Street Fight

I recently witnessed my first violent incident since living here. It was two days before my wedding. I picked up my friends Corey McGee and Caroline Johnson from the airport. We were in a cab on the way to my place.

Traffic slowed in front of us. There were three girls, maybe 15 years old each, in the road--the highway--fighting. They were in the right hand lane. 

It was a two-on-one situation. The girl that was on her own fell to the pavement. Before she could stand, one of the attackers stepped up and gave her what I can only coldly describe as a field goal kick to the side of the head. Our car slowly drifted beside them. 

It was brutal. The girl spun and collapsed. Her hair clip skipped across the asphalt to the curb. The third girl quickly added a kick to the square of her back.

All of this happened in four seconds. We were past them by now. Car horns blared all around us. As we drove away, I saw the attacked girl get up and run into the arms of a motorcyclist who had stopped. She was crying hysterically and yelling to him for her life.

It's the worst thing I've seen. I've been here for almost seven months. Corey and Caroline had been on the ground for about an hour.

Before this moment, our cab driver hadn't said anything to us. He just listened to us yammering away, catching up. I assumed that he, like most drivers here, didn't speak English.

When we parked in front of my building, he helped us with our bags from the trunk. His face had been serious and embarrassed ever since the fight. In what little English he knew, he slowly said, "I'm sorry...What you saw...That's not Brazil."