Entschuldige mich! Das ist lächerlich! I'm just saying...

I should have known. Governments! Why do we have them? I guess you could ask the same of Teachers' Associations and Churches, heck, even parents themselves. All authority!

Okay, I know I was born waaaaay back in '85 or whatever but seriously, my records are not that dusty. Or are they? My Birth Certificate has been lost at least twice - as far as I know. This would be the second time it is being replaced; first time by moi.

I know about misjudging, I've done it a lot, probably still doing it right now. But on Monday, the Birth Certificate people told me to come to-day, to pay for it. In typical government fashion, the guy who was checking to see if it had been dug out of purgatory, said:

"Not yet." 

At least he smiled. Shook his head too. And looked directly at me.

"So when do I come for it?"

"Wednesday."

I wince and frown. I know this because he winces and frowns with me... sympathy, I think. Will Wednesday turn into 2pm today if I slide a 'Nyato' under a white sheet of paper? Nah! He looks genuinely sad for me. Wishes things worked better. I have to be somewhere else on Wednesday so I ask:

"Can I come on Thursday?"

"Yes." He even smiles, again! His white teeth tell me one thing, and one thing only: it's going to be a long wait for you Njeri. A looooooooooong wait.

At this rate, I'll be getting my Passport in May! Next year! God forbid.

It's not even a problem though, The last time I got anything on time from the government was when I lost my ID; flushed it down the toilet as I hurried to return to my desk and chat with @Bigboss from Australia. He was probably Indian, but that did not make him (could've been her) any less interesting to converse with. He broke English like it was the law and even had the nerve to tell me that my English was poor.

So engaging was he that it took me a week to figure out what had happened to my ID. When that finally sunk in, I went about getting an Abstract (Affidavit?) from the police and headed back to the Westlands Police Station where I'd applied for my ID the first successful time. This time, I waited in line for 3 minutes, took 10 minutes to fill a form, feigned a smile for a few seconds at a disinterested clerk and was instructed to:

"Come back in two weeks!"

Two weeks later, I returned and lo and behold! my old mug shone under a new laminate! I could, once again by identified using an image printed on paper, encased in plastic. I have never again had the fortune of being respected in that way by any arm of government (this might not be the right way to say this but, hey! Kenyans are champions when it comes to using words and phrases inappropriately so I will be understood).

I guess it's true what I said yesterday then, that no one is that lucky twice. So I will not return on Thursday of next week to see if they've found proof of my birth. As if my being alive isn't proof enough. I'll give them an extra week to search for the damn records, seeing as I was born last century and all. Might as well be Dracula - or Abraham...

So you see, in my deliberate endeavour to find something good about The System, I have once again been shoved into a dungeon of doubt, inefficiency and wasted time. 


Who can survive it?

ecitizen does not exist

http://www.immigration.go.ke/

If you click on the link above, you'll notice, on the right hand side, an announcement that says:

        This is to inform the general public that as from 15 April 2015, all passport application will be made via www.ecitizen.go.ke. 

Manual application will not be accepted

Which is perfect for the lazy, like myself, if only it worked. This reminds me of that time when Government digitized PIN registration. I must've tried to get registered for 3 weeks before I'd had enough and walked to Times Tower, made a lot of noise, demanded to see the Supervisor and then got registered as I stood there. It took all of 15 minutes. I was 22 at the time.

Now, no one is that lucky twice. Usually by the second time of getting something done that others have to wait weeks or months to get done, one has usually compromised their morals, bribed a few times, called in a few favours and likely put themselves in that tight spot between the door and wall.

So no, I'm not planning on going to wherever passports are applied for, claim in a loud voice that their website is "a sham!" and expect to walk out of there with 'my balls' unsqueezed. I've heard enough to not want to learn from my own mistakes, if you catch my drift.

Even then, I've got to say that it's a welcome relief. Turns out I'll finally get another 'original' copy of my birth certificate - it will only have taken 5 - days, if I do get it when they said I would get it.

And since I'm not in that much of a hurry, I can actually just wait for April 15 and apply for my passport online. Again, I'm a late bloomer  where travel outside of the country is concerned but it seems like I'm going to get to do a lot of things in my old age than I ever did when I was younger. 

Maybe I'm just one of those people who come into their own when everyone else has written them off, but boy! Am I glad I'm not going to have to stand in line and get stared down or undressed (with the eyes) by a gun-toting AP or whatever... those guys (I really want to call them goons but...) call themselves.

But if you are a criminal who does not intend to be flagged every time you travel, perhaps the digital age is something you wish did not exist. Tough!

Loosed latches

Writers! Rowdy bastards! But not always… My kind of writer is a quiet one; at least until they have something worth reading – by me. No one else matters you see. 

It’s a funny thing, I used to be a writer. Still am maybe, but, just because I can slay a man in his sleep, doesn’t mean I should, see?

Just because you can write, doesn’t mean that you write well, or that you should share your writings with anyone. I don’t know, maybe it’s an excuse. Before I turned 11, I never wrote a damn thing, except my homework, and sometimes, not even that.

Then I turned 11, and whoa! Poetry, essays, songs... they all came pouring out. Ten years, multiple essays, songs and two hand-written novels later, I got a job as a writer. It killed my talent. Killed? No. Put it in a deep coma. Haven’t written anything worth reading in almost 10 years, until now. It’s a monster seeking to devour the planet, and I just loosed the latch.

It's pretty much a miracle

What is? Everything.

It looks like... the world IS my dance floor.