It had been a couple of weeks since I had last returned to Nairobi through Jomo Kenyatta International, when I arrived at JKIA a few days ago.

So I filled out my landing card, handed it and my passport to an Immigration officer, and waited for the entry ritual. Instead, the chap took the landing card and threw it in the trash basket beside his chair. He asked me to do the fingerprint thing, and asked me what my business was in Kenya. Before I could answer, he stamped the passport and I was done.

When the Immigration officer throws your landing card away, it is the signal that you should start sweating. There was no need, it turned out. East African integration had outraced me.

All that stuff about common visas, common this, common that, that Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame have fidgeting with, is beginning to pay off.

A while back Kenya got rid of both departure cards for all of us, and landing ones for its citizens. In between my last journey through the airport, and the latest return, they ditched the landing cards too.

Typical of people who are content with their good fortunes, I forgot to find out whether that was just an East African deal, or global.

In these terrible days, when the Al Shabaab terrorist have become such an enhanced menace, and we don’t even have an East African team in the World Cup, it was particularly heartening to see that baby steps continue to be made in regional integration.

Less travel time

It used to take a shipment a month, and paying police bribes at at least 30 collection points, to travel between Mombasa and Kigali. Now, there is still the odd bribe, I am told, but you can get your container of mitumba making the same trip within five days – or less.

Someone joked that traders who used to demand that trade ministers be fired and presidents impeached for destroying their businesses with the scandalous delays, now have a different lament.

You see, if you are a Kampala trader, and your goods arrived in Mombasa and got caught up in the corruption and bureaucracy of Mombasa port, you still enjoyed some advantages. That gave you time to raise the money to pay import duties to the revenue authority.

Today, however, your clearing agent will call to say your consignment has arrived. His call finds you in the village where you have gone for a relative’s funeral.

Two days later, he calls. The taxman wants money for the goods, he tells you. “But I am still in the village,” you reply, “and broke.” And right there, your troubles start. The collector starts counting the penalty.

The other day an MP in Tanzania asked why Kenya Airways was using Kilimanjaro in its promotions, when the mountain was Tanzania’s.

Tanzania’s attorney-general swatted her aside gently, saying that while that may be the case, Tanzania doesn’t have a patent on the mountain.

She spoke of an East Africa that is slowly dying away because, with the common tourist visa (Tanzania is not yet part of it), you can go to the Kenyan embassy in Tokyo, and get a visa to go see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Not bad for Africa.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is is the editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter:cobbo3