Nairobi has very modern Government skyscrapers with very tight security to protect its public servants from its citizens – and from Al Qaida gentlemen.
The Kenya Revenue Authority, authorised to stamp out the Carnet de Passage for our car was in one of those buildings. Meaning: standing in a very long queue of people wanting to enter the building and waiting to be checked by security guys, standing in another similar long queue and being registered of having entered the building and being issued with a pass only valid for the office you wanted to go. Unfortunately, nobody knew which office may stamp our carnet. We discovered that the office that was maybe supposed to stamp out the carnet has moved. It took us approximately another hour to find the correct office; we could cheat the security guys to access it without changing the entrance permit – but unfortunately everybody important here was in an even more important meeting. We explored the other floors and the outside of the building and learned after another hour that the carnet only will be stamped after having inspected the car. Well, the car was at the hostel; due to the congested Nairobi traffic we came with a taxi.
Anyway, we got our stamp, but it took some time. After this happy event we were fully aware of being illegally in Kenya and by now we also had exported our car out of the country – that all in the CBD of Nairobi. Fortunately these issues are called administration only, so they had no link to any reality and therefore there was no visible advantage or disadvantage to our status or the one of our car.
