolic bloco in front and behind. The most complex dilemma our days currently pose us is “shall we go to the internet café now or later”, which is usually resolved according to how much more sun we can take. There’s no bank here, and so we are eaking out our remaining cash as long as we can, unwilling to undertake the mission of leaving (we can’t quite justify another expensive airtaxi, which means it’s a boat and a bus and another bus and a ferry and a taxi to get back to Salvador.)
No comments:
Post a Comment