Opinion and Analysis
The Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NATION
By CAROL MUSYOKA
In Summary
Patriotism is defined as the act of vigorously
supporting one’s country and being prepared to defend it against enemies
or detractors. Quite similarly, loyalty is defined as a strong feeling
of support or allegiance.
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The two actions evoke a lot of emotion and passion
particularly about the country, person, organisation or item that is the
subject matter.
Many years ago, while I was still a minion busting
the banking grind, we went to visit the executive team at Airtel’s
predecessor, Celtel who had indicated that they wanted to undertake an
enormous capex project that required millions of dollars. As we drove to
their offices, the key relationship manager asked us to show him our
business cards.
He took one look at the cards and muttered an
expletive under his breath with raised eyebrows. My senior asked him
what the problem was. “You can’t give your cards when we get to the
Celtel offices,” he answered.
“The Celtel executives are very sensitive about
working with people who use their services and all your cards show
Safaricom numbers.” With raised eyebrows, we swallowed the snide retorts
that were on the tip of our tongues and feigned having forgotten our
business cards in the office when the meeting introductions took place
at Celtel.
I have also been reliably informed that if you are
going to do business with the government of Rwanda, don’t try and rock
up on the first Kenya Airways morning flight, bright eyed and bushy
tailed, ready for business. They don’t appreciate that.
If you want to do business with them, then fly
RwandAir and pay the “loyalty tax” that is levied on suppliers by many
businesses worldwide. The evidence may be anecdotal, but is very true.
Business loyalty demands business loyalty.
I write this because I have a veritable bee in my
bonnet. Landing at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) at about
9:30 p.m. a few days ago, I found the usual, absolute total chaos at the
immigration hall after passing through a makeshift Ebola processing
barrier where a tiny plastic pen was appended to my forehead and I was
given a clean bill of health.
Now, frequent travellers will know that the worst
times to land at JKIA are between 5:30am and 7:30am and between 8pm and
10pm, this is when several Kenya Airways flights as well as other
international airlines land.
Our immigration department has attempted (please
note the deliberate use of the word attempted) to reward Kenyans with
their citizenship by creating about four dedicated counters for passport
processing.
East African Community and Comesa get about two
more counters and then the rest of the world get another four counters
or so. It is noteworthy that most of the rest-of-the-world citizens are
given visas at the counter and thus their processes can take at least 10
minutes.
I have travelled widely in the last 10 years and
nowhere am I made to feel more like a gnat in a bottle than in American
airports like Chicago, Miami, New York or Heathrow, Johannesburg and
Dubai. Why you ask?
Because you are NOT allowed to even THINK about
standing in the queue that says citizens only (which of course moves
faster than every other queue) and you will stand in a snake of a line
that would make Moses and his Red Sea crossing look like a kindergarten
game.
Typical wait times on these airport immigration
queues are anything from one and a half to two hours. You cannot and
will not be invited to join the citizens-only queue until ALL the
citizens have been served. How do they do this? They employ floorwalkers
whose job it is to monitor the counters and ensure that all immigration
counters are being utilised effectively, with priority to citizens.
So you can imagine my anger when I landed a few
days ago and found at least 30 Americans standing on the “Kenyans Only”
queue. The Americans needed visas and therefore tied up the entire queue
of Kenyans waiting behind them as they were being served
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