Will:1, Guy Who Tried to Pickpocket Me: 0

So there I was, hot, sweaty, and caught in the middle of an ever-growing traffic jam of people clogging one of the main arteries used for entering and exiting our labyrinth of a central market. I didn’t understand why at the time, but the guy in front of me just decided to randomly stop walking, demorar (waste time, delay) right there in the middle of it all and thus cause this whole mess. As walls of people began to close in on me, I felt a rush of adrenaline fueled by cultural misunderstanding of what the hell this guy was doing. The crowd quickly grew as my heart started beating faster. Suddenly, I felt a hand where it shouldn’t be. My perimeter had been breached. Just like that, I went from naïve American, to naïve American caught in an oh-so-common pick-pocket trap. Following the security breach though, I went through a hulk-essque transformation to become a pissed off, defensive, and arm swinging naïve American fighting his way out of an oh-so-common pick-pocket trap. With cat-like reflexes that only a person with severe paranoia could possess, I managed to slap the guys hand and give him a nice hard look right through to his evil, yet obviously impoverished and desperate soul right before high-tailing it out of there and escaping with all of my pocket contents still contained. That was close.

The whole situation was pretty stupid on my part, and in reality, I got pretty lucky. I wasn’t carrying much, but I did have my blackberry in the pocket the man went for, and a few bucks in the other. I didn’t even think twice about having those things in my easily accessible side-pockets prior to entering the notorious thief haven that is our Central Market. We’d been warned before, countless times actually, by our Safety and Security Advisor Alfredo. Throughout the ten weeks of PST, he did his best to engrain in us that here in Mozambique, people will prey on even the slightest security vulnerability. Unfortunately, I think for most trainees (myself included), that message has a tendency to go in one ear and out the other. It’s not because we don’t believe him, and it’s certainly not because he’s wrong. In my case, I think it was more so just having a certain over-confidence and naivety, while thinking, “Oh, that won’t happen to me.” Well, I was wrong. It can, and usually will happen to everyone.

What’s important is that I learned something today. I need to be smarter here, and always consider the necessary precautions. I dodged a bullet today, but there are still others in the chamber. Now, I just need to work on finding an appropriate balance between living life with a certain level of paranoia while still sustaining genuine faith in humanity.

In the end, I emerged unscathed, so it was indeed a bom dia. I thwarted my first pick-pocketer, and though it may seem pretty strange to be excited about it, I think it’s important to recognize the small victories and consequential life lessons. So, I celebrated with some bolo (CAKE!).