Drama over a driver's license

Driver's licenses only for (well-behaved) white people.

Drama over a Kenyan driver's license

Is a Kenyan driver's license valid in Germany? Yes and no. You can use it for 3 months – apparently, all people drive well enough for that. But after 3 months, nothing works anymore. Now, there are some countries that mutually recognize driver's licenses; in that case, a trip to the authorities is enough and you are done. Other countries have it harder. For Kenya, you can have the driver's license converted if you take the practical test again. Okay. That shouldn't be too hard.

Of course, you also need the usual things, such as an eye test and proof of first aid training. And this is where it starts. Apart from Corona issues, it is strange that this course has to be taken in English, which means extra driving and costs. But we managed that. The eye test was also no problem. So, off to the driver's license office, name the driving school, and let's go. Of course not!

"This driver's license is invalid, it expired in 2018" was the first thing we heard. It was not easy to make the analog civil servant understand that in Kenya, driver's licenses are retrievable digitally and some people simply kept their old documents, but these remain valid. He searched and searched and reached no conclusion. Not even when we showed him the access to the driver's license (government portal) and presented the declaration of validity. "Expired is expired." What is written on paper is the truth, and the internet always lies anyway.

Luckily, we moved to the countryside that month. So I was able to go to the nearest driver's license office and – how could it be otherwise – no problem with the date. This was proof of a skill, and that cannot expire. We were very happy. Too early.

"Which vehicle with 500 pounds do you want to drive? And what are pounds actually?" The nice official read from the official translation an authorization for vehicles up to 500 lbs. The cause was that the "Class B" stamp was over the number, and thus the 6500 was translated as 500. No explanation helped; even showing an empty driver's license with the complete number led to nothing. She confiscated the license to check it. So it lay with the police for 8 weeks and eventually came back. It was real. But which class of driver's license this was, the lady could not determine and offered to involve an expert. I visited him, and he thought it was all great and said that the driver's license indeed corresponded to a "German Class B." But: I was not the applicant, my wife was. And so she now has to drive to Dresden and ask the same question. However, the office first had no visiting appointments and then some with 2G+ rules. Thank you very much! So without vaccination, no expert opinion and thus no driver's license. Normally everyone would have screamed racism, but for unvaccinated black people, BlackLivesMatter does not yet apply. That only exists with a jab, which, by the way, no one in Kenya wants, and all people are still strikingly healthy today.

It remains to be mentioned that she still does not have a driver's license. She is now redoing it entirely for a lot of money. Appointments are practically impossible to get. Even less so in English. So I am condemned to play chauffeur for probably another year, because public transport in the countryside is more of an imposition, and she doesn't want to carry groceries for 2 km either.