Martin, Judy and I went up to Nairobi by Modern Coast bus on Tuesday, 12th June. They bumped our 8:30 tickets to the 10:30 bus…which actually left at almost 11a.m., so we arrived in Nairobi at about 8p.m. Thanks to Martin roaming the streets and asking quite a number of people, while Judy and guarded the luggage, we finally found a reliable and reasonable taxi driver, Benson Mwangi who took us to the Flora Guest Hostel and charged us only 1000ksh. We paid full board for 2 nights at Flora; but what with arriving after 8pm and going to get in the Nyayo House queue before 7a.m…we missed almost all of the meals
On Wednesday, 13th June we arrived at Nyayo House just a few minutes after 7a.m. and there were already about 150 people in the queue and already being processed.
They have five white tents set (15ft x 15ft) side by side and long tables running along both sides of each tent with about 10-15 people at laptops. It ran very efficiently, like an assembly line, entering at one door, moving along the tables left to right—Work Permit original compared with Passport and both numbers entered into the computer, WP receipt checked for authentication and stamped, digital fingerprints taken, digital photo taken, printing of the information on an A4 page—photo, fingerprints, etc. They said the new digital WP cards will be ready for collection in 3-4 weeks.
They were controlling the flow of people, allowing only 10 at a time into the first tent. Glenn Davies had texted us the night before that people over 60 get priority but we stood in the queue for about 15 minutes before Martin went and asked about that and got us moved up to the front of the next group. It took us a little over an hour from start to finish—it took Martin and Judy longer because the official WP receipt was written “Heath x2”—but as they came out and we started for the gate I saw the person I had been behind initially just going in.
