Bureaucracy 101

The first hurdle in Nairobi turned out to be our residency permit - the permit you have when you want something more useful than a 90 day visa. This, by the way, is a complex process. As well as a three-page form we needed evidence of academic qualifications, copies of our passport and passport photos, a letter of recommendation from a sponsoring recognised charity or church, evidence of school registration and a 1000 shilling processing fee.
It's easy to be quietly confident with form generation when you are preparing documents in the comfort of your own home. However, when staring through a grille at a government officer who speaks quietly and quickly, everything changes.
The experience started well. We only took ten minutes to find the right office, and it was ground floor as well, only two people in the appropriate queue - things were looking good. That's when we first met our officious but well-meaning public servant (WMPS). We had the right window, but he didn't like the look of our forms - too many blank spaces, even though the questions did not apply to our permit category. "Go away and write something in those spaces" he said. So we did, wrote something semi-relevant in some places, and "N/A" in others.
Back to our WMPS. "No, no, no this still isn't right, you must fill-out all answers properly". "But sir"  I intoned with a false sense of knowledge, " those question only apply to categories A to E, and we need a category I". Admittedly, he must have been getting quite frustrated with these ignorant aliens (that was the word used on the sign!), but he kept his composure. Then came the clincher; "you must fill out that section because the category names have changed and your voluntary category is now E". Well blow me down ... Why didn't I know that. Strangely above my head there was a LCD display describing each category's requirements, and the technology department was obviously not aware of the change either. That made me feel somewhat better - no it didn't, I'm telling fibs.
"Fix that up and see me before you pay the cashier, I'm sure your (heavily scribbled on and somewhat untidy form ... Oh yes, our pens leaked from the plane trip too) will be satisfactory".
During our third edit the entire office closed for lunch. Nobody was let in but we were allowed to stay inside and wait for the grand re-opening. By the way, lunch goes for one hour in Nairobi departmental offices.
On the stroke of two, Des is back at the counter. The WMPS is now happy with our applications, but doubts whether our photocopies will be be good enough (he expected the originals). I lectured him about the tyranny of distance, but to no avail. Help affixing our passport-sized photos and we were sent to the cashier.
You would think that a cashier would just take money and issue a receipt, wouldn't you? so the eight people in front of us didn't seem to represent a major obstacle. Amazingly, after about three minutes with each customer, they hung around waiting for paperwork to be eventually shoved under the metal grate. While one was being spoken to, he seemed to be finishing off the paper work for the previous customer.
Finally, job done ... But Des just had to ask didn't she? "What do we do next" she asked hopefully.
Come back to this office in two months time.