After having lived in Costa Rica for almost 5 months, I am still trying to figure out how things work and why Costa Ricans look at some things the way they do. Case in point.....the unconscious man face down in a parking lot with a bicycle on top of him. I am going to guess from the confused looks on your faces that you have no idea what I am talking about so I will start from the beginning and explain......
Jake and I went to the grocery store today and saw that Harry Potter was actually at the movie theaters. We were pleasantly surprised because Twilight didn't come out in Costa Rica until 2 weeks after it did in the United States. Of course the theater by our house only shows movies in Spanish so we made the trip to the mall in Escazu to see it in English.
SIDE BAR: The movie was really good....can't wait for the 2nd part to come out next July!
Anyway....we were walking to the bus stop by the mall....even though there were no buses because it was after 11pm....to catch a taxi since the bus stop is right along the autopista (Interstate). As we are walking to the bus stop, we look through the gates and see a taxi driver and about 5 men just parked there. Then we look past the taxi and see someone face down, on the exit ramp of the parking garage, with his bicycle on top of him and he is not moving.
Jake and I go back to the gate we just passed and I go to the man while Jake runs looking for one of the security guards on motorcycles. It turns out that the men with the taxi driver are actually security guards for the mall and the man face down is actually a security guard himself.
Now this is where Jake's much improved Spanish would be handy but remember...he is looking for security. So I am at the mercy of my greatly improving but still not quite there Spanish to English translations.
I ask if anyone has called the police and they say no. So I offer my phone, which one of the guards takes, and they call the police. Of course 5 minutes later I am going to realized that at least 3 of them have phones on them.....not quite sure why no one thought to use them!
Now it is a waiting game....and the man is unconscious and not moving. It took the ambulance almost 20 minutes to get to us and the man was unconscious the whole time, plus however long he had been unconscious when we found him. The paramedics finally arrive. They roll the man over, stabilize his neck and then the man starts to move his legs....thank goodness!! Of course he never opened his eyes. At this point, our taxi arrives....which had been called for by one of the security guards....and we get in the taxi and go home.
The strangest part of the whole experience was the fact that the other security guards just stood around talking, waiting for the ambulance to arrive, while their co worker laid on the ground, unconscious, face down, not moving, and barely breathing.
The only explanation I have for this nonchallant attitude is the fact that they are desensitized to things like this because of the media. One of the very strange things we have learned since we moved here is that they don't sugar coat anything on television. When they had the terrible floods and mudslides a couple of weeks ago.....if they found a body in the mud.....you saw it pulled out on tv. They don't try to hide anything from you...if someone has been shot in the middle of the road....you are going to see it....blood and all!
As I'm riding back to my house, all I could think of was how differently Jake and I responded to the scene compared to the other security guards and it made me wonder if we were looking at two different scenes because I don't think they saw what I saw!
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