We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by no less than fifty vociferous people. “What are you doing here!. Go away!. We don’t want your trash in our village!”, were the kindest words that they gave to our ears.
We both tried to explain to the masses that we had nothing to do with their claims. We were working for a contractor to do a survey to assess the cable duct capacity for a fiber optic deployment. We had nothing to do with the national rail administration and their plans to build a waste treatment plan in their backyard.
One person introduced himself as the village mayor and started to address us with a speech about why the waste plant should not be located there. That was fine, but he would do that as he was grabbing my shirt, as if I was about to fly from the place. I shouted: “”Don’t you dare to touch me!” as I slapped his hands and took a step towards him.
That was probably not my best move. The crowd instantly and concertedly became more aggressive, as they directed their wrath towards me. I suddenly became the public enemy number 1 of the f*ck*ng dorp, an impersonation of the diabolical railway administration who wanted to turn their homes into a waste pit.
They felt I was an arrogant son of a beast, to say the least.
My colleague suggested that I should leave then, which I did. As I was slowly walking away from the herd, three grown women warmly joined me waving 20 inch long knives in their hands and threatening to castrate me. That brought me not very pleasant memories of how pigs were castrated at home when I was a kid.
As for my colleague, he handled the situation with remarkable patience. Those folks, in the end, just wanted to be heard by someone, even if he wasn’t able to do anything for them. Maybe they were right and I was an arrogant son of a bitch.
Thus I did not die that fine day. I survived because no one dared to lay his hands on me – if any one of them would blow me, the rest of the pack would have followed suit. I guess I was lucky and the most impetuous neighbours were at work or at school and the canonical town fool was up in the hill.
But I believe standing your ground before a pack of wild dogs also helped. If you happen to fall into an ambush or unintentionally shake a wasp nest, you better keep calm and walk gently.