Transportation to Ukraine
It’s at the end of 2002, during a chat with Raymond Guggenheim form LifeLine (another Swiss association providing Sumatran help to Ukraine), that the idea of transporting 2nd hand stuff to Ukraine arose.
In summer 2003, Lifeline had already achieved the most important steps to get the truck transportation organized and had it scheduled for November 2003. We then started to collect 2nd hand clothes and shoes which we received in huge quantities not only from all over Switzerland but also from France, thanks to Laurence and Sylvie efforts.
After sorting out clothes and shoes by size, we carefully re-packed them and labeled each single box to ease distribution. We brought almost a ton of stuff to LifeLine warehouse in November 2003. At that time, the truck schedule had already slipped to December 2003. So Raymond and I decided to schedule a trip by car in December to accompany and help unloading the truck once arrived in Ukraine. After many administrative hassles and never ending chats, the truck left Switzerland on January 11th 2004. It transited through Germany to load more stuff and arrived without problems in Ukraine (Chernivtsi) on January 16th 2004. In Ukraine, a new administrative ‘soap opera’ started for our goods. But since every fairy tale has a happy end, local authorities cleared out of custom a first bunch of merchandise on February 20th. Which was very nice for Raymond and LifeLine, but still not for us. We had to wait another good month to get our stuff cleared and transported to Nikolaiev by another truck.
We were then very annoyed to hear that our careful packaging and labeling was for nothing when Pascal visited Ukraine again in April 2004 ! Customs had opened each and every box and bag, and re-packed everything completely mixed up again. Even worse, out of the 4 computers (2nd hand) we had gracefully received from LifeLine, 2 were definitively unusable. We then had to sort out and pack everything again…
…before being able to dispatch goods:
To summarize, this operation was much more time consuming and expensive than we first expected, mostly due adminstrative hassles generated by Ukrainian adminsitrations. Considering time spent to organize, wash, sort, pack,label, store, load, unload goods as well as the money spend for it and the transportation itself, it doesn’t make any sense to send 2nd hand stuff to Ukraine. This is especially true for clothes which one can buy for a much better price locally (i.e. 100kg for $150). But, gratitude from recipients is always a nice reward.
We want to sincerely thank every donor and everybody who as been involved in this project. We have gathered a lot of experience and if we are to organize such a transportation once again, it can only run more smoothly than this one did!
