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Published: January 6th 2008
Before scribbling the bit about Patagonia, I began with the intention of writing about something that I am perhaps uniquely qualified to comment on: robbery. For those of you who don’t know, I have the dubious distinction of being liberated from my material possessions on nearly all corners of the globe. Now my percentages (71.4% vs. 85.7%) do depend on whether you were raised in a country that believes there are seven continents or six. At Thomas Alva Edison Elementary, home of the eagles, we were taught that Edison invented the light bulb, George Washington Carver did something with peanuts, America was the gleaming castle on the hill, ‘Thriller’ was revelatory material, break dancing was bad, in the good sense, and there were seven continents.
The run began in New Orleans during the Jazz and Blues Heritage Festival in the mid 90s. I think of this one rather fondly. As you do when you are 21 and in New Orleans with no money, carly and I were sleeping in a car with the windows down. Some opportunistic local decided to reach in, pop the trunk and grab some dirty clothes and unread school books out of the trunk. Confused about what mattered: my skin or Contemporary Perspectives on Religious Epistemology, I decided to follow. Guided by a fellow named Spider, who thought it was mighty inconsiderate for folks to be robbing other folks, we took a short tour of some of the nicer crack houses off the Quarter. Spider didn’t have two pennies to rub together, but he never asked me for one to try. We found damn near everything and celebrated with a breakfast of chicken wings and a beer.
Shortly after, or perhaps before, there was the trip accurately described as EuroFlail. Someone had allowed a gaggle of Missouri idiots loose in Europe. Having made a terrible name for Americans in a number of other countries, we found ourselves in Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls. Upping the ante on our ability to make absolutely moronic decisions, we decided to sleep in a public park. Inevitably, I got robbed. Although spending the next morning in the police station seemed dreadful, in retrospect, it probably saved one of us the trouble of getting gored by a pissed off bull.
In 98, I again decided getting robbed needed to have a more international flair. Shockingly, I managed to wander through India and Nepal for 8 months (countries where a tall whitey who earns more in a summer waiting tables than a majority of the country does in a lifetime ought to get robbed), before being relieved of a credit card in Bangkok by a South African with whom I was having breakfast. I went to the bathroom. We finished our coffee and paid the bill, and then he went on a shopping spree. I have to admit, I was impressed how much he was able to spend in such a short span of time. Luckily, Chase MasterCard felt the brunt of that one.
Later that year, somewhere on the east coast of Australia, I lost a borrowed camera. Having read that sentence, it occurs to me that I have no idea where the one I took to India went. Perhaps I did get robbed in India after all. Ah the luxury of forgetting. Anyway, I know I borrowed a camera from a guy named, interestingly enough, Spider, in Surfer’s Paradise. After that, the details are vague. Sometime shortly after having hitched out of Surfer’s Paradise, I recall waking up very wet in the middle of a hellacious rain storm that had localized in my tent. Only after having hitched my bedraggled self into the next town and strewn all of my worthless possessions in a public park to dry, did I realize that the recently borrowed camera was gone. My guess it was lost in the lake I awoke in, but who knows. It is bordering on the miraculous that nothing else can be added to this list as most of the 3 months I was in Australia was spent hitchhiking and camping illegally under bridges, in farmers’ pastures, on the beach, or often enough, in furrows off the side of the highway. (The other half was in the homes of the absolutely incredibly fantastically amazing locals who picked me up, fed me, and drove me up the road. The later fact cementing my opinion that Australians, esp. Fleur and Sanj, are the best people on the planet).
A few years later, in 2001, my mother’s Olympus 35mm camera (and my aspirations to do more than point and shoot) vanished in a packed bus station in Oaxaca, Mexico. I returned from the bathroom to find cwb irate and speaking some amazing, shockingly fluent, profanity laced Spanish to the thirty or so other people who all saw nothing. A month or so later in Mexico City, I donated a fair sum of money to a fellow American whose well practiced ‘help a fellow in dire straits’ scam included a suit and tie, a working knowledge of Kierkegaard and Durkheim, and a romantic twist about his wife’s anniversary. That one almost did me in. I don’t mind donating to the locals, but getting screwed for trying to help someone out is pretty devastating. The moral of the story clearly being ‘The Golden Rule’ is for suckers. O well, better a sucker than an asshole. So at this point in the narrative, we have North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, This brings us to the present.
Chile. South America. A whole continent teeming with people that I am sure will get around to robbing me/us. Eight years ago while we were living in Brasil, we delayed getting robbed until our return trip through Mexico. After all, things are so much sweeter when you have to wait. This time we would not bother with so much procrastination. However, we did wait until the very last day of our trip to Patagonia. The setting: New Years Eve in Vina del Mar, the garden city on the shores of the Pacific. Boulevards lines with flowers, stately colonial mansions, golden sand beeches, palm trees, fuegos artificial, fireworks, at midnight. The beach thronged with families. A festive mood, confetti, champagne, Ooo Ahs, and some chant about “Chi Chi Chi . . . Viva Chile” bellowed out by sober and drunk alike. Nevertheless we head in early and sober due to bad things happening in carly’s stomach. Our residencial was no palace (turns out the internet can be a little misleading), but the front door locked and the cheerful attentive owner spent the night buzzing in revelers. Alas, our interior room was stuffy and hot, so we opened the window. While we slept, anti-claus climbed through the window with care and relieved us of two cell phones, my wallet, and a camera full of pictures of Patagonia. Hurray! A fabulously crappy way to wake up to 08. Life goes on. We get robbed. So it goes.
However, the point of this missive is not to ride off into the sunset in the waaaambulance. Rather, it is that which differentiates it from all of the other transcontinental robbings. We wake up. Tell the owner. He expresses the proper amount of doubt, followed by shock and dismay. The police are called at 10:00 and then a couple of more times. My guess is that we weren’t the only idiots robbed New Year’s Eve. At noon, we are still sitting in the dingy gloomy lobby feeling sorry for ourselves. This is pretty much par for the course. Then carly remembers The Card. Cue ‘holy’ sound and imagine shafts of light cutting through clouds as might be seen on a kitschy macramé John 3:16 doily hanging on some grandmother’s wall in a retirement community. The Card contains the number of CEPAL security. CEPAL being the UN commission where carly works. She calls. 10 minutes later, the carabineros, police, arrive. They still think we are dolts, which I admit we probably are, and don’t really know what to make of our pretty powder blue Chilean ID cards. However, CEPAL security has leapt into action. 10 minutes later, the captain or commissioner or something of the Vina police department is on the horn. He talks to Johnny Law, and then asks to speaks to Dona carly and tells her something presumably reassuring. (I have to infer most of what is going on as people continue to insist on speaking Spanish to, at, and around me and my alter-ego, Igor the village idiot, who no speako no Spanisho.) However, clearly things have changed. No longer are we mere moronic tourists that have to go stand in line at the central station with all the others. Now we - okay really Carly, but as ‘dependant spouse’ I too get to be considered - are ‘special’ morons who have to be dealt with carefully. Although I rather doubt a UN librarian subject to petty theft is going to cause much of an international incident, I am not about to decline preferential treatment. The cops load our suitcases into their squad car and we speed off to the bus station (sadly, sans lights blaring which would have added some auditory gravitas), where they wait outside while we make bus reservations out of their damned garden city. Presumably, the UN itself would cease to function if carly were not at her desk the following morning. Then they take us to another smaller, no-line, station. A balding office cop two- finger hunt and pecks out our police statement while his superior stands behind him smoking and offering editorial advice. They print it in triplicate, have us sign it, stamp it, and then bundle us back in the car and take us to the bus station. Junior cop takes our bags from the trunk, warns us to be careful and they go on their merry way. The next day, one of the CEPAL security force is off to Vina to take pictures of the ’crime scene’ and shake down the owner.
Of course, none of this will make even the slightest bit of difference. Sadly, the camera, or more importantly, the pictures, are lost. (can you really put that many commas in one sentence?) Nevertheless, the efficiency and string pulling was something to see. Getting robbed has never been so smooth. If it weren’t for the pictures, I would say it was worth the price of a couple of phones just to see how people who matter get treated. Aside from the clerks tedious typing inefficiency, it was almost fun. The United States might hate the UN and the lunatic Evangelicals may think that Ban Ki Moon is the Anti Christ presiding over the world government prophesized in Revelations, but I’ve been ‘helped’ at the US embassy and it is not quite the same. I can’t say I am concerned about the Evangelicals’ objections because the nicest thing I can say about them is that they are fanatical deranged dangerous lunatics. However, as a dependent spouse, I now see why they are so concerned about the sanctity of matrimony. Who knew? Membership does have its privileges.
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Bob Sullivan
non-member comment
Runs in the Family
Colin, this is your Tio Bull but for God's sake don't say my initials--TB--around UN folks! Your cousin Corey was robbed by two knife wielding locals while shopping at a market somewhere in Mexico in 2002. Two years later we visit him in Paris and I become the victim of one of the oldest dodges in the book--the old ketchup squirt on your back trick by a three-Gypsy team. I fell in love with Vina del Mar in July 1985 while attending an inernational conference of sorts in Santiago. VdM was a side trip for the day. Since I was a guest of the Chilean Air Force we enjoyed the "belonging" as you and Carly did but I'm one up on you insofar as riding in authority autos goes. Two security guards took me all over Santiago looking for a bird your Tia Annie ahd to have, and which we found later in Panama of all places, where we lived. This bird was supposedly made of stones native to Brasil. Couldn't find even a facsimile of it but I enjoyed zipping around Santiago and when traffic got tight the guards would flip on their siren and folks got out of the way. Of course this was when Gen. Pinochet was still the jefe. That was the year, in September, I believe, that the folks who didn't like him tried to assassinate him while he was returning to Santiago from Vina del Mar. I returned for the same type conference in 1986 but things were considerably quieter. Things are really different in Chile now, and I'm happy about that but in closing I'd like to say that the Chilean Air Force cannot be equated with Pinochet's ilk. Its commander, General Mattias (how about that one?), along with the Chilean Navy top admiral convinced Pinochet to hold elections in 1990. And the rest, as they say, is history. I hope you two develop a capacity for sleeping with the windows closed. Or at least switch to one-use cameras! Salud! Bull