Bribing pulbic officials

So, I am in Nicaragua, and it may or may not come as a surprise to some that you CAN successfully bribe people to get your way here. I had never had to do this until yesterday. I decided I needed to go to our clinic to check out a particularly annoying bout of intestinal issues that had been plaguing me for about a week. I asked my friend Sarah to go with me since I am still learning to drive stick shift and am not very confident in my abilities. It was her first time driving in Nicaragua, even though she had been here about seven months already and although she didn't have her license we thought since we were only going a couple of miles down the road it wouldn't be a big deal. I was thinking if worse came to worse I could pass her my license, we are both blonde and sometimes folks get confused here with blonde-headed types. So we were driving down the very bumpy torn up road to our clinic when I saw the police ahead. I told Sarah to just keep driving and not look them in the eye and perhaps we would be okay. No such luck. We are white after all, which was something I had failed to remember when we took off down the road. I told Sarah to be calm as they flagged us down and asked us to pull over. The policeman stopped us and told us that it was his job to stop every car and ask for our license and the papers of the vehicle, that this was a routine stop and we shouldn't be worried. (I knew this was bullshit from the start.) Problem number one arrived when we couldn't find the papers. Neither of us had had to look for papers in any of these vehicles before and I thought I was looking for a manila envelope with 'papers' in it. I had to inform him I couldn't find them, but assured him that we worked close to where we were and were just heading to our clinic, couldn't he just let us go? He then asked Sarah for her name, I told her in English to say Emily, in the case that I was going to have to give her my license. Luckily she knew my last name as well and he quickly wrote it down on his not very official looking piece of white legal paper. Then he began running off the numerous problems we were going to have because we didn't have any documents and how he was going to have to take us down to the station and that it would cost us approximately 800 cordobas, equivalent to about $50 in penalties for our lack of documentation. I was nodding and agreeing that we were in the wrong, no papers and all, but wasn't there something we could do? I was not going to outright ask him how much money it would take to pay him off so he would let us go, but I was trying to hint that this might be a possibility. I very carefully took a bill and pushed it up out of my wallet which was in my hand so he could see it. He made no recognition to me that he had seen anything so I began to get a little worried. Finally I told him that I had been in Nicaragua for a while and knew how things worked here. He raised his eyebrows and repeated in question form what I had just told him. He kind of glanced over his shoulder at his companero who was holding an AK47 across his chest and asked me if the back of our ancient Land Rover 'ambulance' opened and if it did could he please get in. I assured him that by all means he was welcome to get in the back, so he and his friend with the large AK47 climbed into the back of the car. He sat right behind me and kind of laid his arm over the back of his seat with his hand dangling close to my shoulder. He assured me that this procedure was only necessary because people talk, and he didn't want people to know that he was taking a bribe, so coming into the car with us allowed him to stealthily take my money without being seen. I covertly wadded the bill up into my hand and put it in his , he then transferred it to his pocket, no harm done, except I was out about 100 cordobas. We drove down the street a little ways while he chatted us up asking our names, luckily Sarah remembered to say that her name was Emily, so as not to get us in further trouble, and then they got out, their pockets well padded with bribe money to finish their police business for the day.

Sarah and I made it to the clinic and when we told our Nicaraguan friends the story they showed us the documents which were easily accessible in the car and laughed at us for being such stupid gringos. I still say Sarah didn't have her license, which really was a problem, so it wasn't all paid in vain, and now I've got this great story about how I paid off Nicaraguan officials for being white. In a way I think it's their way of sticking it to us just a little bit, kind of saying, yeah, you guys don't belong here, and you're going to pay for it.