Right, so, I took a trip to Kenya this year (twice). Though the
first time was in February, I felt it wise to write about it,
because, hey, why not? I get to rant and my readers (if there are any
of them) might find enjoyment in it.
So, cause my parent's so awesome and so am I, I get these so called free trips to Kenya twice a year, courtesy of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research and the Archimedes Foundation through their Compatriots Programme (Yes, I know... Enough with the links). Cool, right? Weeelll.... Not quite. Let's not forget that dealing with government agencies tends to have a LOT of a little special something. I think it's called PAPERWORK!
In the agreement it states that I must prove that I travel to Kenya when I say I do. And I think, "Well, hey! The easiest way to prove my presence is to get an ugly Kenya Passport Control stamp on my shiny new EU passport and show the Archimedes bastar.. Ahem... PEOPLE (I meant to say people) the desecrated passport." Simple! Guess Again! The annoying bastar... err... PEOPLE... choose to have the most annoying policy I've ever seen: "We DO NOT accept Passport Stamps as proof of visit." Yes, you read right. The passport stamp, whose sole purpose is to record that the person, onto whose passport the stamp had the honor of being placed on, was indeed at a particular place at a particular time, is NOT accepted as a valid verification of travel. Instead, they expected me to collect all my boarding passes and/or tickets from the travel, put them in an envelope and send them to the foundation. It's a little hard to do so, when half the boarding passes got left in Kenya (and thrown away in Kenya two days after my departure) and the others got lost and misplaced on the way back. Neat! So, what must I do if I can't give them boarding passes? I must go to ALL the travel companies I traveled with and ask them to write a letter, or produce itinerary proving my presence on their vessels. It's clear now that instead of wanting me to prove that I went to Kenya, they want me to detail my route and in that way show that I went there, which, to me, doesn't make much sense, given our agreement. I should make a point of reading through it again to make sure I didn't misunderstand... Next thing I know, I'm not allowed to complain about them :P
Right, so I had a messed up amount of paperwork to deal with on my return. But that's not all. The route to Kenya was mostly uneventful. I flew with the Estonian national carrier, Estonian Air to Stockholm and then took Turkish Airlines to Nairobi, with one stopover in Istanbul. I got to Nairobi in the early morning, when my parent is probably the least productive. Which was annoying given that that was the time I really needed her to be alert (not that she can't get up fast or anything...) I passed through passport control without problems (though with 40 EUR less in my pocket... Tourist visas leave quite a mark!) but get caught up in Customs. Kenya has some really weird customs! I mean, we have Masais, who kill lions to prove their manliness, Kikuyus, who LOVE their money and Luos who love their fiss (fish, for the ignorant readers), to name a few. We also seem to have airport officials who feel that everyone who comes in has something to declare. There is NO "Nothing to Declare" section. Everyone must (apparently) pay a little something to the dear customs people. It was very annoying having to open my boxes (boxes because you can shove lotsa stuff in them and they don't weigh much in themselves and open, because the Kenyan government seems to have missed the memo saying, "Customs works better with X-Ray machines!") It was also just as annoying to have a stranger lean over and look at the contents of my box and then ask, "So, how much is all this worth?" Excuse me? how much is it worth? Interested in selling it are we? Seeing that there was no other way to get past these annoying customs, crowding round my box like vultures, I called the Estonian Consul (the sleepy parent). The Consul went on to diplomatically make things clear to the disappointed Customs official: The contents of the box are property of the Estonian Consul (who, as a diplomat, is exempted from paying taxes or any other excuse the officials can use to try and get money out of me) and the bearer of the box is the son of said Consul (meaning he is, similarly exempt from taxes). And should the official not believe what is being said to him, he is permitted to take the boxes into custody and once the workday begins, someone from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would show up and make things clear. I got through customs pretty fast after that call... WITH my boxes :D
The part of the trip where I was actually in Kenya was pretty good. There was a small matter with the heat, that I got used to very soon, and my travel partner from Estonia had a pretty good time at the coast and Masai Mara. We even went to Bungoma and had fun there!
The route back was the most er... INTERESTING. All's well that ends well, right? Well, this DIDN'T end well at all in my books. So, we had a flight in the early morning and we got to the airport on time for that (somewhere near midnight). I start to look for the Check-In desk, that should be up. Noticing its absence, I ask an airport official where to find it. He points in some vague direction saying, "It's normally over here, but look!" he points at the departures list/screen, "The flight is cancelled!" And there I stand looking like an idiot feeling very sure that only seconds before that same screen showed that Check-In was underway. One hour or so later, an angry mob is waiting outside the Turkish Airlines cubicle and the idiot in there didn't look like he gave much of a damn. Half an hour or so later, a woman and another man (the man seems Turkish) show up and say that they'll deal with us soon. They say that the flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Istanbul (Let's not forget that the northern hemisphere was under the impression that they had what they call Winter). I'll skip through the part where I thought that to be a load of hogwash and the wait as well. I shall, however say that we got a flight to Helsinki via Amsterdam, because they simply couldn't find a way to get us to Stockholm. Once in Amsterdam, I got the very bright idea that I should find the Turkish Airlines box and tell them that they should, instead, take me to Tallinn (I mean, why not?). The guy behind the desk looked at his computer and says, "We can't take you to Tallinn, but I see here that your original flight took you to Stockholm. I'm sure we can get you there at around the same time the other flight would have gotten there!". Anyone smell something fishy here? But since my luggage was already on its way to Helsinki, I chose to go with them there (what I'd give to have The Luggage from Pratchet's Diskworld...). And to finish off my journey by air, the plane arrived in Helsinki 15 minutes too late for me to get on a ferry to Tallinn.
Murphey's Law isn't it?
So, cause my parent's so awesome and so am I, I get these so called free trips to Kenya twice a year, courtesy of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research and the Archimedes Foundation through their Compatriots Programme (Yes, I know... Enough with the links). Cool, right? Weeelll.... Not quite. Let's not forget that dealing with government agencies tends to have a LOT of a little special something. I think it's called PAPERWORK!
In the agreement it states that I must prove that I travel to Kenya when I say I do. And I think, "Well, hey! The easiest way to prove my presence is to get an ugly Kenya Passport Control stamp on my shiny new EU passport and show the Archimedes bastar.. Ahem... PEOPLE (I meant to say people) the desecrated passport." Simple! Guess Again! The annoying bastar... err... PEOPLE... choose to have the most annoying policy I've ever seen: "We DO NOT accept Passport Stamps as proof of visit." Yes, you read right. The passport stamp, whose sole purpose is to record that the person, onto whose passport the stamp had the honor of being placed on, was indeed at a particular place at a particular time, is NOT accepted as a valid verification of travel. Instead, they expected me to collect all my boarding passes and/or tickets from the travel, put them in an envelope and send them to the foundation. It's a little hard to do so, when half the boarding passes got left in Kenya (and thrown away in Kenya two days after my departure) and the others got lost and misplaced on the way back. Neat! So, what must I do if I can't give them boarding passes? I must go to ALL the travel companies I traveled with and ask them to write a letter, or produce itinerary proving my presence on their vessels. It's clear now that instead of wanting me to prove that I went to Kenya, they want me to detail my route and in that way show that I went there, which, to me, doesn't make much sense, given our agreement. I should make a point of reading through it again to make sure I didn't misunderstand... Next thing I know, I'm not allowed to complain about them :P
Right, so I had a messed up amount of paperwork to deal with on my return. But that's not all. The route to Kenya was mostly uneventful. I flew with the Estonian national carrier, Estonian Air to Stockholm and then took Turkish Airlines to Nairobi, with one stopover in Istanbul. I got to Nairobi in the early morning, when my parent is probably the least productive. Which was annoying given that that was the time I really needed her to be alert (not that she can't get up fast or anything...) I passed through passport control without problems (though with 40 EUR less in my pocket... Tourist visas leave quite a mark!) but get caught up in Customs. Kenya has some really weird customs! I mean, we have Masais, who kill lions to prove their manliness, Kikuyus, who LOVE their money and Luos who love their fiss (fish, for the ignorant readers), to name a few. We also seem to have airport officials who feel that everyone who comes in has something to declare. There is NO "Nothing to Declare" section. Everyone must (apparently) pay a little something to the dear customs people. It was very annoying having to open my boxes (boxes because you can shove lotsa stuff in them and they don't weigh much in themselves and open, because the Kenyan government seems to have missed the memo saying, "Customs works better with X-Ray machines!") It was also just as annoying to have a stranger lean over and look at the contents of my box and then ask, "So, how much is all this worth?" Excuse me? how much is it worth? Interested in selling it are we? Seeing that there was no other way to get past these annoying customs, crowding round my box like vultures, I called the Estonian Consul (the sleepy parent). The Consul went on to diplomatically make things clear to the disappointed Customs official: The contents of the box are property of the Estonian Consul (who, as a diplomat, is exempted from paying taxes or any other excuse the officials can use to try and get money out of me) and the bearer of the box is the son of said Consul (meaning he is, similarly exempt from taxes). And should the official not believe what is being said to him, he is permitted to take the boxes into custody and once the workday begins, someone from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would show up and make things clear. I got through customs pretty fast after that call... WITH my boxes :D
The part of the trip where I was actually in Kenya was pretty good. There was a small matter with the heat, that I got used to very soon, and my travel partner from Estonia had a pretty good time at the coast and Masai Mara. We even went to Bungoma and had fun there!
The route back was the most er... INTERESTING. All's well that ends well, right? Well, this DIDN'T end well at all in my books. So, we had a flight in the early morning and we got to the airport on time for that (somewhere near midnight). I start to look for the Check-In desk, that should be up. Noticing its absence, I ask an airport official where to find it. He points in some vague direction saying, "It's normally over here, but look!" he points at the departures list/screen, "The flight is cancelled!" And there I stand looking like an idiot feeling very sure that only seconds before that same screen showed that Check-In was underway. One hour or so later, an angry mob is waiting outside the Turkish Airlines cubicle and the idiot in there didn't look like he gave much of a damn. Half an hour or so later, a woman and another man (the man seems Turkish) show up and say that they'll deal with us soon. They say that the flight was cancelled due to bad weather in Istanbul (Let's not forget that the northern hemisphere was under the impression that they had what they call Winter). I'll skip through the part where I thought that to be a load of hogwash and the wait as well. I shall, however say that we got a flight to Helsinki via Amsterdam, because they simply couldn't find a way to get us to Stockholm. Once in Amsterdam, I got the very bright idea that I should find the Turkish Airlines box and tell them that they should, instead, take me to Tallinn (I mean, why not?). The guy behind the desk looked at his computer and says, "We can't take you to Tallinn, but I see here that your original flight took you to Stockholm. I'm sure we can get you there at around the same time the other flight would have gotten there!". Anyone smell something fishy here? But since my luggage was already on its way to Helsinki, I chose to go with them there (what I'd give to have The Luggage from Pratchet's Diskworld...). And to finish off my journey by air, the plane arrived in Helsinki 15 minutes too late for me to get on a ferry to Tallinn.
Murphey's Law isn't it?
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