My Kenyan friend shakes his head when I tell him about my “special treatment” during the visa application process at the Nairobi airport. For the past several minutes he’s been ticking-off all the ways Kenyan government officials extort bribes from the citizenry. Some of the complicated schemes he’s describing have made me suspicious about my own odd treatment at the Nairobi airport, where my wife and I were whisked through immigration without filling out the required paperwork (see my previous post titled Profiled).
My friend narrows his eyes and thinks for a moment. “They asked you for the correct fee, yes? Fifty dollars apiece?”
I nod, but I don’t see where he is going. Fifty dollars is the correct price for a Kenyan visa. We were not extorted in any way. In fact, despite our special treatment being embarrassing, it had allowed us to avoid the long lines of people applying for visas. Our speedy processing had resulted in our passports being stamped and us out the door in less than five minutes, instead of the hour or more it would have normally taken.
My friend chuckles and merrily rubs his chin, as if astounded at my naivete. He leans toward me and lowers his voice. “Tell me this: did they give you a receipt for the one-hundred dollars you paid for the visas?”
I think back to our time at the airport. The immigration official had plucked us out of the line, taken us to the head of the queue, handed our passports to the officer at the visa kiosk. He’d whispered something in her ear. She’d nodded, taken our $100 bill, stamped our passports, and waved us through. No paperwork at all.
Which, of course, meant that there had been no record of the transaction. It suddenly dawns on me. “They pocketed the cash, didn’t they?”
His smile widens. “Now you are thinking like a Kenyan, my friend. Of course they kept your cash. They saw two white foreigners with American passports who looked lost, and figured you wouldn’t know the correct process for the purchase of a visa. I’ll bet they asked you if you’d ever visited Kenya before, didn’t they?”
I think about it and nod. “Yes, it was the first question the man asked before he pulled us out of line.”
My friend laughs out loud. “Most of the people in the line probably understood what was happening, especially if they’ve been here before. Nobody could protest though, because if they did, when it came their time with the visa officer, they would be denied a visa.” He sighs. “You see how it works? Nobody can turn in the corrupt officials because the people you turn them in to are also corrupt. You only make trouble for yourself if you try.”
“This is common in Kenya?” I ask.
“It’s not just common. It’s always. They are all corrupt. From the traffic police all the way to the MPs of parliament. The problem is that the system is built on corruption. Corruption is the foundation of our government. Without it, our government would collapse. Did you know that Kenya pays its members of parliament more than any other country in the entire world? They make something like 800,000 schillings a month, when the average Kenyan makes only 3,000.”
I think back to our airport Uber driver, who was shaken-down by the airport cops. They had demanded a 2,000 schilling bribe. I also remember our safari driver, who loved Kenya dearly, but who had cursed the endemic corruption. “You have no choice but to pay into the system,” my friend continues. “Without payoffs, they will bury you in bureaucracy. Except for the traffic police, who are very direct, no government official will ever ask directly for a bribe. They will just find a way to make you wait. Nothing will happen. As soon as you offer money, though, they begin a negotiation process. They will tell you that the money doesn’t just go to them, it also goes to their boss and their boss’s boss. They don’t care in the least what is right or what is wrong. They know they will get in trouble with their boss and could lose their job if they don’t extort money from their client. It is a chain that goes all the way to the top of the government.”
I wonder briefly how the $100 I paid for my visa was split up among the conspirators of the scam. Obviously the man who pulled us out of the application queue was in on it, as was the immigration officer. Probably her boss got a cut, too. I remember how she’d shown the $100 to the other officer in her booth, and how they’d whispered something to each other. That person had probably gotten a cut, too.
I ask, “What percent of my $100 bill made it all the way up the chain to the Minister of Immigration?”
My friend shrugs. “I don’t know, but you can be certain that some of it did. There are strict unwritten rules that govern the system of corruption. If you think about it, the people in the government aren’t bad people. They have no choice but to participate in the system if they want to keep their jobs. And good jobs in Kenya are hard to come by.” He gives a gentle, self-deprecating scoff. “If somebody offered me a government job, I would surely accept the offer.”
I think back to the difficulty I had applying for a Kenyan electronic visa on their official web site. How my credit card payment had continuously failed, forcing me to try several different cards. Could the malfunction have intentional, a scam to steal my credit card numbers? I realize with a sinking feeling that it may have been. I make a mental note to carefully monitor my credit card accounts over the next few months for any signs of fraudulent activity. I make a second mental note to not be so gullible in the future, especially considering the number of developing countries we will be travelling to, countries that, like Kenya, may have endemic corruption in the official ranks of government.
“How do you deal with it?” I ask my friend. “It must be incredibly frustrating.”
“You pay,” he says. “That is all there is to it. You must accept it as reality, and simply pay.”
Be First to Comment