The Robbery

Every day is full of moments that cause us to adjust or change. We are constantly tweaking our personalities and our viewpoints. But every once in a while, a moment comes that TRANSFORMS us. These moments ALTER who we are and how we view the world. Here is one of mine…

Recently, Nickele and I had to head to Nicaragua for our visas. As she and I were traveling by bus to our destination, we started talking to a friendly guy on our bus. When we got off at our stop, he offered us a ride with his family since they we were going to the same place we were. In light of the fact that his entire family was going, Nickele and I thought it would be a great alternative to another 2-3 hours of bus riding. Nickele and I spent the first hour getting to know the other three people in the car when all of a sudden I looked over at Nickele and saw that one of the other passengers had her arm around her neck with a knife. In my mind I thought to myself, “That doesn’t look good.”

And so began the process of being robbed. The two women in the car restrained Nickele and I while the two men in the car opened our backpacks and began to riffle through our stuff. Throughout this whole process Nickele and I were told to keep our eyes shut and encouraged to not talk. For those of you who know me, you can already guess that I wasn’t very quiet during the whole thing. I wasn’t concerned about my stuff or my money but I did REALLY want them to give me my passport back.

After using our debit cards to withdraw money, they drove us to a dirt road just outside the Nicaraguan capital of Managua and dumped us (They were fairly considerate criminals since they gave us about $10 so we could catch a bus and specific instructions on how to do it). Nickele and I quickly looked over our stuff and were fairly upset when we discovered Nickele didn’t have her passport anymore (I guess my begging worked because I still had all of my ID). My only thought at this point was, “GET TO THE EMBASSY.” So Nickele and I walked to the highway and hopped on a public bus heading for Managua without a clue of where we were going.