Kenyans in Italy, UK and US share experience during lockdown Lameck dunde who has been living in italy for the past four years playing professionally and studying has left his house only 3 times in the past month.this is after a countrywide lockdown imposed by the italian government following the coronavirus outbreak. Dunde lives in cassina de peki, 15km north east of milan one of the hardest hit cities in europe’s fourth biggest economy. Bernard ndong with his exclusive story on life under a countrywide shutdown
Irate Letter to the German Embassy in Kenya from an Infuriated Kenyan
Open Letter to the, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany-Nairobi
Dear Mr Ambassador and employees of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Nairobi-Kenya.
My sister Ms Silvia Kagendo Njeru born on 20.12.1963 has been to your Embassy several times in an attempt to apply for a Visa to visit Germany. She started the process in December 2013. Here is her background story.
Silvia is a trained Kindergarten/pre-primary school teacher in Kenya and has worked for many years until she fell ill. She is a single mother of four children and after her illness, she moved back to the village where she has continued to cater for her children and take care of our aging father.
Kindly note the following;
1. All the visa applications requirements were at hand and that is why the Embassy accepted her application forms along with the application fee of 60 Euro which paid in kshs comes to 7,000.00, that was on the 10.12.2013
2. You issued her a rejection of the visa on the grounds she has no strong family ties to return back home and no steady income. My question on this is… do you mean to say that single parents have no right to visit Germany? Do you mean to say that if a person has no mainstream work, they are not legible to visit Germany?
3. Her first born Son lives in Germany since 2007, he is an Engineer student. As a student he has limited hours of work and what he earns is enough to see him through his daily needs, that means he cannot afford to go home to Kenya to visit his mother. Do you mean to say that you have the right, legal or not to deny a mother to see her son or a son to see his mother?
4. She has school going children in Kenya, isn’t that reason enough to return back home?
5. She made another application on the 09.01.2014 and again you cashed in kshs 7,000.00 for processing fee and yet again you denied her a visa on the same grounds-She has no evidence she will return
6. Now the critical part comes in; at this rate of denial she made an affidavit with a practising lawyer ; that is meant to act as proof that she would return, and of course she attached a lot of other documents, she delivered it on the 08.02.2014. The tricky part is that she was allowed to hand in her documents without an official appointment since it was an appeal . Five weeks passed and there was no communication from your side, when she followed up she was informed that she had not signed some section, she faithfully came by on the 17.03.2014 and she was told to write a supporting letter of appeal which she did. On the 09.04.2014 she followed up yet again only to be told that she had post she should check in the post office. Yes, post was waiting for her but it is written partly in English and the rest in German, with the statement
“According to the applicable German rules of procedure, this decision is rendered in German only. Unfortunately, the Embassy is not in a position to provide you with an English translation”…
The German version of reply states that they received her appeal on the 17.03.2014 ( the day she was tricked into writing a supporting letter for the documents that were lying in the Embassy since 08.02.2014). In whose hands were those documents for nearly six weeks? If your reply is a standard letter, why wouldn’t you translate it for a Kenyan into a language she can understand? If you are operating in a country, you should master the official languages there..
7. Mr Ambassador, the only option Silvia has is to make a fresh application for her visa, that will cost her another kshs 7,000.00 is this the catch?
- You take in about 30-50 applications per day, for five days a week, right? YOU ARE MILKING KENYANS.
- Why have you turned to such barbaric ways of dealing with Kenyans?
- What happened to diplomacy?
- Why do you accept visa application if the forms are incomplete, are your employees not efficient enough to check through documents?
- How can you give replies in a foreign language to a common Kenyan citizen?
- Would you accept an appeal in Kiswahili language which happens to be an official language in Kenya?
- Tell me what it would feel like if someone had the power to deny you the right to see/visit your family; a son, a daughter, a mother, a father?
- Silvia has a right to visit her son, she is the only parent that boy has!!
8. It is time to dialogue, it is time to state clearly your services to the Kenyan citizens!!!
Kawira
