|
|
 |
 |
| |
T-Shirt Travels
Arthur Stamoulis
T-Shirt Travels
Produced by Shantha Bloemen
Grassroots Pictures, 2001
Old Bart Simpson and Titanic t-shirts, boy scout uniforms,
off-colored pants and laceless sneakers. In Ghana they're called "Dead
white man's clothes." In Tanzania, they're "Died in Europe."
In Zambia they're sold in salaula, which roughly translates
to "bend down boutiques."
Environmentalists throughout North America and Western Europe have
oft recommended people donate their old clothes to charity. "Reuse"
is a basic component of the environmental ethos, and getting people
to take their old clothing to the Salvation Army or Goodwill box is
one of the easiest waste eduction steps that environmentalists have
been able to convince people to take.
It makes sense. Less material ends up in landfills, and it feels good
to be helping other people, right?
But how many of us have followed what actually happens to our old
Nirvana tees and Addidas once we've donated them to charity? Shantha
Bloemen's new film T-Shirt Travels: The Story of Secondhand Clothes
and Third World Debt does just that.
Starting on the Jersey Shore, we hear the familiar and well-meaning
reasons why people donate their old clothes to charity: it's out-grown,
out-of-style, stained-but there are needy people who could use it.
 Many
people think that what they give to Goodwill or the Salvation Army
actually gets sold in Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. But, as
the film documents, 95% of that clothing is never even unpacked before
it's sold to huge used-clothes dealers at 10 to 15 cents per pound
in part of a multi-billion dollar industry. From there, it's exported
on giant ships to places like Zambia, where it's sold to small-time
sellers at a 300 to 400% mark up.
T-Shirt Travels is at its most poignant when interviewing one
of those sellers, Luka Mafo, and his family. The 19-year old used
to go to school, but couldn't afford to finish. Now he makes the 10-hour
bus trip from his home to the capital city of Lusaka to buy used clothes
one bundle at a time in order to re-sell them in the local market
at a modest profit.
Mafo is forced to make the journey himself, rather than just order
a bundle, because the quality of different batches of clothing varies
substantially. As each package costs around $180, the decision on
which bundle to buy cannot be made lightly. Peaking through the corners
of a wrapped-up bundle gives buyers at least some insight into the
quality of the goods they are putting their family's entire savings
into.
Once home, Mafo, his mother and his younger siblings sort through
the bundles, ironing the clothes if needed, and searching the pockets
for dollars. The local salaula, a huge type of flea market,
is three miles from their home, and someone from the family is there
selling nearly all the time. It's a competitive business, but if lucky,
the family can sell or trade enough clothing to buy some food and
go back to Lusaka for another bundle.
 The
saluala's in Zambia are a sad story, but seem to offer people
at least some opportunity. The mark-ups on the clothing may be a little
unsavory, but the system seems to make some sense — until you
realize that things in Zambia weren't always this way. The people
selling one another used clothing from America used to be nurses,
teachers, factory workers and civil servants, who were doing much
better for themselves until the "structural adjustments"
of the early 1990s hit.
T-Shirt Travels does more than track old t-shirts from the
US to Africa. It poses the question, "Why are no new clothes
being made in Africa?" It's a much easier question to answer
than one may think.
Textiles is one of the easiest industries for developing nations to
get into, as it requires relatively little capital and infrastructure
in order to get up and running. After Zambia won its independence
from Britain in 1964, it built its own textile industry, with 85 major
factories employing over 10,000 people by the 1970s alone.
Unfortunately, Zambia also picked up a good deal of international
debt, and its creditors, led by the United States, now dictate the
country's economic and social services policies. T-Shirt Travels goes
into the particulars in great detail, making complicated economic
policy easy to understand. To make a long story short, Zambia was
forced to open its markets to used clothing operations in 1991. Freighter
after freighter of used clothes was dumped onto the nation, making
it impossible for the local textile industry to compete. There are
no longer any clothing manufacturing factories left in Zambia.
 Similar
uneven competition forced major downturns in the agricultural industry.
And to make matters even worse, international creditors forced Zambia
to cut back social services to only those who can pay for them. As
schools and hospitals charged more, people stopped going, and teachers,
nurses and civil servants also found themselves out of work. All that
remained were "free market" solutions like selling old clothing
for pocket change.
It's not exactly an uplifting story, but the strength, good intentions
and perseverance of the families featured in T-Shirt Travels does
leave one with a certain sense of hope and potential.
One thing T-Shirt Travels makes abundantly clear is that poverty and
hardship is not necessarily a result of local ecosystems, "natural
selection," just living in Africa or anything in that vein. People
in Zambia are struggling largely due to economic decisions made by
governments. Us donating old clothes is not the problem. Bad policies
are. Thankfully, global policies are something that each of us —
particularly here in America, with all of our freedoms — can
work to change.
For more information, visit http://www.tshirttravels.com
or http://www.itvs.org/tshirttravels/.
To watch this video online, you need Real Player. Don't have Real
Player? Download
it here for free.
|
|
|
|
