Often times when you are driving in East Africa there is a high chance that you will get pulled over by the police. More often than not it will not be for any reason – it will just be because the policeman wants a bribe. There are 3 ways of dealing with this:

• The first option is obvious pay the bribe (a few dollars) and drive off. It is not the most ethical thing to do – but many foreigners (wazungu) do it because it saves time.
• The second option is to call any potential bluff and say no and ask them to take you to the station – they will probably let you go (because they have no grounds for arresting you), but they will draw it out as long as possible to try and get that extra cash. (NB – this is just from my experience – if you get taken to the station and charged…unlucky!)
• The third way is my personal favourite that an ex-pat taught me when I was living there. The word they use for bribe is chai which means tea. You can use this to your advantage by pertending to be a dumb foreigner that has a very basic grasp of the language. The trick is to keep tea bags in your car and when they say “leta chai kidogo” (meaning ‘give me a little tea/bribe’) hand them a few tea bags with a disbelieving look on your face – and then drive off. In most cases it will confuse the policeman and you can drive off!

I just want to clarify that these are not guarenteed to work and I only recommend trying if you have not done anything illegal, and are yourself being illegally approached for a bribe!

If you have any good bribe stories I would love to hear them….