Africa is a thriving market for West's hand-me-downs

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001995244_africa03.html

By Davan Maharaj
Los Angeles Times


LAGOS, Nigeria — Tossed off a flatbed truck, a 100-pound bale of used
panties and bras, worn socks, DKNY suits and Michael Jordan jerseys lands
with a thud amid a jostling swarm of shoppers.

Okech Anorue slits the plastic wrap on the refrigerator-size bundle he
bought for $95 and dives in. There's bound to be a gem in there — like the
faded leather bomber jacket once worn by an American high-schooler named
Tiffany. That piece now hangs on the premium rack in his 5-foot-by-5-foot
stall with a $25 price tag.

"These clothes make people's dreams come true," says Anorue, chairman of
the vendors association at Yaba Market. "Everyone wears them, from
insurance women, vendors, poor people to parliamentarians. When they put
them on, you can't tell rich from poor."

People scramble for 10-cent underpants, 20-cent T-shirts and dollar blue
jeans discarded by Westerners. A young man in the Congolese jungle wears a
T-shirt that pleads: "Beam me up, Scotty." In a Lagos nightclub, a Nigerian
ingenue models a used red negligee over a hot-pink halter top. A young
Liberian fighter with an AK-47 assault rifle wears a tan bathrobe like a
trench coat.

In Togo, the castoffs are called "dead white men's clothing." Few people in
that West African country believe that a living person would throw away
anything this good. Consumers in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania call the used
clothing "mitumba," the Swahili word for bale.

Insatiable demand from village shops and sprawling urban markets has turned
the West's castoffs into an industry that generates hundreds of millions of
dollars annually. Clothing is only the most visible example. Polluting
refrigerators and air conditioners, expired medicines and old mattresses
also are routinely shipped and resold here. Used vehicles imported from
Japan dot African roads. Antiquated secondhand computers power many African
governments.

An industry beset

"We are digging out own graves"

The trade in hand-me-downs offers millions of Africans another means to
endure their daily struggle with poverty. Shoppers get cheap clothes, and
legions of vendors eke out a living one worn T-shirt at a time.

Mere survival has a long-term cost: The continent is losing the capacity to
produce its own clothing. Although labor is cheap, Africans cannot make a
shirt that costs as little as a used one. Every textile mill in Zambia has
closed. Fewer than 40 of Nigeria's 200 mills remain. The vast majority of
textile factories in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi are shuttered as
well. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs.

"We are digging our own graves," says Chris Kirubi, a Kenyan industrialist
who blamed secondhand clothing for the demise of his textile mill. "When
you make your own clothes, you employ farmers to grow cotton, people to
work in textile mills and more people to work in clothes factories. When
you import secondhand clothes, you become a dumping ground."

The used clothes most often start out in the United States. Charities such
as Goodwill and the Salvation Army sell donated clothes by the pound to
wholesale merchants, who grade them. The top grade usually ends up in
vintage shops in the United States, Europe or Latin America. The lesser-
grade merchandise, much of which is faded or stained, is labeled Africa A
and Africa B.

Once in Africa, the bales of clothes bounce through a chain of wholesalers
until they are thrown off a truck at a market.

A day at the market

Something for everyone — even used underwear

Several countries, including Nigeria, have tried to ban imports of used
clothing; others are trying to impose taxes on the trade. But even in
Nigeria, which earns billions of dollars a year in oil exports, the demand
for hand-me-downs is great and the traders creative.

So every morning before daybreak, Yaba Market is a carnival bursting with
the sounds of vendors setting up for the day. They haul their goods in
wheelbarrows and on homemade carts, but mostly on their backs, dumping them
on the hard-packed soil to grab a quick bite to eat from women warming pots
of tea and porridge over glowing coals.

The market stretches for miles, spilling out from a sprawling collection of
galvanized sheds and rusting steel buildings. Yaba is not even among the
five biggest markets on the outskirts of greater Lagos, home to 20 million
people.

"Some vendors come here to hustle," Anorue says. "The good vendors know
that if you treat your customers right, they will come back."

In one corner, clothing vendors are clumped around the railroad tracks.
There are 20,000 of them. When the train rumbles through — sometimes
several times a day — vendors scramble to clear their makeshift stalls from
the tracks.

Many have specialties. Izuka Aptazi, 23, operates the Athlete's Foot of
Yaba. Each day, Aptazi, who flaunts a jersey of Philadelphia 76ers guard
Allen Iverson, scours the market for athletic shoes and jerseys bearing the
names of international sports stars. Some vendors sell him jerseys from
their bales at cost. He earns about $30 a month.

A Shaquille O'Neal jersey that costs him $3 can be sold for as much as $8.
In soccer-crazy Nigeria, even poor fans will scrape together a few dollars
for the jerseys of French star Thierry Henry, Senegalese striker El Hadji
Diouf or former Manchester United superstar David Beckham.

Water Eoji, 26, sells tablecloths and curtains at about $2 a yard. He often
knocks on the doors of hotels, offering to outfit their rooms with drapes
that once adorned American homes.

At the bottom of the heap are used-underwear vendors such as Teresa
Williams, whose trade is cited by Africans as evidence of how far they have
fallen. Williams herself sheepishly acknowledges that she would draw the
line at wearing anything she sells.

Three young toughs strut past, glancing scornfully at her rumpled piles of
garments. When they're a safe distance away, Williams blurts out: "If you
check under their pants, I bet they're wearing used underwear." And she
explodes in laughter.

Minutes later, four young women from Surulere, a nearby neighborhood known
as Nigeria's movie capital, stop by and pick through the pile. They choose
a half-dozen pink and black panties.

Nigerians call these places "bend-down boutiques," because customers often
have to stoop to get to the merchandise. But no one minds stooping if the
price is right. And the price always is negotiable.

Hard bargaining

A schoolteacher clothes his family for less than $20


John Muriamo, a 45-year-old teacher and father of four teenage sons,
arrives at Yaba ready to bargain hard.

He has the equivalent of $20 in his pants pocket. He is wearing one of the
two white long-sleeve shirts he owns. Both are threadbare. He is trying to
support his family of six on a salary of $325 a year — a little less than a
dollar a day. But, like many Africans, he often is paid late, if at all.

With sweat rolling down his face in the tropical sun, Muriamo stops at the
booth of Precious Okoyo. He selects a yellow Lakers T-shirt and a checked
Gap shirt for his two older sons, and baggy jeans for his two younger boys,
who are 14 and 15. Finally, for himself, he picks up a lily-white, long-
sleeve Yves Saint Laurent shirt that, with any tie, could command respect
from his students.

Okoyo does some mental calculations and tells him that he owes her 4,200
naira, the equivalent of $28.

"I'll give you 1,800 naira," Muriamo offers, his voice cutting through the
hum of buying and selling.

No response.

"Look, Miss Precious, I always buy from you," he pleads. "Am I not your
best customer?"

He makes a final appeal: "Everybody has to live."

"Teacher, make it 2,700 naira and we'll remain friends," Okoyo says. "But
remember, next time it's my turn."

Muriamo hands over the money, grabs the merchandise and thanks Okoyo with
an elaborate handshake. He has a piece of clothing for each of his four
children, a new work shirt and about $2 left. His children will be happy,
and his family will eat tonight.

Like other Nigerian men, Muriamo used to wear the colorful, flowing
Nigerian "agbada" on special occasions, or when he and his family attended
Sunday services at their Pentecostal church. He cannot remember the last
time he bought one of the traditional robes. Now, his $20 would buy only a
yard or two of locally produced fabric.

"We get better deals because everyone is trying to do some business,"
Muriamo says of the market.

One reason is international trade policy. While Nigerian fabric has grown
scarcer and more expensive, reforms demanded by international lenders have
eliminated Africa's high tariffs on imported clothing, driving down prices.

After a decade of wearing used clothes from the West, many Africans find
that necessity has become style. Children no longer want to wear anything
else.

"If they want to look like rap stars and sports stars, we can't compete,"
says J.P. Olarewaju, who heads an association of Lagos textile
manufacturers. "The children want to dress in baggy jeans and look like
their heroes.

"It would be the happiest day in my life when secondhand clothing is truly
banned from this country," says Olarewaju, who is wearing a floral green
African suit.

Nigerian wholesalers evade their country's ban by shipping goods to
neighboring Benin, where a bribe to a customs officer guarantees passage to
Nigeria — and boosts the local economy. Fifteen percent of Benin's revenue
comes from so-called re-exports.

Once in Nigeria, the clothes pass through a chain of middlemen to markets
buzzing with millions of eager customers. At Yaba Market, shoppers seek out
cooler spots as merchants take a noon break. Vendors rush in with pots on
their heads to serve porridge, greens and meat.

In front of a shed emblazoned with a homemade sign that reads, "Hand of
God: Dealers in All Kinds of Trousers such as Chinos, jeans and
Electronics," young men break out drums and percussion gourds. The music
summons vendors and shoppers. Some dance until they become entranced by the
frenzied beat.

Life depends — for all the vendors — on a good bale of clothes.

Today, Anorue, who exclusively deals in skirts and suits for professional
women, is smiling. His bale produced three DKNY suits, a couple of Ann
Taylor outfits and some Italian brands he hasn't seen before.

"My customers are very demanding," he says. "They are going to be very
happy."

The next bundle might be different. But the clothes won't be discarded.

"This is like the palm-oil business," Anorue says, referring to the
lucrative trade that squeezes cooking oil from palm-tree parts. "Nothing,
not even the husk, is wasted."


Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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