Applying for a visa extension in Kenya pt. 2
Now this is where things get downright FASCINATING. Monday 27th May. The day our visas expire. We read somewhere that you can be charged up to $50 per day that you extend, so that wasn’t really an option.
We hop in an Uber at about 11am, readying ourselves to join the almighty queue outside Nyayo House. To our great surprise, there was no such queue. We hopped out of our Uber and wandered straight over to the security terminal. We went through the metal scanners and straight into the grounds of this intimidating building. We craned our necks at the endless monolith. Yellow walls and letterbox windows. It was a building plucked straight from 1984. Architectural oppression. All I could think about were the torture chambers that I’d read about.
We walked over to the guard in military fatigues at the top of the steps before the entrance.
“Where do we go for visa extensions?” I asked.
“No visa extensions today. Come back on Thursday.” He responded.
I anticipated as such, and began to lay out the situation. I told him that our visas expired at midnight. I told him that we’d been brushed off last week. I told him, dressed in sandals, shorts and a creased t-shirt, that under no circumstances were we leaving without some sort of permission that we could stay in the country for at least another week. At this point, I would’ve been happy with a signed slip from his mother.
He eyeballed me momentarily and held up his index finger. He moved a few feet and began speaking to another man in Swahili, dressed the same and brandishing an AK-47 (I think - it looked the same as they do on Call of Duty). They all have automatic weapons here.
After a few moments, he nodded at us to follow. We really did look like tourists in a sea of uniforms and suits. He walked us into a long, low-ceiling passport office with four rows of about forty seats. Every seat was occupied and every head in the room turned towards the two mzungus that were receiving special treatment. He spoke with the woman at the desk while we looked at our feet. I prayed that we were in the wrong place. After a few seconds, it became clear that we were. He raised his eyebrows at us and nodded back towards outside. That’s something I’ve gotten used to here and even begun reciprocating. Talking with my eyebrows. You can say so much with your eyebrows but we waste our breath on bumbling, abstract words.
We walked back into the main entrance of Nyayo House. It is a bare hall with six elevators. Our personal military escort spoke with a woman whom it appeared worked here. It’s hard to tell who worked there and who didn’t, because everybody was dressed like they were going to church. He turned back to us and smiled.
“We can arrange your extension, but we must walk up the stairs to the 17th floor.”
It sounded like a challenge. A sort of ‘how-desperate-are-you-really?’ challenge.
“Sorry? Are the lifts broken?”
He raised his eyebrows again. I turned to El, who shook her head. I turned back to our guy, whose name I didn’t know, and shrugged my shoulders.
“Okay.”
So, we began to climb the twisting, crowded staircase. Bear in mind, this building had six lifts, each one with a maximum occupancy of 18 persons. That’s 108 people every 5-10 minutes using this narrow, stuffy staircase while the elevators were out of action. We climbed steadily, passing elderly men with shuddering canes and women with babies on their backs. I turned to see El slowing slightly. We were on floor 8.
“Almost halfway there,” I joked, conceding to myself that this was tougher than I anticipated.
We fell silent for the remaining nine floors. There was the Dept. of National Statistics. Dept. of Early Years Learning, Dept. of Agriculture. It were as if we climbing through one of the main arteries of the body-politic of Kenya. From what we had seen so far, it had bad skin and an attitude to match. It was a body in need of a holiday…or makeover - whatever would be less painful.
We witnessed two men lifting a 2-metre cabinet down from floor 15 (I assume they’re still in that stairwell) and arrived on the 17th floor to a carbon copy of the ground floor. An empty space with six elevators and two slits were the windows should be. Our military escort of one spoke with a woman in Swahili. She laughed. He smiled. Their eyes told me that they were flirting. After about three minutes, she acknowledged our existence for the first time.
“Did you apply on cyber?” She asked with a face so straight you could’ve sat a spirit-level on her upper lip.
“Urrrm, no. We were told *several* times that we had to do this in-person, here.” I spoke with all the attitude of somebody who had just climbed 17 flights of stairs.
She shook her head. “Yes, you come for extension but you apply on cyber. Come with me.”
Our military friend handed over custody of us and she walked us over to the elevators. You know, the ones that weren’t working? She presses the button and, as if by magic, the lift opens. We glide down, faces pressed into the armpits of 13 other people, in a matter of moments.
Why did he tell us the elevators were broken?
Why did we believe him, despite seeing people waiting by the elevators on the ground floor?
Where were we going with this woman?
She led us out of the entrance and through the security and all of a sudden we were walking the streets with this new stranger. You spend a lot of time trusting strangers here, despite the country’s staggering rate of corruption. She told us that she was taking us somewhere to complete our application for extension, then we would have to go back to the 17th floor of Nyayo House to get our passports stamped. Then we could go home.
This was turning into a long day. Did I mention that my stomach had been churning from the previous day’s KFC?
We walked for about five minutes in tow of this woman who seemed to know everybody. She stopped to talk to elderly women and high-fived suited men taking their lunches. She had coins for the beggars and even laughed off the violent advance of someone who appeared to be mentally-ill. She moved through Nairobi’s CBD with all the cool of a salesman who has his own mug in the office.
She led us into a nondescript building that advertised passport photos and cigarettes inside. There was a cafeteria and a staircase and she led us up the latter although I wished we’d had a break in the former. All of the women in the building were dressed immaculately while the men were a 50:50 split between suits and Arsenal shirts. Our guide led us into a small room that first seemed way too crowded for us. There were seven PCs tightly packed along one wall and three desks opposite. Behind each desk, there was a member of staff (although nobody wore uniforms or lanyards or anything else that would prove their employment) with two plastic chairs (think early noughties garden set) either side of them. We were bluntly instructed to sit either side of the man in the middle.
Data protection does not exist in Kenya. While we sat behind the desks of the staff, we saw the passports and IDs of several people. We saw WhatsApp messages and PIN codes. We saw bank details and addresses. There is no privacy for anyone. The gentleman to my right was flicking through gore images that he’d received in a group chat, clicking and zooming into bloody car accidents while we waited patiently for our visa extension application. Hilariously, the visa portal was down.
After over an hour of watching the guy click refresh on the search bar, our applications were submitted. Our woman, who still hadn’t introduced herself or made it clear her role, walked us back towards Nyayo House, stopping at a ‘withdraw’ station. These places serve as a sort of manned cashpoint. You send them money via M-PESA and they give you the cash equivalent. She told us it was 5,200KES (£31)
“5,200?” I asked, in confirmation.
“Umm, but what about me?” She asked innocently, like none of the past two hours had actually been part of her job.
“What do you mean?” I pretended that I didn’t understand.
“Can you give me 500 for some lunch?”
“I’ll round it up to 5,500KES, you can get plenty lunch with that.” I sent the money and she took the cash, pocketing 300 shillings.
We were led back through security and - thank God - into the elevator. We waited on the 17th floor while she disappeared into the veins of the floor. After five minutes, she walked us up to the 18th floor, at which point she took our passports and disappeared. As the minutes crawled by, we began to seriously consider the idea that we’d been stitched up. We had no name, no number, no passports and we’d parted with over £30.
Surely not?
We’re in an official government building.
They’ve got people with machine guns outside.
After ten minutes, I began looking for the British embassy on Google Maps and Ellie was searching the procedures for losing your passport abroad.
After twenty minutes, she appeared, stamped passports in hand and the first smile I’d seen in nearly three hours.
Neither of us could believe the fact that we’d been told, matter-of-factly, that there were no visa extension services that day. All it took was a little stubbornness, some cash and, *open sesame*, the doors to bureaucratic success were flung open to us, even in my shorts and sandals.
Y’know what’s really funny? Yesterday, we arrived at the Tanzania border. The Kenyan official looked in our passports and questioned why we’d got stamps for an extension. We told him that our eTa was only for two months. He seemed angry.
“NO! eTa is different thing! You have visa for 3 months automatically. Your visa is until end of June. You did not need extension!”
“Ahh, well, we were under the impression that-”
“No! No impression! You have been scammed.”
And with that, we waved goodbye to our beloved Kenya.