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Posted by lexandstuff 23 hours ago

Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda(notesbylex.com)
637 points | 226 commentspage 3
ckemere 16 hours ago|
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…
pjc50 15 hours ago|
There's an important difference between tax (predictable, evenly applied) and corruption (uneven, unpredictable, and doesn't go to the government but individuals)
infamousclyde 20 hours ago||
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.
seblon 13 hours ago||
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.
atmosx 16 hours ago||
> 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.

dvduval 21 hours ago||
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.
solidasparagus 20 hours ago||
If you're asking about logistics, try reaching out to your country's embassy in Jordan and see if you can get in touch with an aid/development worker. They know how to make things happen.
Imustaskforhelp 21 hours ago||
I have a really really old laptop (1gb ram intel atom dell inspiron mini which my father had bought back many years ago) which can run tinycorelinux and I also have run modern firefox on it.

Its really small and I am more than happy to ship it to her, please do note that it can't run youtube or the likes but can run python and firefox and pdf browsers.

The battery is interchangable so it can be fixed.

Honestly I would be more than happy to help with these things, wishing nothing but good for her & hope she finds a decent laptop that she needs and hopefully others might chime in too but let me know if you are interested, more than happy to help :-D

I don't want to sound too noble (because I am not) but I was also thinking of going to any nearby orphanage and giving it to them. It can let them play retro games or programming and i was thinking of spending time with them teaching them terminals but I doubt the usefulness of the teaching part as I certainly have so much to learn and I am unsure if it might be the best use case of their time too or something and (this was just a thought which had come, I haven't given too much thought about it but I might have some spare time recently)

Anyways, let me know if there is any help needed, Also I am more than happy to share my servers/vps's that I have with the lady, I have two small vps's of 0.5 gb ram (each for 7$~ish per year)

Anyways this message got long but waiting for your response and have a nice day dude and feel free to mail me if you might need (any) help in (anything)

Edit-1: thinking of just making a small video to showcase to ya what my old laptop is but I think that programming is possible on it. and perhaps it might even help given its tiny and battery upgradable and something which can help her more perhaps

dvduval 2 hours ago|||
OK, that’s great, I don’t know the logistics part real well either but I think if we talk to her, we could work everything out. I also don’t know how to contact you but you’ll see if there is a domain name listed in my profile, and if you go to the info address for email on that domain, you can message me there and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I was just talking to her just now and she said she would love to show her kids and teach them how to use it. She’s been here for I believe 12 years in the camp and came from Syria.
Imustaskforhelp 20 hours ago|||
https://archive.org/details/img-20260523060043 (catbox seems to be down for me for some reason so I have uploaded it to archive.org) but I have installed tinycorelinux on my laptop, installed firefox,gnumeric,abiword,micro-editor,python and others but its a fully functioning laptop.

Also, I read other discussions, I am more than happy to help out sending this laptop but I hope somebody looks at the shipping costs as the shipping costs might be magnitude more than the cost of this laptop. Looking forward for discussion if anybody from Africa might need it but yeah, waiting for GP's response and gonna show the laptop to my dad now who had also on one occassion asked me to fix that laptop and uh, I might as well write a blog post about it too running all these apps on it. This laptop can run youtube!! but it does get quite heated tho but I find it incredible that this laptop can run youtube albeit very very slowly, I didn't expect it. It does crash the browser sometimes tho in my testing, I am gonna test it more and share it with my dad! :-D

rock_artist 12 hours ago||
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.

hacker_88 14 hours ago||
Western way of problem solving . Still remember OLPC (ONE LAPTOP LER CHILD).

China would have 50$ laptops for all.

throwaway85825 18 hours ago||
I recommend the documentary "Empire of Dust" if you would like learn more about the difficulties of doing business in africa.
chrisvenum 16 hours ago|
I just started watching this after seeing your comment. Great recommendation, extremely interesting.
Aachen 8 hours ago||
Where did you find it?

Wikipedia only links IMDB and they have everything from plot info to production company to revenue to screenshots but not the obvious question anyone would have: how to actually watch it

bhartipoddar 12 hours ago||
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
7kmph 20 hours ago|
Bram Moolenaar tips his hat
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