> It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is

> It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is more meaningful than anything else to those bored officers. Either they don't actually care that much about your documents, or if they do, they're simply looking for a bribe. At least that's been my experience at out of the way border crossings in southern Africa. The most ridiculous experience I had was crossing into Zimbabwe with my 11 year old son. The officer wanted to see his birth certificate, which was still in the car that had already been driven across the border. So I had to leave the building, walk across the border, which nobody batted an eye at, get the document, walk back across the border, re-enter the building, and then present the document to the officer who didn't even look at it before letting me proceed to leave the building and walk across the border once again.