How I Got Robbed Twice in One Week
I was at a local indoor soccer stadium that was popular amongst my friends to rent out and play in during the weekdays. As a teenager I would take a taxi there and tried to bum a ride back home afterwards. But on this occasion I was old enough to drive there in my parent’s car. I had grown up most of my life in Panama and being back for the summer I was excited to see if it had changed. After parking the car outside I nonchalantly put the keys and my wallet in my backpack with my water and towel. After a few handshakes I set down my stuff on the bleachers and jumped into the first game.
Fifteen people came to play and only ten fit on the court. So we divided into teams of five and played for five-minute intervals or until a score of three goals. I was out of shape and needed someone to step in for me by the second game. I was always out of my league there, some of these people worshipped soccer. Being the underdog didn’t matter though when compared to seeing old friends, getting some exercise and even better getting out of the house.
I walked back to the bleachers to get my water from my backpack and with a slice of sudden alertness and adrenaline, realized that it was gone. Like a flood, instinct and suspicion came over me, and I scrambled over to see if it might just be covered by someone else’s stuff. Realizing that it wasn’t, a thought flashed in my mind saying “oh no the car”.
Now there was the slight chance that the criminal I believed at this point existed had missed the car keys that were in my backpack and stole just my wallet with 40$ in it. But as I ran to where I had left the car my hopes became as empty as the parking space I was staring at. This is a moment that many people can find familiar; it’s when you pinch yourself and check to make sure you are not hallucinating. I had just participated in event that led to the loss of a very expensive possession, a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe, barely a year old. I didn’t have a cell-phone so I borrowed one from my friend and called the police as soon as I could find their phone number.
The police arrived quickly spread the word but that made no difference in the end. Oh, and the phone call home, what a drag. Saying “Hi dad the car has been stolen” can be a funny joke if you are pretending, but it’s not funny when its true. The car was found a few months later in a different province of the country, beat up but still working. Cars in panama are often stolen to use for illegal activities like kidnappings and drug trafficking rather than for the cars themselves.
That same week a high school friend of mine threw a birthday party at her house in the city. Once there I related to my very humored friends that someone had stolen my parent’s car from me. They had already heard about it since some of the people had been there when I was calling the police. But they amused at the fact that I was a gringo, an American, and implied that I simply did not understand how not to be taken advantage of in panama. I brushed it off then but they were right.
I left there that night at 2:30am with a beer half empty, cuddling with my left hand and a grin on my face. I walked down to the main road to catch a taxi and reminisced about how life in panama had shaped me as an individual and if I was an American. I had time to because it was tough catching a cab. It took me about 20 minutes before I hailed down a taxi that already had two people in it.
I always try to be friendly to taxi drivers, but when I’ve had a few spirits I act like we are already the best of friends. I chatted freely with the taxi driver about how I was just visiting from the U.S. but lived there for nine years and blah blah blah. We dropped off one passenger and I told the driver to head to Albrook, the name of the area I lived in. I have to say that it was a nice cab ride until the taxi pulled in to the left on the highway, into a road that was quite desolate and pulled a gun on me. I cooperated politely and gave them the wallet I had replaced the last one with. This one had about 45$ in it. They told me to get out and walk away with my hands up and not to look back. I stepped out of the cab and said “Thanks for the ride”, sarcastically of course, and with my beer still in my left hand and a grin on my face. As I embarked onward again I heard the taxi say “Hey!” I turned around and saw the thieving punk throw three single dollar bills out of his window; “For a cab home” he called out.
The taxi sped off and I hitched a ride back home from the police. Even without the money I had lost that week I still survived fine enough and my parents collected insurance for the car. So little harm was done. But more importantly I came to accept that I was maybe more foreign to the country than I thought.
It had not occurred to me yet that according to everyone “crime in Latin America, panama included, had gone up”. There were no signs of this anywhere, no notices that read: “watch out because bad things are more likely to happen now”. It was just something everyone knew from the stories that they heard about friends and family about crimes. As of then I had been absent from any tales of horror and entered a different country unaware and naïve because I had hope that it was as I had last left it.