Memoirs of a Melanin Sojourner

After about five minutes, a blue truck pulled up and stopped next to me, the doors swung open and out came four military soldiers holding uzzi machine guns. They all looked right at me and appeared angry. As they surrounded me, one of them began to speak to me in Portuguese. I could not understand a word he said except I knew he was asking me a question. So I gave him the universal sign for I don''t understand by shrugging my shoulders and raising my hands and arms into the air.They looked at me strangely up and down and then spoke to one another. They quickly came to a consensis, looked at me and then waved for me to come with them. As they led me to the truck all could think about was the fact that I was alone and no one would know what happened to me. I could refuse but then I could also get shot. One look at those machine guns convinced me that it would be in my best interest to cooperate. Just as I was about to get into the truck my peers showed up and started asking me what was going on? I explained the situation and they told the soldiers that we had permission to video tape the relief effort and showed them the papers. But they would not release me. So the chief engineer told them that if I went, they would have to take all of us. so they threw us all into the back of the truck and took us to a polce station. The station was basically a gutted concrete building with a desk and a long wooden bench which they had us sit on until they could find their supervisor. after about a five minute wait, the guy shows up, stands there for a minute, looks at all of us and then looks right at me and starts to ask me questions in Portuguese. Again I explain to him that I speak English and don''t understand him. Then he ask for my passport, I show it to him, he ask the others for thier passports, and looks all of them over. But the only passport they are really interested in is mine because I am the only African American and therefore a novelty to them. I am handed back my passport and the guy goes away. after awhile a higher ranking officer comes in and takes us through the same ordeal, looking us over and then asking me questions in Portuguese. I guess they thought that since I was black I could speak the language. Well this guy goes away and we sit there quite awhile before this soldier shows up, goes into a cabinet and pulls out an AK47, loads a clip of ammunition into it, cocks it and starts staring at us with an I''m going to kill you look on his face.