Prince Rakeem! Just wanted to give you a shout out for saving my life (or at least my wallet) way back when.
12 years ago, I’m serving a Mormon mission in Brazil. I’m assigned to a poverty stricken area of Curitiba, a city of about 2 million people. I’m 20 years old, young enough to think I’m invincible and stupid enough to not heed the advice to stay out of this particular neighborhood. This is one of those “favelas” that you hear about in the news. Houses made of plywood, cardboard and tarp; a river of feces, trash and decaying dog carcasses; red dirt roads that turn into streams during rainstorms and a whole lot of people walking around that didn’t really have anything to do other than observe those who didn’t belong. This is the same place where you read about nightly murders in the newspaper. The problem was, this neighborhood was right in the middle of our area and it made it difficult to get from one side to the other without passing through. Although my mission companion and I had been through the neighborhood a handful of times during the day, we had never ventured to pass through at night.
Well, this night a meeting of ours goes particularly late at night and we are dead tired after a long day. From where we were, we were going to have to walk around the outside of the favela to get home and that was about an hour-long walk. Instead, we decide to cut through the favela to cut it down to about 20 minutes. At first, the decision seems like the right one. The moonlight is blanketing the road, the night is freezing but still, and even though there is always the lingering stench of rotting dogs, it just isn’t that bad tonight. The road we choose to walk down is the same one we’ve used in the past, but now that it’s night I start to realize some things I hadn’t before. The road is like a chute, without any roads intersecting it. It’s like a long hallway of back-to-back shanties and decaying cement buildings with no exit other than the two ends. As we walk, I start to see figures in the shadows ahead on both sides of the road. As we get closer, the figures start to meander to the middle of the road. My companion, who has only been in Brazil for about a month is oblivious to anything going on. I casually look behind me to reconsider our choice of road, and I see five figures, evenly spaced across the road, walking toward us. I turn back and see the figures ahead of us have formed a line across the road as well. By this point, even my naïve little friend knows we’re screwed. As we approach the group I notice that the men all wearing heavy black clothing: big coats, baggy jeans, boots, hoodies, winter caps. But one detail struck me immediately. All of them are wearing at least one article of clothing bearing an emblem I knew very well. It was the Wu-Tang logo. Mind you, I was obsessed with Wu-Tang in high school and knew pretty much anything there was to know about the group. As we stop, looking the men in the face, the lines of men behind and in front of us meet to form a circle around us. The man directly in front of us asks, “Perdidos?” and the man to his left reaches into his coat and begins to pull out what looks like the back of a black semi-automatic handgun. Before he pulls the gun from his coat, I almost subconsciously blurt out the only thing I could think to say: in Portuguese, I ask “You guys are Wu-Tang fans?” The man pulling the gun immediately pauses. The man who first spoke asks “What do YOU know about Wu-Tang?” I respond by telling him that I’m a huge fan and I know all about them. Obviously they doubt everything I’m saying. After all, I’m a white kid, wearing a white shirt and tie, with a part in my hair. At that moment I began to realize how I wouldn’t believe myself either. They begin to quiz me! One thing after another—names, nicknames, alternate names, rapping styles—I’m nailing it all! After about 10 minutes of Wu-Tang trivia, they’re convinced and they ask us to come back to one of the guy’s house to watch the latest video. They told us repeatedly how we were the coolest white people they knew.
From that day on, we were in with the local gang and you really don’t know just how good of a thing that was.
