Many places you travel will have lots of people with guns. This is a taxonomy that I have developed:
- Controlling their own citizens – Equatorial Guinea, where there are virtually no tourists, yet plenty of guns and checkpoints. Milling groups of military clearly intended to cow local action. Add tourists, and now China is in this category.
- Fully militarised societies – Israel. Impossible to ride a bus or walk a street without encountering an armed citizen soldier. Until you are identified as ‘one of us’ you will be treated with suspicion and an aggressive attitude.
- Flooding obvious targets – Mexico City, where in touristy and high value neighbourhoods it appears that there are police vehicles and security from at least four services in view at every point. Outside those zones, coverage is notably sparse.
- A hybrid local control/reassurance – Cairo, where every government building has military personnel behind shields and blast walls, perhaps an armored car; and every tourist bus has a suited, lapel pinned, Mac 10 armed guard. Add a young soldier at every major intersection and you are in Bogota.
- Rich people/poor people – South Africa, where the startling gulf has engendered private ‘rapid armed response teams’ and airports have ‘firearms pickup desks’. Luckily I am on the white side of this and never get a second look.
- Genuine peace force – only anecdotally, but it sounds like Lebanon’s military, ubiquitous, is actually trying hard to stop citizens from killing each other.
- Bored/full employment plan – Nicaragua. As far as I can tell everyone gets to have a job. Like Peru, very few are armed or aggressive.
- Genuine border control – Dominican Republic. Coming over from Haiti you will be stopped and pulled off the bus perhaps four times. Full baggage and papers check. Not aggressive, just domestically reinforcing immigration policies.
- Reassurance – Spain, where the model is one policewoman flanked by two fully kitted military. The message is clearly that there is a rule of law, reinforced by some firepower. Editorially, this is almost the sexiest thing that I have encountered.
- Blessed absence – so much of the world. Where, after a few days of a vague sense that something is different, you realize that you have not seen an armed person, not heard a siren. Somehow most of the world gets along.
My approach to private, paramilitary and military individuals around the world is based on the notions that: they are mostly young, they are curious about me, they want a little respect, and they are grossly underpaid.
Rolling up to a checkpoint I lower the window, conspicuously remove my headphones and shut my book, sit erect, and open my passport. I engage with the interlocutor as well as nodding to the Sergeant (oldest and most obviously in charge, and usually behind and offset from the person who is speaking). A vague semi-salute not-wave, and palm to chest to show respect. They will work the driver of the bus or collectivo harder than me, and sadly search more of the local baggage than mine, but I am scanning to see if I can demonstrate compliance by vaguely handling my bag.
If there is a bribe to be paid I consider it a cost of expedition, rather than a moral outrage. I will try to engage in any language, to at least extend the period until payment is made, essentially making the extorter work for the money. But some fly ridden remote dusty highway in Cote D’Ivoire seems like a poor place for me to make a stand. I invariably thank, without sarcasm, the South African policeman for helping me ’solve this problem’.
Walking in to a shop, hotel, market, park, bank, parking lot, train station, airport that has security I will always seek eye contact and offer a nod of respect. I know that if I had their job I would be pleased to be acknowledged.
And, for the love of God, do not take photos of heavily armed groups or militarized locations.