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.
I take your point - no doubt I approached this in a very naive way.
That said, we did collaborate on it - at the very least I needed to learn his address before sending.
Neither of us have ever sent or received a package in Uganda. It was a learning experience for both of us.
Crikey, the laptop actually arrived!!!
For me that is absolutely stunning. Dude I would give you a big hug if I could.
While the comments are suggesting this story is about a disaster it feels like a massive feel-good story. I don't think anyone here will understand but there are tears in my eyes right now!
I grew up in Ghana in the 80s and I can pretty much guarantee that a package that looked possibly slightly valuable would no way go more than 2 steps in the postal system then.
I know that was decades ago and Uganda might be completely different but this story is still messing with my head in a way I can't explain.
For better or worse, "person from 1st world country does what they think helps, based on their worldview - but never asks 3rd world recipient" is unfortunately a very common troupe.
(I'm from a 3rd world country and have seen it over and over again.)
Sending things is hard, it does not help asking people in who receives the things. You need to speak with someone who has experience sending things in the way you need to do it. Getting a package from China is not the same thing as sending things from China.
I am the first to acknowledge that I know very little of how things works outside my country. The only reasons I know that is with many failures. When I lived abroad sometimes people feel talked down to when you as an rich outsider tried to understand things. I do not understand the culture or the reasons for things. It did not help asking in because I did not know how to ask the right question.
From another comment, the author did ask the recipient, who also did not know the best way to ship the laptop
It’s “trope”, not “troupe”
it's mostly actors who traffic in tropes, and also actors who travel in troupes... coincidence? i think not
While I mostly agree with what you say, the thing is Django was probably asked what was the best way to ship the laptop, but he probably just didn't know :
- he is from neighboring DRC, not Ugandan;
- based on his description of his travels, he lives in the overwhelmed Kyaka II camp, and was probably recently displaced due to the M23 campaign;
- he was probably already enrolled in the course before being displaced, so a young full-time student, probably not even aware of how the system work in his origin country.
My bet is that he just said to ship it to a drop location in Kampala and that he would find a way to get there to retrieve it.
In the end, the Hubris was probably not on OP's side, but on Django's side, thinking he could get a laptop shipped to him while avoiding entirely the camp's organization. Although he did manage it after all...
It sounds less like arrogance and more like both sides trying to improvise with incomplete information
Well, it was more for the overconfidence meaning than the arrogance one.
We have a customer with a business in Uganda, we just give her the laptops and she physically takes them with her next time she goes there.
Just want to note that OP was in Australia, not Austria, but the broader point stands that it can be helpful to ask foreigners what they need rather than assuming your norms will translate over.
And yet, this was still a very generous gift and perhaps even greater value in sharing the experience and starting these discussions
> 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.
Why would you think it's hubris? People know what they know, and extrapolate. If all you've ever known is streets with numbers for each unit being used for giving directions, you'll probably assume it's the standard. So you wouldn't even know to think "hey, do other countries use something else?". So a Costa Rican "300 meters south of where the church used to be" would be a surprise, and you'd only know it if you've been there / researched it / someone told you.
Yhere are things part of your daily life you don't even question why they're like this and if they can be another way or are indeed different in other countries.
From the outside, the "official" shipping route feels like the safest and most obvious option
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There's no doubt this laptop would've been delivered frictionlessly if Uganda was still under rule of the British empire.
No idea who wrote this, especially now that Royal Mail has been privatised. A while ago I sent a book in the post to Finland from Britain. The book got stuck for 4 weeks in LOS ANGELES. Then I had to watch as the tracking bounced it around between depots on the west coast of America. Then somehow it got flown to Finland where it got stuck again due to post-Brexit customs issues. International shipping, even to countries a few kilometres from Dover is now handled by US Postal Service.
So even though you’re almost funny, you’re still taking sh*te.
The fact Royal Mail is privatised seems irrelevant since whoever you shipped with in Finland decides how it will get to the UK.
I order things like band merch from Europe and have never had a problem receiving in the UK.
> since whoever you shipped with in
They used Royal Mail for shipping, on the way out Royal Mail are the ones handing it to the next country. In that case it seems to be a Royal Mail fuckup. It didn't touch the Finland carrier until it reached Finland.
Seems relevant if you actually read the post.
Bold claim given the mail never reached "the wrong kind of native" during either the Mau Mau rebellion / Mau Mau uprising / Kenya Emergency (1952–1960) or the Malayan Emergency / Anti–British National Liberation War (1948–1960).
To be fair war does tend to disrupt the postal service a little.
To be honest, mail rarely reached the natives, right or wrong, outside of the hot times that saw thousands killed.
Just a general note that things didn't generally run well in the colonies for natives under British rule.
I'll concede they ran well enough for a privileged few who were closely aligned with the British .. but that was not a representative slice of the whole.
Ah yes, the "barbarians" couldn't possibly manage delivering a packet by themselves, after having their country looted for centuries (ongoing).
There's no doubt this laptop would've been delivered frictionlessly if Uganda had never suffered under colonial rule :) And who knows what the UK would be like..
>after having their country looted for centuries (ongoing).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania
>The town was founded with the goal of creating a white ethnostate for the Afrikaner minority group, the Afrikaans language and the Afrikaner culture through the creation of an Afrikaner state known as a Volkstaat.
>All jobs, from management to manual labour, are done by Afrikaners; non-Afrikaner people are not allowed to live or work there.
>The town's monoculturalism and monoethnic philosophy rejects the concept of baasskap, where the White minority exploited Black labour for economic gain, in favour of a model of strict Afrikaner self-sufficiency.
>The town has grown at an annual rate that was estimated at 10% in 2019 — faster than any other town in South Africa.
>The population increased by 55% to 2,500 from 2018 to mid-2022, and to 2,800 in July 2023.
>In 2023, the town council announced plans for the population to grow to 10,000 as soon as possible.
I'm honestly tired of the bullshit anti-colonialism ideology. These people are so "racist" they purposefully tie their hands behind their back to avoid exploiting black people to prove how they are superior that the standard anti-colonialism rethoric is just a thinly veiled self-hate ideology at this point.
Some racists built a village and it's doing well, therefore centuries of colonialism across continents was good? Is that sound logic?
So if Scientologists or some other cult built a potemkin village in Wyoming and pumped it with investment, and the town's balance sheets looked better than surrounding communities that didn't get their investment, you'd endorse the cult ideology too? Or at least denounce its critics?
What your opinion about the reverse colonization - immigration?
In what way could immigration be the reverse of colonization? Colonization is a specific form of immigration, where the immigrants purposefully destroy native ways of life via different forms of warfare, segregation, etc.
I encourage you to question where you read that framing, because that's a racist stance that doesn't stand scrutiny even for a minute.
My opinion is that whoever uses this term is a fash
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What the actual fuck
That attitude has been around for a long time, well since the time of colonisation.
With the current Zeitgeist people just feel more confident, expressing it now again.
But imagine you are a colonizer (or your family got rich because if it). I guess you have to believe that, to still feel righteous.
Pretty sure they still to choose to be free people with this situation better than getting their mails frictionlessly and ruled by british barbarians.
America is under colonizers that's why things are delivered. Praise colonization
I certainly disagree with the GP attitude, but also with your counter-example.
America is de facto run by the descendants of colonizers. How much control do Native Americans really have over its governance?