The mutual bias for stealing

by Stratos Bakalidis (Greece)

Making a local connection Poland

Nasutow, Poland 2018. Somewhere among the vast valleys of Southeast Poland. Nasutow was one of those villages that the one house from the other was very far away with some land field between, something totally different from Greek’s ones, where houses are enough close to know neighbor’s underwear color(Greek joke). But what was I doing at this seemingly peaceful place? I was there for an Erasmus+ youth exchange project related to photography. One sunny afternoon, I and my teammate Andrei, a photographer from Brazil, had the task to take a picture of something yellow and rectangular around the village. Quite tough, right? Nature doesn’t like those shapes. Farmers were ploughing their fields as it was middle of April. After some time wondering without too much success, we split a little bit and I came across a cottage, which had an ideal signpost on its fence. A yellow sign with a small dog on it say’ dobiegam do furtki w 3 sekundy- a ty? For those of you speak Polish, you start getting a bit suspicious but for others you don’t, like me, you ‘ll learn the adventurous way. So I take the posture for the picture and after a while I listen behind a tractor braking abruptly. A sixty-year old farmer gets off the tractor and comes towards me. He says something in Polish very angrily pointing my camera. I can’t understand him and I respond ’just pictures’. There is no communication and things escalate quickly. At once, he grabs my camera, and he is ready to go. My reflexes start tinkling. Am I getting stolen now? Yes. I try to stop him, grabbing him from his back, but he embarks on his vehicle anyway. I am doing the same. On the tractor he places my camera to other side, so I can’t reach it. I yell ‘give my camera now’ while holding the helm so he can’t drive. He punches me on face and I respond with a fist on his head. My adrenaline is at its peak and I grab his neck very tightly. However, he is speeding up with the reverse. Now it’s very dangerous because I am hanging the half outside tractor’s door, very close to the big wheel. My hand starts bleeding due to the rusty, sharp frame’s edge. I can very easily fall down and get seriously injured. I am giving up and I jump off the tractor. He continues moving backwards, Ι am running alongside the street and making international ‘polite’ gestures. A few cars were behind so he has to stop. Luckily, Andrei saw the whole scene and now he is running towards us. Thanks to his maturity, he makes some gestures for calming down. The guy gets off and says ‘polizja’ among other stuff, very easy to catch this word at first place. Now indeed we are in trouble, because I don’t know if there are special local rules regarding taking pictures. He calls the police, we call immediately the project’s Polish leader to come. She translates’ he is arguing that it’s illegal to take pictures and I tried to rob his property. How much worse can be? He denies discussing more and goes into the house. Andrei, Ola and I are at house’s yard talking. I try to explain to her what happened but my English were a bit bad at the time, and I am still in shock. She says’ just promise me you didn’t attempt to break into the house and all will be fine. Of course, I didn’t. An hour later, the police arrives. After a long discussion, we are assured that is totally legal to take pictures everywhere. We shacked hands and he gave me the camera back. More or less, the farmer was afraid of me being an immigrant because my appearance is a typical Mediterranean, not common in northern countries. What I gained from this experience? A hand wound and the initial meaning of the signpost ‘I can reach the fence in 3 seconds- how about you? Subconscious bias is everywhere active. Nevertheless, not all Polish people are like this and Poland is a very nice country with interesting people to get connected with.