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I am Ugandan.

I've shipped electronics and Laptops for Work quite a bit, and OP is right, the system is broken, it stays this way because a lot of corrupt individuals benefit from this mess. However, OP showed a degree of Hubris here, a mistake lots of us make when dealing with foreign countries, just because it works this way here, so it should work that way in XYZ.

OP would have saved themselves lots of time and money if they'd asked Django what the best way to get that laptop shipped to them was. Lots of Ugandans in Austria ship things back daily; they just do it differently, simply hand it to someone travelling back home, there are people travelling back daily, willing to help or just pay a shipping agency a small amount and they'll handle everything.

This is a good act of charity and I applaud OP for that; however, the first mistake they made was Google "How to send a laptop overseas" , a message to Django, asking the best way to get them the laptop would have saved them time and money.

We all fall into this trap of giving people in need what we think they need instead of asking them how best we can help. Local knowledge goes a long way.

All in all, I applaud OP, not many of us would have done this.

This is not how it works. My partner is Ugandan, we live in France - I'm used to ship to various countries in Africa. Never use the "regular" post - it is just as OP described. Don't use high-end couriers (DHL, Fedex etc.) either - very expensive for scant value added. Do what every local does: use one of the innumerable grey market freight forwarders. One way or the other (for a typical "line haul" example, they entrust extra carry-on luggage to airline passengers remunerated for the service), they get packages to their destination, and they are not even expensive.

They know the thicket of rules and petty fiefdoms, what rules apply and which don't, what to pay and to whom... Regular post just acts as if everything works by the book - and that doesn't fly. Use word-of-mouth to find the good couriers, trawl through your local community of people from the destination country - it is a very common service, so you'll soon find a good provider. Test it with a couple of low-stakes deliveries and you'll have a solid channel.

Meet your guy in a metro station, or find the shop in Barbès that smells like a marketplace across the Mediterranean, hand over your package with the recipient's name, destination city (Addresses ? Where we're going we don't need addresses !), your phone number and the recipient's phone number scrawled on it with a felt-tip marker (make sure they are Whatsapp numbers), pay in cash, don't get a receipt (lol) - and there you go !

Operating in Africa will soon tire you if you attempt to force European ways. Going with the flow (with appropriate caution - a nose for issues, borne from experience, is invaluable) works and makes the experience enjoyable !

Two main takeaways:

1. Never underestimate developing countries' governments' willingness to absolutely bend their people over to extract tax revenue (and then their corrupt representatives extract bribes on top of it)

2. Django's gratitude and positivity in the face of all of it is an inspiration. I suspect I and most everyone I know would be in tears and would have given up in exasperation halfway through his quest. We are so spoiled in the West.

I help a good friend run a small business in Africa, and this story is exactly why, every time I go visit, I fill my luggage with stuff she needs. Laptops, car engine turbos, espresso machines, fryers, bottles of shampoo, printers, anything. The cheapest and most reliable way to deliver things there is to take a plane yourself and carry the things with you. This whole mess is why, despite being a poor continent, the price of goods is actually much higher than in rich developed countries, which puts a huge brake on the development of the countries.

It is also quite sad that the western NGOs, which all have their own very functional and heavily subsidised delivery channels, keep it to themselves, instead of making it available to the general public and businesses of the countries. Their monopolies on efficient import is weird and counter productive.

My question, does Uganda not have used laptops available for sale? At the point where you're about to spend $200 on shipping, why not consider just doing a money order so the guy can find one locally.

Shipping things overseas is such a convoluted process. My wife wanted to send a company Christmas gift bundle (literally just company merch and some candy) to two Filipino employees. One of the workers says that only DHL reliability delivers to her so I help my wife with getting a shipping label. Holy shit, I'm just sending a tshirt, mug, and some pens. Why do I need to list out the contents and their international categories like I'm trying to send a shipping container full of rifles? Also addresses for people living in villages in PI are weird, the address was relative to the town hall. Luckily the other person lived in a gated community with a more familiar address formatting. Finally I figure everything out and she buys the label and pays the tariffs (more expensive than the gifts but it's too late now). Luckily there's a DHL near my work so I go to drop off the two very carefully wrapped packages. Of course she wraps both like an actual gift with cute tissue paper and of course the DHL agent has to open it and inspect it, ruining the care my wife put into the wrapping. Overall the experience was mind boggling bureaucratic. Sending via USPS would likely have been a bit easier but the warning of unreliable local mail was concerning. The next year, she just had the CEO send them an extra bonus instead.

The most amazing thing about my travels in Africa, specifically Uganda, is that things I would never expect to work, work. The people are so innovative and resourceful that I think things that would be scams (handing a laptop to a stranger to hold) are pretty common and work.

Also makes me grateful to live in a developed nation where we can take shipping for granted.

Long-distance shipping is even a pain in the (so-called) developed world, for instance from Europe to the US. As soon as your shipping value exceeds a treshold (IIRC about 1000€), you have to electronically declare the customs. There are agencies specialized to do this for sth like 20€ per shipping just because it is not reasonable to get all the accounts if you do it only once in a while.

However, in my experience, "ordinary" parcel shipping (like DHL) won't do this shipping either any more: You have to switch to the express ones (like DHL express, UPS, FedEx) even if you don't intend to do any express. The difference is easily 40€ vs 400€ for shipping a shoe box!

If you ship anything slightly larger then a shoe box and slightly more expensive then a notebook, think twice whether you don't want to accompany the freight with a seat in the commodity class in some airplane. It can easily be cheaper.

I learned the hard way that I couldn't just ship a laptop to myself from the USA to Mexico. I had a nice, new-ish Macbook Pro that I wanted to use sitting in the USA, and the laptop I was using in Mexico was getting old. What I should have done was just fly to the USA to get the nice laptop and then hand carry it back. What I did instead was ship the laptop via Fedex to my address in Mexico. Big mistake.

Fedex informed me that my laptop was stuck in customs. This wasn't a pay-a-fee-and-get-your-stuff kind of stuck. I couldn't pay any amount of money to get the laptop out. I had to find a local import partner which could take weeks or months to do just to get this stupid computer out of customs. And that's assuming they didn't destroy the laptop before I could claim it. There was literally no way for me to just pay some big ol' tax to get the computer.

Eventually I asked if I could have the laptop shipped back to the USA, and they were happy to do this. So I shipped the laptop from the USA to Mexico, from Mexico to a friend's place, and then I bought my frienbd a roundtrip ticket to Mexico to enjoy a vacation on the condition that he brought my damn computer with him.

So many characters worthy of an epic story. The last one would be the Good Samaritan, or some sort of elderly sage...

> Before leaving, I asked him whether he even knew what was inside the package.

> He answered very casually that he had no idea and that he did not need to know.

> I then asked whether he at least knew which company had entrusted him with the delivery. He replied that it was simply "a friend" who had asked him to temporarily keep the box until someone came to collect it.

> I switched it on briefly, and that was actually the moment when the hardware shop owner himself suddenly became excited[...] Seeing the Apple logo appear on the screen, he immediately smiled and said something along the lines of, "Ah… a MacBook is a MacBook. Apple is still Apple."

That's pretty cool. I've also realized that even a small amount of money can solve a lot of problems for someone. I've been helping people in the SF Bay who are fighting cancer by giving them laptops. So far, I've assembled and donated three using parts I already had, and I bought a few more online specifically for this purpose. One more (the fourth) hasn't been given away yet.

It reminded me of when I was a student. I used to repair laptops and resell them. Going through cancer in my family these days, I understand how important it is to help people when you can. It makes you a slightly better person, at least in your own eyes.

I tried to do the same from USA to Turkey. Can't ship lithium. So my brother took the laptop to Germany, and then shipped it to Ankara.

The laptop was never released from the customs. The Turkish reps were rude and expected bribe and pretended they don't understand english. After few months it was returned back to Germany. My cousins' laptop had a keyboard issue and local shops would not replace it and the HP agents on the ground also didn't want to help.

It's pretty much like trying to get something shipped to Argentina, a royal pain in the ass.

The laptop would pay a 50% fee over the (declared value + shipping cost). Couriers will mostly deal with that on send, but if sent through regular mail you need to declare and pay before you get it.

If you didn't include your tax number as part of the address (doesn't matter in which field), there's a non-zero chance that the package will be lost, held indefinitely or returned to sender.

It's great that there are people willing to help even in these conditions.

We tried to ship company-provided laptop from Poland to somewhere in India. After long time the parcel was just simply labelled "gone". And we paid very similar amounts for all the shipping/taxes/clearances. Nice to hear that such stories end well sometimes.

I admire people that just get shit done: especially in an environment of misdirection.

There's a lot of luck and bad luck in the story.

What a wild story. I hope they can meet one day! This is one of many reasons why these countries stay poor -- it is so hard to follow the byzantine set of rules to do business.

Years ago, during the COVID-19 crisis, I wanted to send a laptop to my domestic helper's son who lived in the countryside of Mindanao (island), the Philippines. It was very difficult. It tooks weeks to find a willing shipper (denied by many!) and find/fill the correct paperwork (many shippers didn't know the correct process and Philippines customs agency was zero help). I still have no idea how he paid the customs fees and received the laptop, as he lived hours away from the only FedEx office on the whole island. I just heard from his mother: "Oh, he got the laptop." As a point of comparison, Mindanao is roughly the twice the size of the Netherlands. At the time, FedEx (the only carrier willing to attempt the delivery) only had a single internal postal code for the whole island. Incredible.

I worked on an OSS project and we had a volunteer working from Tobago. His computer wasn't working properly so we sent him a new one.

It got smashed by customs. Literally.

I wish governments would realize that the more barriers and friction they put between their citizens and good tools, the worse their economy will probably be.

Really makes you appreciate infrastructure. Great story. Maybe one day everyone will have Zipline style drones that can drop off stuff anywhere.

Really like how Django writes his response. Well written and very polite. Feels like I only see that sort of genuine writing from penpals

Lots of complaints about corruption. It’s worth imagining how you would run a very low income developing country. Remittances and tariffs are the easiest items to tax for revenue. I’d love suggestions for better alternatives…

This was a great read, and a bit of a break from the noise. Kept me engaged the whole time. You’re a good guy.

42 days sound like a long time, but I'm living in Senegal, cassamance. Me also need to wait mostly 5-6 weeks (regular priority, no express). Also, Transport here is via regular public (but private) busses, and to be honest, I never missed a parcel.

> Finally, on May 13th, after ~36,000 km across 12 countries over 42 days, the laptop had arrived.

This is by all means amazing. Kudos.

I know a lady with four children who’s in a refugee camp in Jordan and could really use a laptop. It would allow her to teach language online and maybe get some side jobs and I think it could help her get out of the camp. If anybody has any ideas or wants to send her one please let me know.

Mail and shipping is tedious to begin with. Recently I've sent some hoodies and shirts to colleagues.

Everything is within the EU.

For sending few shirts I ended up paying about EUR20 each just for shipping! (I've wanted to ensure it gets to their house and not a pickup point).

Initially I've went with regular post office, but they've wanted so many documents I've used a 3rd party shipping company.

It always ends with compliance and regulations which shipping companies are being (and charging you) for.

It's crazy that things from china can come at ridiculous price or Amazon in specific region/countries and they 'hacked the system'.

We also had similar headache when my wife forgot her bag (with her work laptop!) on a train to the airport back home while visiting my parents in our home country. The bag was found and my parents took it. but sending it ended up being so complex we eventually found someone kind enough to travel with it. (or you need to have so complex procedures just to explain why it shouldn't be taxed as it's YOUR equipment).

TL;DR - personal shipping is broken. it might be cheaper to visit a friend in Uganda and give him the laptop in person.

Western way of problem solving . Still remember OLPC (ONE LAPTOP LER CHILD).

China would have 50$ laptops for all.

I recommend the documentary "Empire of Dust" if you would like learn more about the difficulties of doing business in africa.

Next time sell your laptop locally and order one on ugandan apple (or third party) store.

The best part of this story is that every 'official; system failed, but random people kept helping anyway, somehow the human network was more reliable than the shipping network

Bram Moolenaar tips his hat

when it comes to shipping to another country ot always becomes unnecesseraliy complicated, agreed in that particular case it went to another level regarding battery and the recipient's status as refugee but if your parcel crosses borderlines you basically always have to deal with bureaucracy

Django has a certain determination that will take him far in life. As do you OP. Kudos.

reading this article while listening to billie eilish made me feel something i've never felt before, what a blogpost

It’s a great writeup, thank you. I wish there was a better way to send the laptop or source a new one. I wonder, how far does $400AUD go in Uganda? Is that like enough for him to bribe his way out of the refugee camp?

Django has strong honey badger energy!

Next time, just give him some money

Next time, just him some money

We have a couple co-op members in Uganda and their billing addresses are always distinct. Along the lines of "Behind the Gas Station, SomeCity, Uganda."

They're also extraordinarily good engineers so idk wtf is going on in Uganda. A lot of folks from there come work in Taiwan, I guess the pay and quality of life is better here.

I have old electronics, including macbook that I would like to give is there a way or an assiociation to know how ?

Why not put a tracking device in it?

In other words, African governments are even more corrupt shitholes.

(Please note: im explicitly saying this about the governments. Not the people. The people, in most/all situations, have little to no power to remove this corruption, other than civil war.)

I really think its the mixture of the Global North, and along with the worst of the worst people is why there isnt an African Union, with African single currency.

Its also the reason im not (cant) buy African products locally. The supply chain is nearly non-existant. I couldnt buy even if I wanted to.

I wonder how much the laptop costs in a Ugandan store

Looks like he could have bought a used laptop locally for the price you paid for shipping alone.

There are charities that move used electronics to developing countries in bulk somehow.

What is appropriate compensation for someone handling a bar of gold?

Some could argue corruption is an attempt to equalise on that.

While spending a year in southern african countries (Uganda included), and befriend few locals and lots of people from UN and pieces of EU bureaucracy (and EU bank GMs), I learned two interesting things:

- even the UN (which pays 1/4 of what the EU pays) cannot ship work laptops to these countries. The either vanish or have to be shipped to very central DHL offices.

- Informal remittance from family members to their communities is exactly the same amount of all the money the country gets from external sources as Aid. e.g. Angola had USD$2bi given by EU and UN. Remitances where the same 2Bi. I don't know if there are mechanisms to keep that this way, but that was the case for all the countries i could get the number that year and the year before.

remarkable that even without what we would think of as basic infrastructure they can still produce an impoverishing level of bureaucracy. it's like an emergent force of its own.

What's with the downright brigading?

Holy crap what a read. I now feel grateful for some of the luxuries that I have taken for granted in our lives haha.

You can pay the customs fees and local taxes yourself if you're shipping with Fedex/UPS, it's just a checkbox if you have an actual account with them.

Also you can certainly ship batteries via UPU network (Australian Post) but there are strict packaging rules you need to follow[1].

You don't really go into any detail as to why they didn't accept your package. Did you attach properly filled out CN23 label?

[1] https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/docume...

Fantastic! Now get to changing the world Django!!

we should give refugees golden ipods

This is a very western approach to a very Ugandan problem. A trivial amount of money (for a Westerner) could have saved a lot of time and pain.