Uganda: When Kenyan Immigration Officials Almost Deported Me

It was not my mistake yet officials of Kenya’s Directorate of Immigration and Registration of Persons almost deported me to “teach me a lesson”.

It was mid-morning early this month when I arrived at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport on a domestic flight.

Passenger baggage was scanned and we showed our IDs to an immigration official, who appeared to be past middle age. She flipped the pages of my passport. She flipped some more. She looked at me. Then flipped again. I was beginning to hold up the queue.

The official asked why my passport did not have an entry visa stamp. I said I had no idea whether it had or not. When I flew into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) days earlier, I had presented my passport to a man at the immigration desk handling East Africans. I had seen him stamp it before handing it back to me.