While I have found most people I’ve met in traveling around the world to be good, there have been some that are basically crooks. No, I haven’t met that many politicians! There are some others who are not honest. A disproportionate number of these have been police or military. In many countries, some people are given the authority (and sometimes guns), which they think entitles them to take money or valuables from other people. Places where I can remember government officials (usually police) trying to extort money, sometimes threatening with a fine or jail, are Croatia, Egypt, India, Italy, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique and Zambia. I’ll just give one example from Mozambique in this blog. 

Tanzania & Malawi. When I was crossing the Maasai Mara and Serengeti in 1988, I had occasion to see many Maasai. I bought a well-used shield and sword/long knife used by one warrior.

Many days later, a border official in Malawi objected to me bringing a dangerous weapon into the country. We discussed what was so “dangerous” and established that a blade longer than about 4 inches he thought was too dangerous. So, I marched back to the truck and got out a hacksaw we had on the truck.

As I was more than half-way through cutting off the blade, leaving a 4-inch stub, he commented that it was a shame that I was destroying such a fine knife because his sister collected them. Without a word, I handed him the blade and kept the handle with blade stub and the shield. 

Baksheesh. In many places, it is expedient to give or pay something for an official, usually governmental, to do his job – a little bribe just to get them to do what they are paid to do. It is also possible for some to demand this payment in lieu of a fine or jail. The payment is known as baksheesh. One thing I have learned is that nearly always you can bargain for a smaller amount of baksheesh you have to pay, and sometimes you can bluff your way out of paying anything at all. For the latter, you must be very careful though: one colleague told me he spent a couple days in a Kenyan jail, as he was too slow to agree to pay; in the end, his “fine” was bigger than the baksheesh he could have paid up-front.

Mozambique. An easy way to deal with baksheesh is to have very little money available for someone to take. An example of this was in Mozambique where I had fortunately learned on-line of a common police tactic that my wife and I experienced. We rented a 4X4 SUV in Nelspruit, South Africa, and drove into Mozambique, since I was intent on diving with whale sharks and manta rays off the coast of Mozambique near Tofo. Being forewarned, we hid most of our money in the seat padding of the vehicle. It is important though always to have at least a little money available, so the thief will not become violent in frustration.

In the case of Mozambique, towns you drive through have a speed limit sign as you enter town. About half of the towns have a sign on the other side of town indicating a return to highway speeds. However, the other towns do not have such a sign, so if you increase your speed after apparently leaving town again, police can stop you and produce a radar gun (typically with inflated value) showing you were going above the town’s speed limit (even with nary a house in sight). Your protest must be gentle. You turn your pockets inside out with only a little give-away money available; credit cards do them no good, so those are safe to show. Your give-away money is lost, but it’s just part of the cost of your travels. This all happened to us exactly as I have described. When we were stopped by four policemen, I negotiated with the captain. We paid a moderate amount of baksheesh – basically what I had in my pocket (little more than 10% of what he originally demanded), and we continued on our way in ten minutes.

In contrast, earlier on the same day, a Mozambican official at the busy and confusing border-crossing was enormously helpful in showing non-Portuguese-speaking me which lines to stand in first, second and third and what forms needed to be completed in each; he did this with no expectation of reward. 

Zambia. More frightening was an instance when I was traveling for a couple of months through Africa in 1988 with about 15 other people on a 4WD truck. In a remote part of Zambia where we had not seen anyone for quite a while, a military car and a couple of trucks of soldiers passed us and indicated our driver should pull over.

We were all ordered by an officer to get out of the truck and line up on the side of the road while soldiers with their automatic rifles ready (but not explicitly pointing at us) were lined up opposite us. We immediately did as ordered. I was third in line. The first and second persons in line produced passports and were questioned aggressively by the officer. Fortunately, I had clipped a business card showing I am a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in my passport. This impressed the officer enormously. Between us, we established that this was an educational trip in which I was leading a group of people so that they could

learn more about Africa – Zambia in particular. His attitude towards the group changed to favorable immediately. We did not even have to pay any “fine”. 

Rio de Janeiro. The first time I was in Rio de Janeiro (1986), late in the afternoon I took the cogwheel railway up to the top of Mount Corcovado, which has the huge statue of Christ the Redeemer at the top. I might also mention that Rio has a horrible (and well-deserved) reputation for mugging, including a couple people whom I know who were mugged at knifepoint on separate occasions.

As I was walking back to take the train down, I noticed a couple suspicious guys eying me. At one narrow point in the passage to go to the train, they waited, each on opposite sides. I figured they were waiting to mug me. So I just stared at them until they were both looking away from me, and the train was nearly ready to leave. Then I rushed by them quickly and got on the train. They followed me onto the train. Other people had arrived by then too. The train had two cars, and we had entered the top one. I moved to the lower end of that car and continued to watch them. Just as the door was signaling to close, I jumped off the train and entered the lower car. They jumped off too but realized they did not have enough time to run and get on the lower car, so they quickly got back in the top car. For the time of the descent, we were separated.

I immediately got off the train when it arrived at the bottom, ran into the street, and jumped in a taxi. In Rio, as in many places in the world, I would not ordinarily do this but would bargain about the fare while still standing outside the car. 

Crippling effects of apartheid/discrimination. During the years of apartheid, I refused to enter South Africa, stopping my travels south in Botswana. However, in 1997, four years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, my wife and I went there for the first time.

In a small town on our way to Cathedral Peak, my wife went into a public rest room. As I waited outside, an elderly black woman approached me and asked if she could use the rest room. Thinking that her question was “is the rest room open”, I answered indirectly by saying that my wife was inside: so “yes” it was open. I turned my attention to something else, but a minute or so later I noticed that she was still waiting outside. Immediately, it hit me that she had asked me for permission to use the rest room – could she, a black woman, use that rest room. I started crying silently but controlled myself enough to indicate to her that she should go in. The lingering evils of discrimination! They are with us still in 2020!