Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Passa-Porta

Today we had to go to El Doret to get our passports renewed. It’s not as easy in the U.S. where you can just go to your local post office and fill out a form.
El Doret is an hour and a half to two hours east of here, and about 3 times the size of Kitale. It felt like such a huge city compared to where we live, like a mini Nairobi. They had street lights and tall buildings, and the streets were so crowded.

Our friend Stonic who works for a travel company and drives us everywhere when he’s in town had come up from Nairobi for work and offered to stay and take us.
It was good to see Stonic and we felt really safe traveling with him. We got there about lunchtime and had to get passport photos taken to give to the Immigration office.

Stonic...In my glasses...He swears he's a Masai warrior


I wish I had a scanner because these are some really sweet pics…The photographer must tell everyone to look stern because in all the Kenyan passport pictures we’ve seen, hardly anyone smiles…So in keeping with tradition we decided not to smile.

Another tradition we’ve noticed seems to be enlarging the passport photo, framing it, and putting it up in your house…This will shortly be in the works.
After the photos were taken we had to wait for them to be processed, so we went to The Eldo (short for El Doret) Grille for lunch. A friend of ours here in Kitale had told us they have great pizza so of coarse we had to find out. There’s really no restaurant for pizza here so if we want it we have to make it ourselves and the outcome might not always be good…

After lunch we went to the Immigration Dept. and applied for an extension to our visas. While we waited they asked each of us what our profession was…Its always a bit tricky explaining what I do for World Vision so I just said I was a DJ…The immigration people thought this was awesome and asked at which dance club…
Sadly, I had to correct them and tell them that it wasn’t a club but a radio station.

They seemed to be equally as excited about it and asked what kind of music I played and how they could find it…So I gave them the link to find it online and told them we played rock music. They got confused and thought I said rap music. It would be interesting to hear their impressions if they actually look up the link, but I highly doubt it’s music they will enjoy.
The trip was successful and our visas were renewed. Mine actually expires the day Im supposed to leave Feb. 20, 2009

2 comments:

Mama Oasis said...

Hey was that photo of Stonic taken in the parking lot at the immigration office? Cuz....I think I recognize the area from the day I sat in Dan's taxi for about an hour waiting for Geoffrey to do some business there.

Dumb question....
but it's better than asking about Jonah.

Elizabeth Ford said...

The passpoort picture on the wall sounds like nothing but a good idea! ;)