Kaan, Vijay Kaan

Let me handle this.

For that brief moment in time it felt like I was travelling with James Bond.

After an exhausting day of sun and snorkelling we were all freshly showered and headed out for a delicious dinner of BarBQ. Alfredo was a last minute addition to the taxi and ended up in my lap in the backseat with Marlow and Sarah. Vijay was upfront directing the driver to this glorious food oasis.

(I know this sounds very unsafe, and really it is...but this is Africa...it’s just different. Soren, a quirky Australian I met in Peru summed it up – you do things when you travel that you would NEVER do back home...driving without seatbelts across rivers, standing in the back of pick-up trucks as the head up steep mountains etc. Rest assured coworkers – next time we head out for Thai at lunch I won’t make us squeeze 8 people in one car).

Anyway...enough of my defensive tangent...this is my way of explaining that I didn’t see what was happening until it was too late. We believe our taxi was waved over by the police for having out of date registration – the fact that it was overloaded with Muzingas was a HUGE bonus to the corrupt law enforcement.

After getting a patronizing lecture from the English speaking officer we were asked to produce identification. I travel with copies of my passport for just such a reason. In fact, I have 3 full colour, photo quality copies for just such a reason. They are all tucked safely in a special folder back at the house. In fact, Vijay was the only one who was able to produce identification. Visions of my Guatemalan detainment by now were coming flooding back.

Realizing that we were making no forward progress towards dinner, Vijay took the initiative, turned to the cramped lot of us in the back and said “let me handle this”, in a staggeringly Bondesque way before getting out of the taxi and taking the officer aside.

Not wanting to miss what was going on, plus I could no longer feel my lower half with Alfredo still precariously perched there; we too all stumbled out of the stifling hot car. I wasn’t close enough to hear the actual conversation at the time, but Vijay’s recounting seemed to match his actions and I saw him negotiating with the officer, reach into his pocket and then with a handshake transfer the needed funds to get us all safely on our way. JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES!

This wasn’t my first time with corrupt law enforcement...I’m still not sure who made the Guatemalan police go away and I remember our driver in Peru handling it once...and I paid several “tourist police” officers in Egypt but this felt far more Hollywood then any of those.

The officer, now with the equivalent of $6 safely in hand, calmly turned the other way as all five of us piled back into the taxi with the expired registration and sped off...