A photography blogger recently got arrested and recounted his experience in the hands of the police, on his blog. The story took an interesting twist when the cop who intended to arrest him as a terror suspect saw his BAKE membership card.
Sometime back, all it took for a blogger to become a BAKE member was a blog and Ksh.500 damage to their pockets in joining fee. The process is still as easy, only that the amount was increased to Ksh. 1,000 from May 2015, and for a good reason. This increase came after we saw the need to issue BAKE members with a membership card for identification purposes.
This card is important especially during this period where terrorism remains a real and valid threat and every act is viewed as suspect by the authorities. If the recent harassment of photography bloggers is anything to go by, the need for authentic identification has never been more necessary. As the above mentioned blogger narrated in his blog post, whereas he had been treated as a possible terror suspect, his BAKE membership card saved the day when the cops stumbled on his membership card and spared him some serious manhandling that his fellow bloggers in the same predicament had been subjected to.
If you already registered as a BAKE member and paid Ksh.1000, all you need to do is send us your high resolution head shot and ID number to [email protected] and we will issue you with a membership card ASAP. If you paid ksh.500 during registration, we require you to send an additional Ksh.500 to paybill number 865850 for us to process the membership card for you. Use the word ‘Membership’ as the account number. Once that is done, please send us your head shot as well.
If you already sent us a head shot and we informed you that your membership card is ready for collection, we still have your card with us, and it still awaits your collection from our offices at Nailab which is on the 4th floor of Bishop Magua Centre, opposite Uchumi Hyper, Ngong Road.
If you already sent us your head shot and we haven’t communicated to inform you to come for your card, please be patient as the card is still being processed and we will inform you once it is ready.
This card is issued only to BAKE members. Read this post on how to become a BAKE member.