Great Way to Start the Day

Friday was an interesting day...

I needed to make some transactions at the bank so I made a trip there before work. On my way, I encountered two different commotions for two different reasons:


First, about half a block from my apartment, I noticed a small crowd staring up at an apartment building while pointing and telling each other to call 113 (Angolan version of 911)... I looked up and saw that a large apartment on the 3rd floor had smoke coming out of the windows, and the plumes were getting thicker by the second...
The crowd kept getting bigger too, and pretty soon it seemed like everyone on the street had stopped on their tracks to stare and comment loudly on the situation. I saw several ppl on the phone, and one lady was talking to the fire department describing the situation, so after a few minutes I continued on my merry way.

Fast-forward to a few blocks later, right in front of the bank, and I found ANOTHER crowd staring up at a building, commenting loudly and causing a commotion. I stopped and looked up: This time it was a man at the top of an apartment building, threatening to jump. Suicide is a very unusual occurence here, so people were having all sorts of reactions... some people were scared of what might happen, some people were skeptical that he would dare, some people were outright amused and laughing at how ridiculous they thought the man was being. I asked around a little bit and found out from neighbors that he lived in said apartment building, was known to mug people frequently, and had recently found out his girlfriend was cheating on him... so he had gone on some sort of mad rant and told his mom he was going to the roof and was going to kill himself, at which point the mother called the police (we could see the mom accross the street crying and panicking... it was so sad). So now the police was at the bottom of the building and the man was leaning way over the top of the building just contemplating when to jump...

I had my camera with me, and was tempted to take pictures of the whole scenario, but then I would feel bad if he jumped and I captured the event of a man's death... so I just left it in my bag.

After a while, the man backed away, out of our view... That's when the police raided the building to try to find him. A few minutes later they came out with him handcuffed, placed him in the patrol car, and took him away. Rumor spread that they had found him in his room, getting dressed, acting as if nothing had happened.

I shook my head and continued on my merry way... after all, my day was barely getting started.