The grim journey towards getting a passport at Nyayo House

The journey towards acquiring a valid international travel document issued by the government of Kenya - the Passport - is fraught with many twists and turns. It is a jump literally into the unknown, albeit with a plethora of apprehension, if the stories you hear on the streets of Nairobi are anything to go by.

Is the passport application digital or manual?

In my quest to renew my passport, the first step was to fill up an immigration department form on eCitizen detailing all my personal and family particulars. It is not a process for one who is not acquainted to online form filling athletics; hence the many cyber cafes you still see around. It is tedious and time consuming, even for one renewing an expired passport.

“How could they have lost my documents from the last time I renewed my passport and why do they need to take a digital photo of their own after requiring that I carry one?” I mused to myself, as I attached my passport photo online. One might be all grown up, long married and having fully grown children but they will still ask you about your mother and father’s details and - if they’re deceased - their death certificates. Welcome to the department of immigration.

You sign off by paying an amount commensurate to the type of passport you applied for. This digitized office requires that I carry many printed papers to my interview with them, eight or more copies of personal and family documents, all of these details captured earlier in the system. As the applicant, I eventually selected the place, date and time for my biometric capture as well as taking a digital passport photograph.

The shock on arriving at Nyayo House

On arrival at Nyayo House, the immigration department office at 8am, on the appointed date and time, I congratulated myself for keeping time as I made my way through the narrow security gate and promptly arrived at the main immigration service hall. However, I was shocked that a crowd numbering almost five hundred were already ahead of me within a holding tent. I had been daydreaming… I had thought the purpose of the choice of time was to slot an applicant into a specific time so that they avoid crowding while streamlining time to an applicant so that they spend the least time at the immigration office.

When I reached near the door, I was told to join the crowd awaiting within the holding tents for my turn to enter the hall after a National Youth Service officer (NYS) perused my papers. After a lapse of about thirty minutes, I was called to get into the main service hall where I joined another crowd of over three hundred applicants waiting to be served at the numerous counters. The lines were orderly but barely with space to maneuver, hot, stale breath on your neck and elbows on my sides were the norm in the generally tight long curling and curving queue. I longed for the few benches ahead of me which could only take about fifty people. The two-hour wait was torturous but eventually my turn at the counter came. I presented my documents minus the death certificate of my late father who passed on decades ago when I was a minor. The officer behind the counter looked keenly through them and after about four minutes, asked me about the missing death certificate. I said I could not find it as my mother, who is the custodian, is very old now and at times has no recollection of where she kept such documents. I was told to sit and wait, and wait I did, for what? I did not know.

My saving grace came in a lady who was once my neighbor and I did not know she worked here. I saw her passing in the distinct uniform of the immigration officers and I said “jambo.” She recognized me and after greeting me and asking why I was here, I told her I had been told to “wait”over the last one hour in the process of renewing my passport. She said she was headed out for lunch but would check on me on her way back in; she found me still waiting and told me to accompany her to a senior officer’s office who promptly called for my file. He perused it and called another officer to take the requisite digital photo as well as my biometrics. They took all the copies of the documents I had and gave me back my receipt, as well as a token as a sign of having finished with the requisite office.I promptly left after profusely thanking the officers.

In four months’ time I was alerted by use of a short messaging code (SMS) that my passport was ready for collection and I heartily took off to pick it after requesting for only two hours from work to fulfill the errand at Nyayo House. As a student of experience, I checked in by 8am again hoping that I will be ahead of the queue, the fact is that there were those whose tokens for picking the passports had been taken by 7.30am. The passport collection point was another tight holding pen full of humanity packed together like one big sandwich…or, for us in Africa, a bunch of bananas! With approximately over three hundred people present, the experience was terrible because we were meant to be sheltered under two modest tents which could only accommodate half the people present.

The inhumane treatment in waiting for the passport

As I joined this group, I was hit hard by the concoction of stench emanating from many armpits, not to mention the malodourous breath that reeked the air. To add to the misery, there were babies crying due to discomfort and probably hunger. Being in the tent was an ordeal by itself as there was no order at all save on occasion when two NYS officers would pop up and call for people to queue when names were read out from the immigration officers’ list. The whole crowd had their necks craning out just to catch a glimpse of where the immigration officer was and mercifully one or two would come with a megaphone so that we all heard. I heard other people’s names being called out because they had failed to get their passports for one reason or the other, and I prayed so hard that I would not be among them. It was tense, sweaty, and the perfect recipe for infection of airborne diseases like tuberculosis or meningitis.

Miscreants in the crowd causing more misery

A young man of Asian origin who had been in front of me had his two phones stolen as he jostled to the front to get his token and receipt back. He reported the incident and the NYS officers came half-heartedly to only say there were thieves among us before nonchalantly walking away. The man who was before me told me he was glad that he was there to pick his four children’s passports as him and his wife had theirs. He was hoping to relocate to Europe soon and, by the look of things, stay away for some time hoping the broken services would have been worked on. I muttered something of encouragement to him and we moved on.

I hang on in hope, as each group of fifteen was called in. Eventually, I was called out after over two hours and, given my newly stamped receipt, told to queue into another hall where I took another one and a half hours before my turn at the counter. Hurray!  I picked my passport and I pray not to go back near that place for at least the next ten years. As I got back to the office after almost half a day away, I was at a loss on how to reconcile my pending duties.

Getting a passport in Kenya is not for the faint hearted. It is akin to an extreme sport and a lesson in how not to offer services to citizens.