Container almost ready to go.


Containers to those in need

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Andrée Jordan

How I did it, and how you can do it too

In 1999 I had an idea. To collect items not needed here in England and ship them out to improve the lives of people in other parts of the world. My husband worked with computers and as new ones were installed old ones were just thrown away. It seemed such a waste. Then our idea began to become more concrete.

I met two church men from Kenya (Archbishop William Mureithi and Archdeacon Julius Kamwaro) through my church (South Lee Christian Church). William and Julius told the church about their country. At the end of the service I asked them what items they felt they needed. One of the main items was computers! Here might well be a use for those computers if only we could find a way to get them there. Standing there discussing it, another man whom I had never met before, join the conversation. He said that he was involved with imports and exports and could give us some room on one of his containers. Without his offer, I am not sure if we would have gone any further, and I see this man very much as a divine influence on proceedings, although if so, God does move indeed in mysterious ways! A few weeks later he came to our house and we discussed what we should do and how to do it. He said we should find out from our friends exactly what was wanted, and that we should make sure that the items we sent were those really needed. The subject of money did not arise. He said if we collected the items, making a thorough list of what we had, he would put them on a container. So we asked our friends what they needed.

From their friendship I made other links too and all had their own different needs.

We cannot begin to understand the needs of those in Kenya. There is very little rain, electricity is rationed and children, many who are AIDS orphans, roam the streets.

In Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya, there are many orphans who, without help, would have no future. At the Salem Orphanage, Phoebe Onyango and her staff look after the children with the aim of teaching them all a trade so that they will be able to earn their own wage, but they and many other schools like them needed equipment.

In a farming village south of Narok, they needed a tractor to plough their fields with. The cost of hiring a tractor is far too great for the villagers. They have a school there. The only equipment the school had was a set of bottle tops to count with.

In the Lambwe School for the Deaf (late starters), the challenge of giving children a trade is made even more difficult by the fact that they are deaf. They are children that everyone else would have rejected.

I wanted to do something to help so I started collecting. I organised a set of challenges for the pupils of the Ravensbourne School. Each week they had to collect different items, and the form with the most won the challenge. I put up posters and told everyone I knew. People at South Lee Christian Church helped. I collected:

The person who had said he would pay for the container said I could store things in his warehouse, but I felt that things might go missing there, so until I had everything I needed it would be safer to store it myself. Everything was stored in my garage. (A space oddly enough about the same size as a container – 20ft by 10ft by 10 ft.)

My dream was still to be able to donate a tractor. I started collecting money for the tractor through charity events at my school. Knowing absolutely nothing about tractors, I started searching. Every address I could find I emailed or telephoned. I needed to find out how much money I would need to even buy one. Only one person returned my call, Jonathan Latham. He asked me what I wanted the tractor for. When I explained I could not believe his answer. “Oh yes” he said, “in that case I know exactly what you need. I shipped one out to Africa a few months ago for someone.” He said that we should find out the Julius Kamwaro and Andree Jordan with the tractor in Cowden near Edenbridge, after its restoration.price of a tractor out there first, and see if it would be cheaper to send one. He also said that you cannot buy second hand tractors out there as everyone uses them until they cannot be mended. He told me to find out which makes and models of tractor you can get spare parts for, as there is no point sending a tractor you cannot buy spare parts for. I emailed my friend in Kenya, and we finally settled on Massey Ferguson. Jonathan found us a Massey Ferguson 165 and I went down to his farm to see it. I don’t know what I expected. It looked old but it started, and Jonathan said that we could restore it before we shipped it out. I decided that restoring a tractor was the perfect project for some sixth form students who were going into careers in Health and Social Care – something completely different that they would never do again! I collected enough money to buy the tractor, and Jonathan gave us his expert advice and along with his worker Chris Mobsby they willingly gave their time and workshop to help my sixth form and I restore the tractor and service it. We took it apart, sanded down the parts, re-sprayed it and changed the filters. To see my students, all bar one of them girls, removing giant tractor wheels and scrubbing them with wire brushes, learning how to spray paint, and changing My students decided to paint their names on one of the wheel arches. It took three day trips at the end of the December term, and on the last one, we just got back in time for me to take part in the School Pantomime! Jonathan also suggested that we start collecting empty 2l plastic milk containers as they are excellent for carrying water and can fit into any little spaces we would have left in between the tractor, bags of clothes and other items. Jonathan stored the tractor for us until everything else was ready, and you can imagine my excitement when I realised that we also had enough money to buy a plough to go with it too!

While all this was going on (which did take years) I tried to keep in contact with the person who had volunteered the container space. I would phone and there would be no one in. I would phone week after week with no reply. I wrote letters and they were not responded to, and even dropped a letter into his house, which seemed empty, all to no avail. Just when I felt I would never hear from him again he would reappear saying that he had been home to his father’s estate in Africa and had not been back to England for ages. He would give advice, and then disappear again! I had been told to keep a list of everything that we had collected so that he would be able to help us get an exemption certificate from the Kenyan High Commission. He explained that this would be needed because otherwise my friends in Kenya would have to pay a huge amount in tax when the container arrived. This meant negotiation with my friends in Kenya, sending them a complete list of what we had collected. I was told not to itemise every item of clothing, but to say 17 bags of children’s clothes. You can imagine my dismay when I received an email from Kenya saying that the High Commission needed EVERY ITEM listed! So, unperturbed, I organised a day when everything was unpacked, counted and repacked. It was a great social event!

With frequent emails to and from Kenya I finally got the documentation I needed.

Then the funding that was promised for the container did not materialise. I next had to search around for a company to ship the container for me, and work out how to get the items from my home to the container. There was talk of having to drive everything to docks, or the suggestion that the container would be parked for a few days in the large car park of a garden centre at the end of my road. The final suggestion was that the container would arrive on the back of a lorry at my house, and I would have TWO HOURS to load everything on. Any time over the two hours and I would have to pay extra. My next challenge was raising the money needed to send it. It came from various sources, but still I was £800 short, so I asked the year 7 pupils of Ravensbourne School. They eagerly rose to the challenge. They had cake sales, sponsored silences, dressed as their favourite characters, held discos and much, much more.

Next I found myself a reliable shipping company (FSI in Derby). This was something I should have done at the start, but if you remember, I thought someone was going to do that for me. One that ships items out for missionaries and other charity workers and so knows how the governments of many different countries work, and what regulations have to be met. Something you need to know right form the very beginning. Some countries want clothes fumigated and then vacuum sealed. Some countries have odd ideas of what they will and will not allow in, like one European country who would not let in tins of “beans with sausages” during the BSE scare. Oddly, they let the tins through on the way there, but when the receiving country would not let the tins in, the country they had just been driven through would not let them back!

Andree Jordan with the tractor waiting to be loaded onto the container.I feel I should mention at this point that some countries have a problem with people who might want to take the contents of one’s container for themselves. For this reason it is good advice to: 1. fill a whole container. It is possible to buy some space and share a container, but then who will open it? Who will make sure your items get to where they are going? You can buy sealed units within a container, as many people have to if taking belongings abroad with them for long periods of time. If possible however, much safer to hire the whole container. A second difficulty is that shipping a container to a country is one expense, but then getting it transported across a country, on roads with huge great holes in, in quite another matter and can cost just as much again. The other problem is making sure that no one has to open it until it arrives at its destination. Usually, containers have to be checked by customs when they enter a country. I was shipping my container to Kisumu – probably about the furthest you can get from Mombassa on the coast. However, amazingly, Kisumu has its own customs, so could be sealed, shipped all the way there and then opened in the presence of customs actually at the orphanage in Kisumu.

Finally we got the letter from Kenya allowing tax exemption for everything in the container. I also had to do something very strange – I had to go to my local vehicle licensing office and register myself as the owner of a tractor, then immediately register it for export! The export certificate was needed for the shipping.

The tractor and all the other goods being loaded onto the container.Now at last, everything was ready, and on Wednesday 3rd April the container was packed. I organised for about twenty people to come to my house to help. The tractor went on first – well, it almost went on, and then almost fell off when a ramp slipped! A desperate phone call was made to a S.E. Haulage and they sent a “Hi Ab” – a lorry with a crane on the back, to help lift the tractor in safely. We had to load everything in three hours, but with the hitch we had just one hour left! With the help of sixth form from Ravensbourne School and other friends and family the rest of the items were loaded. We finished with 10 minutes to spare! We then all prayed for its safe delivery, opened a bottle of celebratory fizz and sent it on its way.

As soon as it had left the house, I emailed my friends in Kenya to say it was on its way and when to expect it. The container was shipped to Mombassa. At this point a possible problem arose. I received an email saying we had only paid for it to get to Mombassa and we would have to send more money. You have to be wise! I passed the problem straight on to the shipping company who made the “right” phone calls so that the person in Mombassa “realised” their mistake and the container went on its way untouched. Then it was taken to Kisumu where it was opened in the presence of a customs official by those who had waited so long to receive it! It had been 2 and a half long years of preparation and it was wonderful to see it at last coming to fruition.

This was all three years ago, and it is a nice postscript to know that the tractor is still working and still serving the village in Narok.

The tractor doing what tractors do, in a field in Kenya.Would I do it again? Yes, but now I know how NOT to do it, some advice on what to do:

[Andrée Jordan] (30/01/05)

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