To Start a Library

Ever since my first trip to Kenya in 2011, I have been trying to send books to the Shine Academy in Kibera in order to start a small library for the kids. What started out as a relatively straightforward initiative turned into a tremendously difficult and protracted undertaking.

Over the past 12 months, I have searched for sponsors, explored shipping routes from Hong Kong to Kenya, befriended African traders in the notorious Chungking Mansions, and struggled against the bureaucratic monster that is Kenya Post. It slowly became apparent that I had grossly underestimated the challenges involved in shipping books to Kenya from Hong Kong. The following is a brief account of what happened…

Getting the books

The very first thing I tried to do was to source the books locally in Nairobi. There were a small number of English bookshops in Nairobi and each had a rather poor selection of children’s books. Although books were supposed to be exempt from import duties, this was largely at the whims of the Kenyan customs officers. Thus these books were often imported and cost more than their marked UK/US retail prices. Quality local titles were also very hard to come by. Acquiring books in this way was unfortunately not an option.

Next I tried to look for organizations that donated books to Kenya. But sadly, all the organisations I found targeted mainly primary and secondary schools – while Shine Academy supported children that were a little younger. The organization Room to Read operated only in Tanzania at this point.

Finally, upon returning to Hong Kong, and after a couple of false starts, the Hong Kong Ladies Recreation Club kindly agreed to donate approximately 200kg of age-appropriate books to the school (approximately 1,000 books).

Books all packed and ready to go at the Hong Kong LRC Library 

Delivering the books

Having secured the books, the next hurdle was getting them from Hong Kong to Kenya. I ended up exploring many avenues, and each became more creative as the obvious options were eliminated.

• Shipping via courier was prohibitively expensive.
• Shipping by cargo container via Hong Kong was still extremely expensive, and the large range of quotes that I received from various companies left me with little confidence that anyone knew what they were doing.
• Shipping by cargo container via Guangzhou was cheaper, but it would have involved either smuggling the books across the border to Guangzhou, or else getting the Chinese Ministry of Culture’s approval for importing printed material into the country, neither option was viable.
• I also explored shipping by cargo container via Uganda (which was cheaper), then overland to Nairobi from Kampala – this would have involved a couple of shady cross-border transactions along the way, which was again, not viable.
• Then I tried advertising for volunteers to take books from Hong Kong to Kenya on websites such as Couchsurfing and Asiaxpat, but unfortunately there were not very many willing “book mules”.
• In addition, I approached various corporate social responsibility departments of shipping companies such as Kenya Air Cargo and FedEx, and they took a long time responding.

By this time, I was starting to get a little desperate. I remembered that there were many African merchants that did business in Chungking Mansions. The building was featured in the Hong Kong cult classic “Chungking Express” and most recently in a book called “Ghetto at the Center of the World” by Professor Gordon Matthews (who I ended up meeting in the Mansions). Stepping into the Mansion’s rabbit warren of shops, restaurants and hostel has been described as stepping on to the set of “Bladerunner”. Apparently 80% of all mobile phones in Kenya were traded through these Mansions. I was hoping that the books could also hitch a ride with these Kenyan traders.

Entrance of Chungking Mansions

Apart from visiting the Indian restaurants there from time to time, Chungking Mansions was a completely foreign world to me. And to be honest, it was a little intimidating at first to go there by myself, given its dodgy (and largely undeserved) reputation as being a centre of shady activities in Hong Kong. So I sought the help and guidance of Maggie Lin, who spent a year in Chungking Mansions doing her masters research on trade routes between the Mansions and Africa. 

With Maggie’s contacts and insights, I learned that the Kenyan merchants that visited Hong Kong mainly traded in mobile phones, watches and jewelry. These merchants would buy the goods at Chungking Mansions and take it back to Kenya via their hand carry luggage. Often, a whole suitcase of such goods would not only cover the plane ticket but also allow the trader to make a tidy profit. Unfortunately, the Kenyan merchants that did bigger shipments via cargo containers (for furniture and used automobile parts) were based in Guangzhou. Again, the Chinese Ministry of Culture would be a major obstacle.

Despite the Chungking Mansions lead being a dead end, I learned a lot along the way. I became good friends with Maggie, who was undeterred by the fact that I had tracked her down over Google in a rather stalkerish manner. Together, we started hanging out at the Chungking Mansions on free weekends.  I was also lucky enough to attend an English lesson for African refugees run by Professor Gordon Matthews and enjoyed swapping political views with some of the mansion’s African residents. All in all, it was a great opportunity to experience and understand a hidden side of Hong Kong.

Finally I got a break. Fedex Hong Kong kindly agreed to sponsor a one-off shipment to Nairobi. As Fedex did not have on the ground operations in Kenya, it shipped the 9 boxes of books via Hong Kong Post and absorbed the costs of doing so. After 2 months of searching, the books were finally on their way to Nairobi!

Collecting the books

The 200kg of books were packed into 9 large boxes. The boxes left Hong Kong in late November and arrived at the Nairobi central post office in December 2011. Here is where the real pain began…

Now Hong Kong Post assumed that Kenya Post would deliver the boxes directly to the school. However, Kenya Post did not have that service. Instead, they required the recipient to pick them up and pay the related duties. The misunderstanding caused months of to’ing and fro’ing between the two post offices without any resolution. In the mean time, heavy storage costs were being racked up (to the delight of local post office officials).  The boxes were stuck in a quagmire of bureaucracy…

Books in Nairobi, after 8 months of storage 

Finally after 8 months (!!!) of paper shuffling and misleading advice (from an unsavory intermediary looking to make some money), I collected the boxes in person in Nairobi, but not after another half day of painful negotiations in relation to the final “storage cost” payment. The boxes were infested with roaches when we opened them, but the books were otherwise undamaged. 

Half a day of negotiating in this hell place 

What this experience has taught me was the cost of doing business in a developing country. Services and processes that we take for granted in developed countries don’t operate in the same way over there. A relatively straightforward transaction can become bogged down in an inefficient system (which can sometimes feel like it was intentionally designed to frustrate and impede the average user).

This experience has also made me appreciate so much more the amazing amount of progress that Impoverished Children has achieved in Kenya. I can only imagine the bureaucratic nightmare that Catherine and Javier had to endure in order to establish the Shine Academy and continue its daily operations.

This story however, does have a happy ending, as evident from the photos below. And at the end of the day, seeing the kids’ faces light up as they opened the pages for the first time, really made it all worth it.

What kind of bird is that?

Opening the pages of the story for the first time...

I can read!