Contents
- Arrangements from Germany and arrival in Kenya - Visa and permanent residence permit - Health precautions - Contact to the German authorities in Nairobi - Daily life in Nairobi - References
Arrangements from Germany and arrival in Kenya
My study visit at the University of Nairobi (1) is part of the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange (2). It was initiated in 1997 and has sent many exchange students to Kenya. Two other German students from Berlin and I are the sixth generation.
For the first time I made the organization’s acquaintance through a hangout in my home university, the Technical University of Berlin. The deadline for application for participation is usually in the preceeding January of the academic year of the Kenya visit.
After being accepted to participate in the exchange programme, the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange officially announced to the University of Nairobi our visit of the Physics Department for the academic year 2004/05. Thereby, as invited exchange student, we were freed from tuition fees and offered free accommodation.
Another service provided by the Berlin-Nairobi Exchange was to introduce us to a wide network of contacts, which has been established over its many years of existence. Besides other preparations for my study visit, for instance abandoning my household in Berlin and applying for two free semesters at my home university, I and another exchange student had the opportunity to attend the Eurosolar Conference 2004 held in Bonn. We were also able to make first contact to our future environment through many acquaintances with Kenyans, who work as professionals in Berlin. Among them were two PhD-students, who formed the counterpart of the exchange programme and who were working in the solid state physics laboratories of the Hahn-Meitner Institut in Berlin-Wannsee at that time. As they were leaving Germany for Kenya some few weeks before us, on our arrival they welcomed and helped us with our first steps in Nairobi by picking us up from the airport, arranging rooms in the student’s hostels and introducing us to the leading personalities within the Physics Department of the University of Nairobi.
At the time of our arrival in the beginning of October the university was still closed and was not to open until the beginning of November, because a major strike of the students at the end of the passed semester had delayed the administrative work, such that our admission letters for instance were not yet ready. But still we were expected and generously helped to settle in. As replacement for the missing admission letters provisional papers were written for the university itself, for Kenyan as well as German authorities, who required prove of our status as students to print student identity cards, to charge cheaper fees at the entrance of cultural sites in Kenya and to release the Child Support Funds (3) in Germany for instance.
Visa and permanent residence permit