Reality check 3. Monday June 14, 2010

On Friday of last week, Charles had an experience that again reminds us of the reality of life in Brazil and why we have Marcelo to look after us.

Emma and I had just arrived back from the United States, and, with a mountain of laundry ahead of me after 2 weeks of being away, plus the general chaos of returning home, there was no way I was going anywhere that day. Of course Tessie the Fox Terrier didn’t understand that I wasn’t going to be walking her and with Emma feigning exhaustion it was left to Charles to take her to the park.


We have a choice of three parks, depending upon the amount of time we have to walk her. We have the nearest park, “Severo Gomes” which is the smallest and we can be there and back in about an hour. Parque de Povo is bigger and further away and takes about an hour and a half, but our favourite is Parque Ibirapuera which is great if we have a couple of hours to spare.

The park of choice last Friday was Severo Gomes. It is the one that I have blogged about before where, on any given morning there are keep fit classes, Tai Chi instruction and all manner of people stretching and contorting their bodies into odd shapes.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Charles and Marcelo arrived. Unbeknown to Charles, Marcelo had been watching a couple of motorcyclists in the rear view mirror. He was concerned that they had been following the car for a while.

Now, it has to be said that Marcelo is always concerned when he sees motorcyclists either in obvious pairs or two people on the same bike. Opportunistic robbers it seems, always hunt in packs. One is there to distract, whilst the other does the actual robbery, or one is driving and the other grabs whatever they can.

On this occasion, there were two bikes tailing the car. When they arrived at the park, Marcelo made Charles wait in the car for several minutes whilst he watched what they were up to. It seems that they too had stopped, presumably waiting to see who or what would get out of the car.

Eventually, Charles was let out of the car and Marcelo followed him into the park. At this point, Marcelo was obviously feeling very uncomfortable with the situation and un-holstered his gun. I have never seen him do this before, he normally just casually opens his jacket so that everyone can see that he is carrying a weapon, but something that day must have given him greater cause for concern and he decided that just showing that he was carrying wasn’t enough.

He then called Charles back and started talking to him. Quite what was said is not known. Not least because Charles has no Portuguese and Marcelo no English. But it was enough for the two motorcyclists to see that Charles was most definitely there with Marcelo and I gather that at that point, they turned their bikes around and headed off.

Marcelo 2, robbers 0.

Charles was then able to head off on his walk around the park. Marcelo got back in the car and started “curb crawling” on the road that surrounds the park, following Charles at about 3 miles an hour.

Later that evening, Steve had a call from head office in the United States. Marcelo must have filed a report, presumably because he un-holstered his gun and only then did we realize the significance of what had happened. Charles, although aware that the gun had come out, did not appreciate the potential seriousness of the incident and I am sure in his teenage way, thought it was “cool”.

Time to find a different park methinks.