<story><title>The Incredibly Stupid One</title><url>https://www.pownetwork.org/bios/h/h135.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grecy</author><text>Playing dumb works extremely well to get out of extortion attempts too.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve driven through a stack of countries notorious for extortion by Police and Military - Congo, Nigeria, Honduras, Kenya, Guinea - just to name a few.&lt;p&gt;One of my tactics to avoid paying a cent is playing dumb. It&amp;#x27;s super easy when they don&amp;#x27;t speak English. I do my best to understand their (French&amp;#x2F;Spanish&amp;#x2F;Portuguese&amp;#x2F;Whatever), all the while remaining very polite and friendly. It&amp;#x27;s a real shame when I don&amp;#x27;t understand they want money, and virtually always they wave me through in disgust.&lt;p&gt;On a two year drive from Alaska to Argentina I paid one $5 bribe.&lt;p&gt;In three years around Africa through 35 countries I paid once in Ivory Coast, because I was too big for my boots and let on that I speak French.&lt;p&gt;Playing dumb has a lot of advantages.&lt;p&gt;For anyone interested, here&amp;#x27;s me dealing with a real-life extortion attempt in Nigeria [1]. This was in Nigeria, so it&amp;#x27;s all in English, but the script is identical in any corrupt country.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>reidjs</author><text>I vaguely remember a post from you on reddit or HN or somewhere a long time ago when you were first getting ready for this trip and the responses were like &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re going to get robbed&amp;#x2F;break down in the middle of nowhere&amp;#x2F;You won&amp;#x27;t find jeep parts in Africa&amp;#x2F;Why not drive a land cruiser&amp;#x2F;you will die in the Sahara.&amp;quot; Glad to see you proved the naysayers wrong.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Incredibly Stupid One</title><url>https://www.pownetwork.org/bios/h/h135.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grecy</author><text>Playing dumb works extremely well to get out of extortion attempts too.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve driven through a stack of countries notorious for extortion by Police and Military - Congo, Nigeria, Honduras, Kenya, Guinea - just to name a few.&lt;p&gt;One of my tactics to avoid paying a cent is playing dumb. It&amp;#x27;s super easy when they don&amp;#x27;t speak English. I do my best to understand their (French&amp;#x2F;Spanish&amp;#x2F;Portuguese&amp;#x2F;Whatever), all the while remaining very polite and friendly. It&amp;#x27;s a real shame when I don&amp;#x27;t understand they want money, and virtually always they wave me through in disgust.&lt;p&gt;On a two year drive from Alaska to Argentina I paid one $5 bribe.&lt;p&gt;In three years around Africa through 35 countries I paid once in Ivory Coast, because I was too big for my boots and let on that I speak French.&lt;p&gt;Playing dumb has a lot of advantages.&lt;p&gt;For anyone interested, here&amp;#x27;s me dealing with a real-life extortion attempt in Nigeria [1]. This was in Nigeria, so it&amp;#x27;s all in English, but the script is identical in any corrupt country.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=7RTlDa2cg0o&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>iamwil</author><text>Thanks for sharing. Watched and enjoyed. How did you learn how to do that? Trial and error? Or you rode with someone else?</text></comment>