Playing dumb, smiling foolishly a lot, asking about their families and home villages, offering business cards and insisting that they visit you in your home country, or merely waiting it out....whatever you can think of aside from actually paying a bribe. I don't know what to say about people who have seldom or never had bribes requested or demanded--maybe they lead charmed lives. Apparently, I do not.

I've also been threatened quite often--sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. After a long period without paying anyone off, I encountered a late-night roadblock in northern Cote d'Ivoire. The man separated me from the locals on the truck, pulled me into the darkness and started yelling at me; I tried my usual clueless waiting game, but eventually admitted to myself I was alone, friendless, and totally helpless on the fringes of a civil war. Then I tripped over something invisible, and the man shone his flashlight briefly on stacked belts of ammunition feeding a machine gun aimed at our truck. I negotiated him down to a reasonable rate (I remember US$5, but my memory is not what it used to be) and was released.

I feel no particular need to embellish these stories. The lesson I extracted from this one, purely for my own use, was that moral purity about such situations has its limits. But I still resist as best I can, since my refusal to pay might make things easier for you, as vice versa.

Mark