Some
background you should know before reading this post. I live in Costa Rica. I'm
currently an engineering student at TEC in the city of Cartago, one of the
two biggest universities in my country.
Getting robbed on
the street was something I had never thought about when I lived in my hometown,
but when I moved to Cartago things changed a bit.
My first
experience happened to my surprise in the middle of the day as I was walking
back to the house I was living in at the moment. I crossed a couple of guys
talking on the phone who then started walking behind me. I paid little
attention to those guys since it was around 11 am and I was walking by a very
transited street.
Then out of
nothing I was forced to stop, I was looking at the ground and for a couple of
seconds I had no idea what was happening. One of the guys had crossed his arm
around my throat from behind and was holding me down. I saw as the other guy
stepped in front of me and showed me a gun. Both of them were demanding me to
hand out my phone without yelling too loudly. "Give me the phone you son
of a bitch!" They said.
All I could think
at moment was to do everything they said, so I told them “Easy, easy, I will
give it to you" as I pulled the phone off my pockets. As soon as they saw
it they snatch it from my hand and one of them told me to give him the wallet too.
“Let him keep the wallet, let's go!" the other guy said.
And so there I
was, standing on the sidewalk looking at them run away. They crossed the street
ran around the corner and I lost sight of them. It was then that I realize that
there was no one around. No cars driving by, no one else was walking by the
street. I could not believe my luck.
I had just been
robbed in the middle of the day on the only street that was between the campus
and the house. I took a couple of steps to look around the corner but there was
no sight of them. After the initial shock was gone I was only left with one
feeling: anger. I was so pissed; I couldn't believe what just happened. I stood
there for a couple of minutes in disbelief.
When I decided to
keep on walking, the street was again how I should've been, people walking
around and cars passing by. I got home, sat down and told my roommates what had
just happened. I was shaking a bit a I borrowed a phone from one of them to
call home and tell my parents.
After I had calmed
down I started to think about what I could have done. I even started doubting
about the whether or not the gun was real. Maybe I could've waited for someone
to pass by. I even started thinking about the conversation the guys were having
on the phone and how fake it sounded.
Powerlessness was
the feeling that came after the anger. My life moved on and I decided that
avoiding getting robbed was not a matter of precaution, it was just luck.
