13-10-2005 The police
What happened in the previous episode: our tent, some minnow traps and our macroinvertebrate net got stolen.
Because we have insurance for robberies we decided to go to the police to get a testimony. The police post in Maracajaú is never open so we drove about 30 km to Barra do Maxaraguape where the municipal police station can be found. We walked in and found a caricature of a police officer: a young guy with boots, socks over his trouser (it was about 30 degrees), black sunglasses (inside!) and fully armed watching a British high school series on tv. He was not really pleased when we disturbed him. We explained what had happened and he slowly started to look for the paper he needed for this occasion. He opened a folder, went trough some of the papers inside, then left, came back and went trough the same folder again. He finally found what he was looking for, but then –surprise surprise – found out that he had only one form left. To his disappointment (I am being ironic now) he could not fill in this form because it was the last one and he would need it to make copies from. These copied could definitely not be made today so it would be much better for us if we would go to the police in Natal. I got very annoyed be this guy. He was so much acting in accordance with the role of a stereotype Latin American cop that it looked like we had ended up in a slapstick.
There was nothing we could do about it so we left and headed to Natal (we had finished another set of 5 lakes and definitely needed a break). The next day we went to the police there but of course they said that Maracajau was outside their jurisdiction so they could not do anything for us. We played with the idea to go to another police station changing the story and telling that we had been robbed in Natal (ohhh) instead of in Maracajaú, but then decided not to.
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