Not Quite Legitimate

Many Kenyan government or public facilities have signs announcing that they are “Corruption-Free Zones.” I love those signs. Once I walked past such anti-corruption signage only to end up paying a 2,000 bribe to extend my visa. I went to the building in Mombasa that I thought was the immigration/visa extension office, but was kind of given the run-around when the gate security guard told me to go the 3^rd door on the left, then the teller at the 3^rd door on the left told me to go to a different building down the street, then a different security guard told me to go upstairs to the 6^th floor. I asked her if she was sure, and told her I didn’t want to be rude, but that I’d been told several different locations so far. So she made a phone call and brought me to meet some dude, who then escorted me up to the 6^th floor. We walked through a barely-occupied hallway and used a key to get into an empty office – the office where they used to process visa extensions. He rummaged around in a desk, and now that I look back on it, I realize he obviously wasn’t familiar with the contents. This was not his office. He asked how long I wanted to stay in the country, I said just until Aug 22^nd. So he stamped me in until sometime in October and handed back my passport. I was pretty surprised at how “easy” this was and said, “Ok, so that’s it?” And he said yes, that was all. And that’ll just be 2,000 shillings. I figured that was cheap and handed over the money, without thinking too much about it. Only as I stood up did I realize the suddenly apparent fact that this man entered someone else’s office to get their stamp and pocket 2k. There was no mention of a receipt, no book, no signature, no form to fill out. Only a corrupt employee willing to extend my visa without sending me down the street to the new location of the immigration office.

So how did I feel after this, my first time officially participating in such explicit corruption? Well… I felt a little dumb for taking so long to realize the obviousness of the illegitimacy of the interaction. I’d been naïve, so I was a disappointed that I hadn’t been more keenly aware and critical of the situation. But in truth, I mostly felt grateful that my morning trip to immigration was easier and less time-consuming than expected. It was a huge relief and quite satisfying to feel like I had my whole day back to wander around Mombasa.

Much more obvious is the bribery that occurs at police checkpoints ostensibly designed to make sure that matatus aren’t carrying more than 14 passengers. The game they play goes like this: Nearly every matatu is sent to the side of the road for having excess passengers. The police officer ambles around the vehicle while the tout conspicuously holds 100 shillings out the window, and the officer simply pockets the pesa on the way around. Then the driver pulls away and continues his maniacal driving.

Even funnier is when the matatu driver and tout receive word that the police aren’t accepting bribes (this happened 2 of about 100 times I passed a checkpoint). On those days, we simply pull over 100 meters or so before the checkpoint to unload several male passengers. They then walk to the other side of the police blockade while the matatu drives through. Then 10 or 20 meters ahead, in plain sight of the police, the passengers get back in the vehicle. No one even pretends to hide what’s going on. Totally useless.

We also paid a bribe to cross into the Mara Triangle, and I’m sure we gave numerous other little “gifts” in an imperfect attempt to smooth our entry into various parks and who knows where else. And the thing with getting pulled over for supposedly speeding as Andrew drove from Kerio Valley to Nairobi – I don’t know if that was corruption or an attempt to get a bribe, but I do know that it was ridiculous. As we waited at the police station, I started chatting with a Kenyan diplomatic officer who was visiting that town on business. He confirmed that they don’t have radar guns or any real way to measure vehicle speed, so he said they just pull people over that they think may be speeding. I wanted to know how they prove that someone was speeding (but is asking for “proof” a Western thing?? Is that an irrelevant notion in Kenya?), and he said they just check to see if the mandated speed governor has been dismantled. To me though, that doesn’t even answer the question. Then the charge would be that the driver or vehicle owner doesn’t have an appropriately equipped vehicle, not that they were actually speeding. So this doesn’t make much sense to me.