club kenya

i had to help a senior friend of the family with something i never knew was a thing until the other day…

…an application to get into kenya.

a scan of the passport. a selfie. several pages of questions. a listing of every place you plan to stay while in country (which had to run the full span of dates you’d put in several pages back with all your flight info).

and through the entire process you kept getting the same warning – just because you fill all this out, and give us the fee (more on that later) doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to get in. you had to acknowledge, often, that you were aware of this. just paying the cover charge and letting them see your passport doesn’t necessarily part the velvet rope that apparently encircles this african nation.

so we soldiered on, filling out page after page, with medical and personal answers. then came the end. the fee. even on the “dark continent” you can’t escape processing fees, which they list as a separate charge compared to kenya’s thirty dollar cover charge (which ain’t bad as long as there’s a drink voucher?) but i paused for a second, right before i typed the last of her info, to remind her of what we were doing…

now, you realize, you, a senior aged white woman, are about to voluntarily give your credit card info to an african nation. this scenario will play out hundreds of times today, but without the word ‘voluntarily’. you sure you wanna proceed?

she said yes, we went with it. hope she gets into vip for some bottle service!