Landscapes/Cityscapes: Panama

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Images of Peru
by Gianluca Frinchillucci

Classical Greece
by Catherine Skrzypinski

Borobudur, Java, Indonesia
by Anna Stewart

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Images of Italy: Genova new!
by Jackie Goyette

Rome
by Paul Goyette

The Bejing Bicycle Race
by Nicholas Hogg

Freaks and Franks of Rembrandtville
by Lyn Fox

Rome, Finally!
by Eric McElroy

Tangible Discoveries
by Jackie Goyette

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Ghana on Two Bribes A Day
by John Liebhardt

"What do you have for us?" she asked, peering into our car windows. "We are very poor police officers."

Ghana, the former Gold Coast, is well-known for its outstanding beaches, hauntingly beautiful slave castles and rich fabrics. Its police officers, on the other hand, are notorious for their shakedowns and have perfected an intricate system of traffic stops that allow them to spin graft into profits.

We learned this the hard way. Driving the length of the country from Burkina Faso -- Ghana's neighbor to the north -- to spend a week at the beach, we encountered countless of these traffic stops, where a simple hand gesture from a cop brings your car to a halt. Now comes the fun. Depending on the heat and hour of the day, an officer will unhurriedly approach your car, demanding papers, any papers: Proof of ownership, proof of insurance, international drivers' licenses, passports, World Health Cards, whatever. Some cops will even ask to see an emergency triangle, which they'll tell you with a straight face is mandatory in Ghana.

Authorities claim a surge in highway robberies and trafficking has forced them to thoroughly screen vehicles. Locals aren't so certain. Nearly seven of 10 Ghanaians believe extortion and bribery "occur frequently" with the police, according to a recent study. The 2004 U.S. State Department human rights report noted that "[p]olice set up barriers, ostensibly to patrol illegal smuggling, but motorists often complained that they used these barriers to demand bribes from motorists."

We arrived at the beach. The beach! In Burkina Faso, sand is a common feature, but in Ghana sand comes with clear, blue water. We walked the small town near our hotel. We toured the tranquil 16th century forts built by the Portuguese. Most of the time, we stared open-mouthed at the names Ghanaians choose for their businesses: "The finger of God limited;" "He will provide plywood;" "Son of God carpentry;" "The Holy Innocence Refrigeration and Air Conditioning."

We had barely unpacked from the two-day drive before hauling everything back into our car to begin the trip north to Ouagadougou. To break up the long voyage, we left our hotel early to spend the night in Cape Coast, a little more than an hour away.

Not far from our hotel on the main highway, a group of police officers signaled us to pull over. Ghanaian police are always amicable, even when they're trying to extort a couple bucks or your headphones. Not today. Without even as much as a simple greeting, an officer rummaged through our papers.

Drivers slowly slalom through the gates, and police get a good look at everyone before deciding who to stop.

It didn't take us long to realize we hit the road during the last few days of the month, those countless hours before payday. Like anyone else, police officers have children and spouses and families depending on their salary. This time of the month, however, those funds have long dried up. Police stops offered the perfect answer to temporary insolvency. Infractions that just a few weeks before would've barely raised eyebrows were now serious crimes. No emergency triangle? That's going to cost you. Papers not in order? Let's see if we can work this out, my friend.

Once you're on the road, there's no way around these police stops, usually located at every entrance point of even the smallest town. They're made up of a metal gate obstructing one lane of traffic with a corresponding gate a couple car lengths away blocking the other lane. Drivers slowly slalom through the gates, and police get a good look at everyone before deciding who to stop.

Spend enough time at a police stop and you'll learn the various measures drivers use to evade scrutiny. The wave, for example, is popular among the ubiquitous development organizations working in Ghana. The driver simply approaches a police stop, slows to a minimum and waves at every police officer in the vicinity. It's polite and often creates enough confusion to freeze a cop in his tracks.

Short of attaching a UNICEF logo on your car doors, the wave doesn't work for everyone. Public transport drivers -- operating the countless taxis, buses and vans on the roads -- know that once forced to stop, negotiations with the police can drag on for hours as officers have been known to inspect each passenger's identity card and piece of luggage. Entering a police stop, these drivers won't even slow down. Instead, they'll quickly scan the area and accelerate through the gates. We call this shooting the gap.

At our next police stop, we followed a blue van attempting to shoot the gap. Rolling through the first gate, the driver accelerated until a lone police officer walked between two semis and brought the van to a sudden stop. Following the van closely, we had to swerve into the other lane, praying it contained no oncoming traffic. It didn't. We accelerated, pulled away and chuckled at our luck ... only to be stopped by what appeared to be a very cranky police officer.

He waved for us to back up and face our punishment. My wife, angry that she was caught so red-handed, refused to reverse. The cop took his time walking to us, seemingly becoming angrier at every step he took. "What were you doing, speeding through there?" he asked.

My wife offered a lame excuse that the blue van stopped so suddenly she had to pass to avoid hitting it. His sour face told us he didn't believe her story. He gave the four of us a good look, and inexplicably tried a different tack with my wife.

"Are you a Christian?"

Two police stops later, we finally turned off the coastal road, thinking we had left the last penniless cops behind. Today, no money would be spent in the name of bribery, we told ourselves. Driving through a small town not far from Cape Coast, a man in a yellow police vest carrying an automatic weapon stepped in front of our car. Once parked, a female police officer walked over to us, joining the guy with the gun, who didn't look more than 12-years-old.

"What do you have for us?" the woman asked. "We are very poor police officers."

Startled, we pretended to search our pockets as wewould do in front of a teenage beggar. "I wish we had something for you," my wife said, frantically searching for a trinket from Burkina Faso. The lady cop wanted money, but perhaps we could score points for exoticism. She wasn't impressed and grimaced like we had kicked her.

I held a pen and a notebook in my lap, and I began writing down the officers' badge numbers. (The woman didn't have a badge, but I got the kid's: 38651.) The woman gave me the "what are you doing" look. I smiled back.

"We don't have very much money, we need to eat," she repeated, and the 12-year-old became bored with us and left. "Here, how about this pen," I blurted out when she cocked her head to look at what I was writing. "It's a nice pen. It's red, you see, but it writes in black."

"But there are three of us, three police officers."

"I don't have three pens," giving myself the phony pat down.

Long, pregnant pause. She yelled something in a local language, which sounded like "these cheapskates are only parting with a lousy pen." The other two, standing under a tree, must have motioned her over, because she snatched my pen and disappeared.