50-cent Saves the Day

I had an entertaining (for you) experience yesterday. I was in a taxi on my way to a doctor's appointment in Bocagrande, when my driver decided to take a "shortcut" and turned off the main road onto a side street. We made some quick turns but soon found ourselves in an enormous traffic jam caused by an 18-wheeler backing out of a construction site. Unfortunately for us, the street he was backing out into was very narrow, and try as he might he couldn't seem to back up far enough to give himself space to turn.

Now normally I don't take taxis, as they really aren't much faster with the traffic in Cartagena and are much more expensive. This day, however, I had my computer and video camera with me since it was Friday and I wouldn't be returning to work before the weekend. I also had all my important medical documents, the result of months of tests and exams I had to do as part of my medical clearance for the Peace Corps. All this in my backpack on the ground at my feet. I wasn't too worried though, as I regularly walked to and from work with the computer in my backpack, and had taken the taxi as an extra precaution.

After about ten minutes without any visible progress in getting the semi out of the road, I started looking around, and it was then that I realized that our little time-saving shortcut had led us through a comunidad, a slum. We were now stopped squarely in front of its entrance. This didn't really bother me, however, as I had spent a good deal of time in slums in Brazil.

Then some shady characters started walking around the car, and giving me looks I knew were not benign. That was when I started getting a little nervous. I thought of how difficult and how much time and money it would take to replace the medical documents I had accumulated. I thought of how it would be impossible for me to do my work without my computer or my video camera, both essential tools for the projects I was working on in my internship. I thought of how much money I didn't have to replace the things I was carrying with me at that moment. And most of all I thought about how I would have absolutely no recourse stuck in this bottleneck were someone to so much as suggest I hand over my bright red backpack lying conspicuously on the floor.

Just as my nervousness was reaching its peak and the terrible possibilities were running through my head at a furious pace, my driver popped in a 50-cent CD and cranked the volume. The first track opened with a deafening series of gunshots - BAM! BAM! BAM! AHHHH! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! - which emanated from the rear speakers a few inches from my head and continued for about 30 seconds as I pretty much shat my pants.

Ironically, this seemed to make the shady ones lose their interest, as if it said "Nothing to see here, this guy's already been taken care of." A few minutes later the traffic jam cleared and we were on our way, me thanking my lucky stars that white suburban kids across America thought it was cool to listen to gangster rap. I guess you never know what form blessings will take.