Our university students computers finally arrive!!!

Computer - 2

Late in 2021 All Saints Anglican School kindly donated 7 Surface Pro computers to 8×8 To Educate.

These computer will be life changing for the girls in our scholarship program entering University.  Without access to a computer our students have to pay someone to type of every assignment to hand in, have no way to edit their notes, or research on the internet.  Can you even imagine trying to do a university degree in a notebook without access to the internet!

Time consuming and costly.

These computers were shipping via our lovely partners at Pack and Send and DHL, a process that should be simple enough right… but that is not the way things tend to go in the complex African world!   First issue we faced was that we had to send in two separate parcels due to the Batteries and airline restrictions, that meant doubling the risk of things going wrong!.  The second issue was that customs clearance was in Maputo rather than Beria due to flight cancellations due to COVID.  Maputo is 9 hours drive away from our in country contact and the clearance money had to be paid in cash at the counter.  The staff did not seem to understand that I could not just ‘pop’ in!  LOL  She was not even sure Australia was even a real place!

Difficult situation but we managed to connect with a transport company in Maputo via LinkedIn (yes we were getting desperate) who kindly offered to go and pay the clearance for us.  It is amazing the generosity of complete strangers who can see the greater good. 

That was a leap of faith….

I was holding my breath as I transferred the clearance money to an African company we had no personal connection with, who would then have our goods and have to walk them to the next office to be transported to Beria.  We had little choice though as we could not progress without help.

Three months of phone calls, customs clearance conversations, receipts, agreed value discussions, the occasional run to have a statutory declaration signed and a very understanding in Country helper and patient staff in Beria awaiting collection they have arrived!

I think that the faces of the girls says it all!

Thank you to everyone to helped to make this happen!

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