Our things have been stuck in customs for 2 weeks. Elijah has driven 5 hours one way (back to Nairobi from Eldoret) and is planning a sit-in at the customs building to get our supplies. Then he and Benson are driving another 5 hours back to Eldoret! The shipping struggle is real. If anyone has connections, solutions, ideas about making this easier please get in touch. We are determined to do this on Thursday with the class at University of Eldoret. Wish us luck.
Oh my god…how unfortunate…..but these are typical problems in Kenya. Unfortunately I don’t know anybody who could help.
Good luck !!!!!
Brigitte
Its exactly the same in Ukraine in 2021… You parcel can be held for weeks in Kyiv IEV (DHL AWB: 6184492915)
PS: DHL does offer an -20 degrees storage option while goods are in customs, but if your parcel contains both lib prep kit and flowcells and spends one-two weeks in such conditions then either all Flowcells would be frozen or motor protein dead in a kit (if it was kept at +30 – +40 degrees)….
In the mean time it provides a very fertile breeding grounds for novel multiresistand MTB strains or ncov variants evolution with ZERO sequencing capacity in the country…
The only viable options in such cases:
1. Make flowcells and kit stable for 2-4+ weeks at +30 degrees (allow customers to insert pores)
2. Smuggle the required consumables avoiding DHL/Fedex/UPS and slow & corrupt customs offcicals.