Shakedown

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

The Uber driver, a soft-spoken man in a ramshackle Toyota, is smiling, but his expression is strained. He’s leaning through the driver’s door, searching for something in the car’s center console. He pulls out his driver’s license. “Give me a moment and I will explain,” he says in a whisper, holding his voice low so the two policemen standing at the front of the parked vehicle won’t hear.

We are at the Nairobi airport picking up our guests, two teen girls from Morocco who are family friends visiting while we are in Kenya. They sit quietly in the cramped rear seat with my wife Jeanne, watching the events with narrow eyes. We’ve just hailed the vehicle. I start to wonder if we should find another ride.

The driver is talking to the policemen in Swahili. They keep pointing to something on the car’s right fender. The car is old and has many scratches and small dents. I wonder if it hasn’t passed a safety inspection, but then I recall other cars I’ve seen on Nairobi streets that were in much worse shape.

The two policemen are stern, and much taller than the driver. One of them shakes his head. He glances into the car at me and then says something to the driver. The driver nods numbly, hands him something, and climbs back into the car.

“Is everything okay?” I ask again.

Again he whispers “Just a moment and I will explain.”

He starts the car and pulls away, glancing in the rear mirror at the policemen. He shakes his head. “They saw I had white passengers. They wanted 2,000 shillings.”

“For what?” Two thousand shillings is about twenty dollars.

“They say it is three-minute parking but I was parked for five minutes.”

From the back sat Jeanne says, “You just got here! You weren’t parked for three minutes.”

The man shakes his head. “The police are very corrupt, you understand? They think I will ask you for the money and pay them. I did not.”

“Did you pay them at all?” I ask.

“No. I didn’t have the money. So they take my license from me and tell me I have three hours to come back to the airport and pay them the 2,000 shillings. I need my license, I cannot work without it.”

We drive in silence through the smog-choked early-morning rush hour. He pulls a phone out of his pocket and dials. A woman answers. He speaks to her in Swahili and I can hear the English words “license” and “police” repeated several times. The tone of her voice seems angry but resigned. During the conversation I can hear a rooster crow several times. He hangs up. “Sorry. I have to call and find money to pay the police.”

He dials another number, and as it rings he glances at me. “I have a friend who is also a policeman at the airport. Maybe he can help.”

After a few moments a man’s voice answers. There is a short conversation, also in Swahili, and the driver hangs up regretfully. “He is off-duty today. He cannot help me.”

It crosses my mind that this is some kind of elaborate scam. I check the GPS on my own phone to make sure he is taking us along the route back to our apartment. I am relieved to find we are headed in the correct direction. The traffic is crawling along. I wonder if he’ll be able to get us to our destination, go and collect money, and get back to the airport within the three-hour window dictated by the police.

“Has this happened to you before?” I ask.

“I have been driving for four years,” he answers. “It has not happened to me before, but it has happened to many of my friends.”

He seems sincere and genuine, and the situation seems too convoluted to be some kind of scheme. I decide that it’s not a con, and that this poor fellow has indeed been shaken down by corrupt cops. Besides, if this is a scam, it is a very good one, with multiple players and an elaborate plot revolving around me feeling sorry for the driver for being targeted by corrupt police.

The drive back to the apartment takes anther forty-five minutes. By the time we arrive the diesel fumes from the traffic has totally infiltrated the deepest corners of my lungs. We climb out of the car and I give the driver a far bigger tip than I normally would.