Ba Kelvin's new business has made me also ponder the secondhand industry in the United States. Back in the U.S., I made regular donations to the
Goodwill GoodNeighbor Stores in Fullerton and Brea, an example set by my Grandma Pat. I would donate “old” clothes, shoes, small kitchen items and other household goods I had purchased but grown tired of or wanted to replace with something new- or I just realized I'd accumulated too much stuff to fit in closets, cabinets and pantries. When I was a student or otherwise on a tight budget, I shopped Goodwill's GoodNeighbor Stores for clothing, furniture, kitchen supplies- even party decorations.
While seeing the validity in criticisms of Goodwill, there are still several things I like about it: it seems to provide services to many factions of American society. First, it's a place for wealthier Americans to discard unwanted, gently used stuff accumulated through impulse purchases, gifts, and a general addiction to “consumption” or “buying things we don't need”. This has become an fascinating and inextricable part of American culture, psychology and economy that to knock or condone would be an entirely different blog entry.
Secondly, donations to Goodwill, and the resulting revenue, provide local employment at GoodNeighbor Stores for folks of limited skills and who haven't found employment elsewhere. At the stores I've shopped, some of employees are disabled and others older folks bridging the gap between income and expenses. Reflecting on it now, I imagine these folks had limited employment opportunity, but bills and expenses like the rest of us. And besides the financial resources employment brings, we all at some level crave the sense of empowerment and accomplishment found in employment.
Goodwill stores also present a low-cost option for low-income community members- struggling familes, students, pensioners, etc.- to purchase basics and even little luxuries.
Finally, there are the things donated to Goodwill, yet that do not sell. According the Goodwill's website, these items: “are sold to salvage merchants who ship the material to third-world countries where jobs and wages are created through sorting and selling these items.” And this circles back to our friend ba Kelvin and his new success as a “salaula” retailer.
In fact, at any market in Zambia, from Lusaka to Mwense boma to Lukwesa, you'll see secondhand clothing being sold and quite a lot of it. Here in Zambia, secondhand clothing, or “salaula”, has become an industry of serious economic importance, as evidenced in ba Kelvin's recent success. Critics of the development of this industry in the developing world claim that the availability secondhand clothing from the developed world suppresses and eventually destroys local textile industries. Perhaps Zambia serves as a case point: secondhand clothing is very popular here and the textile industry, as I understand it, is effectively defunct.
During Pre-Service Training, my Peace Corps Cibemba Language-Culture Facilitator, ba Golden, taught me that “salaula” comes from the Cibemba word “ukusala” (to chose, to select). “Salaula” refers to the secondhand clothing one buys in the market- one must rummage through a pile of clothing and chose the pieces he wants to buy.
Here in rural Zambia, everyone in our village wears salaula, as does everyone is all the other villages I've visited. It's very popular- we often see adults and children alike wearing T-shirts from small American sports teams, 5k runs, or schools. In Mansa, I once passed a youth wearing a “Newport Swimming” sweatshirt. Our friend ba Frinch's favorite shirt is a green polo shirt with an anchor and the name Ron embroidered in gold. Even as I type this, there is a group of children playing “njuka” (cards) on our front patio. They are all wearing salaula: a faded, torn “Hornets '08” T-shirt; a drab-colored children's U.S. Army T-shirt with big holes around the collar; a ragged, torn nightshirt (worn as a dress) that says “Some Bunny Loves Me”; a yellow “Belle” Halloween costume dress that now is held together by a few threads at the seams. These are salaula items that have likely been passed down from big sister/brother to younger.
