New requirements to enter Kenya in 2021 – Trusted Traveler (TT) or Digitally Verified COVID-19 Tests

If you have to go to Kenya in 2021 you will probably learn at some point that Kenyan government instituted new requirements for the COVID-19 tests, called Trusted Traveler (TT) or Digitally Verified COVID-19 testing, to enter Kenya.

I had to travel to Kenya in February 2021, right after it was adopted, and there was not much information about it online. So when I learned about it, it caused me a lot of headache. No local labs in US where I live (Pacific NW) seem to be aware of the Trusted Traveler (TT) program, or the PanaBios system.

I tried to go to https://africacdc.org/trusted-travel/ like they suggested here and if you scroll down to “Check Travel Requirements For Your Travel Here” and happen to find your country and airport in that unwieldy list, it will give you another rather unmanageable list. What is all that stuff?

I was also trying to understand these instructions. And it was less than helpful.

Suggestions

Now, please differentiate two things. Traveling out of Kenya (say, to United States) is not the same thing. In that case pretty much any decent clinic (like Aga Khan University in Nairobi, or others on the list they provide here) will get you the COVID test results that are Trusted Traveler (TT) compatible. This is their system and they know how to use it.

The issue is with traveling to Kenya from outside of Africa where there’s little information about their Trusted Traveler (TT) program.

So going to Kenya from US, was way more frustrating. Like in my case, I’m in the Washington state and there was nothing in the 100 mile radius from me that is on their list of approved labs.

The only things that seemed to work for me was to get some at-home kit (found one for $290) that can be overnighted + 1 day for processing (2 days total). After that hopefully they would email me the results that I had to upload to the Kenyan portal that should issue that digital verified truster-traveler barcode. But I did not go for this method, as it had too many things that could fail: shipping, some online lab and their processing, would at-home kit be enough, etc. I didn’t want to risk it!

As you can imagine one needs to do this test 4 days before departure (or maybe even arrival) when all the tickets and other reservations are already in place. So yeah. It was also freaking anxiety inducing!

Eventually I was able to find a clinic next to the major airport near Seattle. Just take your time and go through the giant list of approved labs one by one with a search engine (you can get to that list if you fill out “Check Travel Requirements For Your Travel Here” form here.) Then find the labs that are closer to you and contact them. (I know, it takes a few days, and it sucks.)

After that, do the test and when you get the results, create an account and upload it (in PDF form) to their website. Then you will have to answer a few simple questions and the site will generate you a QR code right away, which you can print out or keep it in your phone for the Kenyan customs agent. This worked for me. (Again, all steps are explained here.)

If you ask me though, I think pretty much any 72-hour COVID-19 RT-PCR test would have sufficed. I’m basing it on the fact that there’s no way someone could’ve verified my test results within the time that it took me to upload it. So it feels like an automated process that just generates a QR code for whatever you upload there. (And this is just a bunch of Kenyan red tape, if you ask me.)

Good luck!

Landing at the Nairobi Airport after 10 PM. What about the curfew?

NBO Airport

If you are traveling to Kenya some time in 2021 during the global Coronavirus pandemic you may realize that you booked your flight to Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (NBO) that arrives after 10 PM. And as far a I know the curfew in Kenya starts at 10 PM. Oops.

So how do you get to the hotel or to your Airbnb?

Suggestions

I was in that same situation in the February of 2021. For some reason most of the international flights seemed to have been landing at the NBO airport very close, or after 10 PM.

So here’s some suggestions what to do in that case:

• If the hotel offers a transfer service, that would be the most convenient option. (In most cases you will have to reserve it in advance from the hotel, and probably pay extra for that.)
• You can still find an Uber (which I did) it just took a little bit longer to wait for it. Maybe 10-15 minutes in my case when I was there after 10 PM. But it’s doable.
• Use Yellow airport cabs or Little Cab. It’s a hailing app that got the clearance to operate past curfew hours mainly for airport shuttling and for essential services workers.
• Get a cab from the airport. There will be a lot of hucksters when you come out. So if you do, be prepared to pay extra for this service.

And finally, make sure to keep your boarding pass or a ticket for the flight to Kenya that shows your arrival time. The driver will most certainly ask for it. (He/she will need it in case they are stopped by police.)

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    "+254790487097",     // curious?
    "+254 79 048 7097",  // go to
    "+254-79-048-7097",  // About Me
];

Kenya – Things You May Not Know Until You Search

Mombasa, Kenya

These people are here among us. You may not notice them right away but they are here. They are praying on you even if you don’t realize it. They are for sure on the dating apps, Tinder, in fancy night clubs in Dubai, Nairobi or Mombasa. You may even meet them through friends and acquaintances.

To paraphrase urban dictionary. The definition of a slay queen goes as such:

Often young and naïve women that do not date broke men. They spend hours on Instagram or Snapchat showing off things that they don’t own.

Nairobi slay queens are the worst – they will milk you dry and then run way. mackysasha24

Or this one, which is more fitting:

Poorly educated village girl, who goes after rich men and posts selfies all day on Instagram or Snapchat. chasing after expensive things she doesn’t own. She changes hair style every two weeks, always posts trips to Mombasa, where mostly old white men are staying. You can also find most of them on Tinder and for a small fee they will do anything in bed. They’re real desperate and you can find some at the airport waiting for old white men. They’re also known as chicken chasers. Nairobi Slay Queens are the worst, so please wear protection!

A Slay Queen will break your heart and leave you broke with no money or dignity, aint’t it right, Macktildah Ayuma Khasiala, or Macky?

You’re here probably because you decided to Google someone you know or used to know. I wish I had that option. If you want to know more or just want to share your experience hit me up: lukkycharm1 at gmail. (There’s number one at the end of the email.) It may be too late and you can be in the same rut as I was. I hope you were smart enough to search before jumping into anything serious and wore protection.

I am also assuming that you are from some Western country, were lonely, searching for a girlfriend or just came across some pretty tail. You were also searching in Kenya, Tanzania or maybe in Dubai. They usually frequent those places where there are (rich) white men like yourself. Sorry dude. I don’t know if you’re wealthy or just desperate to find love. But I hope you kept your wallet tight right next to yourself. Otherwise you’d be in trouble.

I also know that it’s hard to just break off your relationship if you found this page by accident. Some odd random search and you are reading this. If so, just know that this is not an accident. Consider yourself very lucky if you found it early on. If so, RUN! And don’t look back. How do I know? Well, I had the same warning as you do now … and I didn’t listen. I went with my heart, or whatever BS it is called, and paid dearly. So don’t be a fool. If you are still not deep enough in all this (even if you are in love) please try to think with your head that’s on top and run. Don’t look back. Or, if you are so attached go ahead bang a few times and then run. It will be hard in the beginning, but later on you will thank me.

How to change system time zone in Windows programmatically

I’ve been writing software that allows to change the current time zone parameters used in Windows. This kinda stuff:

The only reference to setting a system-wide time zone that I found was the SetTimeZoneInformation API (or its variation SetDynamicTimeZoneInformation.) But I wasn’t really sure how I can use it to change the current time zone.

For instance, it takes TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION struct with all kinds of information about local time offset, daylight saving settings, etc. I don’t understand why do I need to fill all of this info out when all I want to do is, say change the current time zone from "(UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)" to "(UTC-07:00) Mountain Time (US & Canada)".

I needed to look further …

The Answer

So let me try to recap what I ended up doing. Unfortunately my solution was OS specific:

• For Windows Vista & later:
  1. Set SE_TIME_ZONE_NAME privilege.
  2. Call SetDynamicTimeZoneInformation by specifying the details of the time zone to set.
  3. Remove SE_TIME_ZONE_NAME privilege.
• For Windows XP:
  1. Set SE_SYSTEMTIME_NAME privilege.
  2. Call SetTimeZoneInformation with information about the time zone to set.
  3. Reset SE_SYSTEMTIME_NAME privilege back.

Lastly for both OS, broadcast the following message to let running applications know that the time zone has changed:

SendMessageTimeout(HWND_BROADCAST, 
        WM_SETTINGCHANGE, 0, (LPARAM)L"intl",
        SMTO_ABORTIFHUNG,
        2 * 1000,   //the total wait time can be up to the value of uTimeout multiplied by the number of top-level windows.
        NULL);

To get the information on the current time zone use GetDynamicTimeZoneInformation or GetTimeZoneInformation for WinXP.

Additionally you may want to retrieve the list of all available timezones that you may use to choose the info for the new (default) timezone. You can get it from enumerating/parsing the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones

Check here and here for the information on its structure.

How to preserve reputation with the Windows 10 SmartScreen Filter after code-signing certificate renewal

I had a code-signing certificate for the last 3 years. When I signed my software with it, the signature did not cause any SmartScreen warnings when the software was downloaded from the Internet.

This certificate was expiring this month, so I renewed it with the same company for another 3 years. But now my signed software is blocked by Windows with a nasty security warning.

Can you even delete Windows 10 “new” Clipboard history programmatically?

If I enable Clipboard History on Windows 10 version 1809 or later, it will then start collecting all copied items so they can be available via WinKey+V shortcut:

But can you delete all those items programmatically?

The mystery of “nop dword ptr [rax+rax]” x64 assembly instruction

This is not so much of a blog post than a call to action. Or a question of sorts. I’m trying to understand the x64 assembly optimization that is done by the compiler.

I compiled a small C++ project as Release build with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 IDE on Windows 8.1. And one of the lines contained the following assembly code:

B8 31 00 00 00   mov         eax,31h
0F 1F 44 00 00   nop         dword ptr [rax+rax]

How to eliminate MessageBeep from the RICHEDIT control

The RichEdit control has this very annoying feature. It beeps every time the user tries to move the cursor past its “end point“. For instance, you can test it with the WordPad that also implements RICHEDIT. Open it up, type in some text, then hit the Home key. If the cursor was not in the beginning of the line:

hitting Home key will move it there, but then hitting the Home key again will produce this beep.