Recife Letter: When losing everything makes you realise how lucky you are

There were a couple of Swiss fans at the adjacent desk in the station of Recife’s Tourist Police. They were speaking in faltering English to a policewoman who was slowly typing the details of the crime in to her computer.

“Then he threw the bicycle at us,” said the Swiss. “Then he shouted . . . something we did not understand. Then he showed the gun.”

The policewoman typed and looked bored.

The policeman who was taking down the details of my own case saw us listening to the Swiss and grinned. “This is worse, huh?”

I was sitting in the station of the Tourist Police in Recife, accompanied by a Portuguese-speaking friend, reporting the theft earlier that evening of a bag that had contained pretty much everything of value I owned.

It was true that the Swiss case was worse. My own case was pretty boring by Recife standards. It involved no violence, just a little subterfuge. I didn’t realise it had happened until it was too late.

I was thinking: did you really have to pack everything of any importance into that bag? It made sense for flights, since hold luggage can always go missing. But I had come to Recife from Natal on the bus. For some reason, I put everything I couldn't afford to lose into the small bag that had just been stolen.

I heard the officer who was speaking to the Swiss ask about the perpetrator: “Was he dark?” The Swiss thought he probably was. “Really dark?” I glanced at my friend, who muttered: “I think that’s what you call leading the witness.”

Helpful

My policeman was helpful and upbeat. When the report was completed he stood up and beamed: “I am really confident we are gonna catch this guy.” This surprised me. “Really?” It turned out the policeman had a profile of a likely perpetrator in mind. “In

Brazil

, there are a lot of . . I dunno how you say in English . . . people from Peru?”

Several days later there has been no word from the police so I guess the trail went cold.

A friend who had had all his gear stolen at the tournaments in both Poland and South Africa offered encouragement: “You will find there is something weirdly liberating in the realisation that you no longer own anything of value.” True as this turned out to be, I still had to replace some of the stuff that was stolen. The first thing was insulin, which was easy. Brazilian cities are full of 24-hour pharmacies and they sell insulin over the counter, with no need for a prescription. Four insulin pens cost R$174, or about €60.

This was about the same price you would have to pay in Ireland, where incomes are on average four times higher, except that in Ireland, the State picks up the tab. Some Brazilians aren’t so lucky. They recently introduced a federal law to distribute free insulin to people who needed it, but these programmes are not equally efficient in every state: for some poorer Brazilian diabetics, insulin remains an occasional luxury.

I needed a new laptop. I discovered that laptops in Brazil are much more expensive than their equivalents in Ireland. Since they are something only the rich buy, they are heavily taxed. I went for the cheapest one I could find, which cost R$750, or about €270. That meant this chunky paleo-laptop still cost about 30 per cent more than the Brazilian minimum monthly wage. I thought again about the thief and the joy he must have felt as he unpacked my electronics-laden bag.

Accreditation

The last essential was a new Fifa accreditation, which I would have to get at the stadium before the USA- Germany game. The journey to the stadium usually takes 40 minutes, but on Thursday morning a relentless downpour flooded the roads and it took 2½ hours. We saw people wading through waist-deep water. It seemed the game could not go ahead. Fifa issued an Orwellian communique declaring that the roads were clear and the game would kick off as scheduled.

It turned out that getting a new accreditation required a police report confirming the old one had been stolen. I had left my police report from the previous night at home, so it was time to make another police report. The cheerfulness of the police again belied their thuggish reputation. They gave me a cafezinho, a sweet coffee in a thimble-sized plastic cup.

The sun was shining this morning and there was time to walk on the beach. The sand stretches for 14km, the longest urban beach in Brazil. The waves break 40m from shore over the reef that gives the city its name. You’re told not to swim because of the sharks that swarm along this stretch of coastline, but there were plenty of people in there anyway – what are the odds? You could understand why they were feeling lucky. Not everyone in Recife shares that feeling. In the media centre a couple of foreign journalists could be heard moaning about the city. The weather. The traffic. The food. The hotel. The coffee. They couldn’t wait to get back home. But you knew they’d be exactly the same once they got there because these are the kind of guys who never understand how lucky they are.