A Kampala journalist named Michael Wakabi told me that Kampala has become ''a used culture.'' The cars are used -- they arrive from Japan with broken power windows and air-conditioners, so Ugandan drivers bake in the sun. Used furniture from Europe lines the streets in Kampala. The Ugandan Army occupies part of neighboring Congo with used tanks and aircraft from Ukraine.
(Packer, George. “How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back” The New York Times. 3 March 2002.)
Check out the full article... it looks at the used clothing trade in Uganda: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10D14FA3E5F0C728FDDAA0894DA404482
Check out the full article... it looks at the used clothing trade in Uganda: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10D14FA3E5F0C728FDDAA0894DA404482
* * * * *
My Coke bottle’s label is worn away in some places. I’m out to dinner with Paige and Phil at the local pizza shop and my glance at the bottle has turned into a stare. The red is faded, but just slightly.
“Is this bottle used?”
“Yep,” Paige says, looking up from her salad, “Best recycling program in the world and nobody knows it’s happening. You actually have to pay more for the soda if you want to take the bottle with you.”
“There’s no broken glass in Kampala,” adds Phil. “Not when it’s worth something.”
* * * * *
Later, we stop by a going away party for one of the expats Paige and Phil know.
In one of those awkward, no-one-knows-anyone-in-this-group moments, a girl from Boston looks down at one of the Ugandans' sandals.
“Hey, nice Jesus sandals!”
Looking down, he laughs, “I made these”
"You made them?”
“Yes,” he shows us the sole of his shoe, “From old tires.”
From where he stands the sandals look black, albeit a bit plastic-y, but the bottom of the shoe reveals tire treads. The Americans launch into how ingenious the tire-shoes are. He shows us how he cut the tire and with four nails affixed the straps. The Ugandans laugh at our fascination.
“These shoes – lugabire – are all over. They sell them for 2,000 shillings ($1.18) in Kampala.”
“I love them!” the Boston girl exclaims, “What market did you say?”
The Ugandans laugh again.
“It won’t be 2,000 shillings for you – 50,000 ($30) maybe”
Americans buy clothes in disposable quantities -- $165 billion worth last year. Then […] we run out of storage space, or we put on weight, or we get tired of the way we look in them, and so we pack the clothes in garbage bags and lug them off to thrift shops.
4 comments:
This really hits home. I just finished packing my bags for college, and even though I don't consider myself a materialist, somehow I'm taking back four bags (I came home with two) crammed with stuff. I don't know where it came from. I'm not quite sure it'll all be used, but I can't convince myself to leave some of it behind.
When I was a kid, we collected bottles from construction sites and vacant lots to get the deposits at the grocery store. There are still a few states (like Oregon) where bottle returns are mandated by law, but for the most part bottle retailers in the U.S. won't voluntarily recycle bottles because they get stuck with the cost of handling the returns. I predict you're going to come home with a greater interest in how economic choices influence culture.
Pietra Rivoli's book, "The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy", weaves the story of a T-shirt from the very beginning--the growing of the cotton! She captures the politics of textiles in a global economy and follows t-shirt through many countries. This book takes the "recycled" T-shirt back to it's pre-cycled creation. Worth a read.
It seems to me that Al Gore and the global warming/environmentalist crowd could learn a lot from a trip to Uganda! Agreeing with Phenol- I never realized how much STUFF I had until I started packing a few hours ago.
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