Life in Jail

Climbing off of the chapa with four of my team members and our fearless translator Luis. We were returning to the Grandparent’s village for the second day in a row. I have been doing my best to make sure that I share as many experiences with the team that has come with me, in the short time that they are here. The experience today was unexpected and definitely unplanned.

We had many bags of clothes to share with the Grandparent’s family. I also brought a soccer ball along to give to their oldest boy, Paulo. The team had a blast playing with all of the children in the village, as they gathered in the street to chase the ball, laugh, and play. The clothes were sorted out, while Luis and I sat and talked with Mary and Jacobi.

As we prepared to leave the house and head to the next family for visit, Tiffany made these famous last words, “Playing soccer with these kids is pretty much made this the best day of my life.” Little did she know that our afternoon was soon going to change. We continued on our way to visit a little boy named Tiki and his family, we walked past a group of guys who had a few drinks and they wanted us to stop and visit with them. As we talked, pictures and video were taken of the awkward encounter with these drunken locals.

I decided that it was time for us to leave and continue on our way. As we started to leave and walk back to the path that would lead us to our next destination, suddenly Luis had a man grabbing his arm and in Portuguese demanding to see his identification card. He asked to see my ID also, but I acted like I didn’t understand what he wanted from me. It soon became obvious, that this man was extremely drunk, and also the more important fact to the story, that he was also an off-duty police officer. He was very aggressive with Luis by yanking him around by the arm, trying to retain both of us, along with the group of girls that had accompanied us to the village.

As this altercation continued, a crowd gathered around Luis and I as this police officer was trying to arrest Luis. He became more violent and was trying to head butt Luis in the face. At this point, I was very confused and didn’t understand what the problem was, and why we were getting stopped. I did understand that this officer had Luis’ identification card and wouldn’t give it back, but was unsure of the other details. As the officer continued on with his drunken rage, Luis continued to tell all of us to leave him and I needed to get the girls home.

My heart was very conflicted because I wanted to make sure that the girls were safe, but I didn't want to leave Luis to get beat up. As the officer yelled at me to stay, I ended up moving the girls up the road to safety, with Luis’ cell phone in hand, calling Pieter to come and get them and also to help Luis and I get out of this situation.

When Pieter arrived in the village, I sent him down to where Luis and the crowd were gathered in the street. He soon returned and the girls and I piled in and we were off to the jail where Luis was now being taken by the officer. As we weaved through the narrow village streets, I tried to bring Pieter up to speed with what I knew about why the officer was taking Luis away. My knowledge was very limited to why, but I did know that the officer wanted to know why we were in the village, and why Luis was friends with white people.

Shortly after pulling into jail parking lot, the crowd arrived and it had grown to be much larger than before. The news traveled through the village quickly, and it now included the majority of the local staff of the house. All of the Educator staff of the house stood among the crowd, as the police chief was now involved, along with this intoxicated officer. It was obvious that the crowd was very much in support of Luis and the outreach work that is done by the baby house. It was a stressful and somewhat scary situation, but it was also a beautiful picture of how much the community stands behind the work that is happening at the baby house.

It ended up, that the drunken officer wanted money from us because we were white. He made the excuse that we had taken pictures of him while drinking (which we did not do), and because of that he was going to arrest Luis and I unless we paid him off in a bribe. He said that he was going to press charges against us, but when we showed up at the police station the next morning to process the paperwork, he was still at home sleeping off his hangover.