A Story of Stuff

Alternate Title: I'll give you 20 bob for that Iginla t-shirt

If you haven't seen The Story of Stuff, you should watch it. You can do that here:
http://storyofstuff.com/
I didn't write the story of stuff, I didn't even discover it (my sister sent it to me a while ago). But I did totally rip off the title for this blog entry - completely without permission. And here now is my own story of stuff.

Wednesday is market day in Ngong - actually everyday is market day, but Wednesday seems to be the big day. The market in town is partly "permanent" stalls and partly an open lot where people set up shop. Half of the market consists of food vendors, selling mostly gloriously fresh fruits and vegetables - carrots and cabbages, corn, onion, potatoes, kale arrowroot and amaranth, mangos, bananas, pinapple and pawpaws. There are also some dry goods - maize and beans, lentils, peppers and spices. And of course there are chickens and goats wandering the entire place, which I'm pretty sure you can buy if you can find out who is selling them. I think here is would be possible to follow the 50 mile diet and only eat locally grown foods - afterall, most of the vendors are little old ladies who can't have possibly carried that sack of potatoes all that far.

The other half of the market is where this story of stuff begins, or ends, depending on your perspective. The other half of the market is for clothing and household goods. It is possible to purchase almost anything here in the market - from collanders and cutlery to bedding and baby clothes. There is a particularly astounding amount of lingere, probably because Kenyan women tend to pile on the undergarments (not just underwear, but bloomers and petticoats too!) Some of the goods here are new and of about the same quality as you would find in a dollar store in Canada. But most of the goods are second hand.

"Does anybody else wonder where all this stuff comes from?" I asked some of the other volunteers one day as we wandered through a similar market in Nairobi. "No" they all answered in unison. Okay, so I guess I'm just crazy, but I can't stop wondering about all the stuff! Even the hawkers on the streets of Nairobi have more stuff to sell than I can comprehend. There are guys sitting on the sidewalks with 50 pairs of jeans - honestly, where does it all come from?

Then today, as I was walking through the Ngong smorgasborg of stuff, I made a startling discovery - a pile of clothes, all the with the Value Village tags still on them! I picked up a Calgary Flames, Jarome Iginla t-shirt, it's VV tag showing $2.99, "how much?" I asked the vendor. "40 bob" she replied, which really means 20 shillings because she doubled the price because I'm white. 20 shillings! That's about 30 cents for a shirt that probably cost $30 originally, but now can't even fetch $3 in Canada!

As I continue to look closely through the piles, I realize that everything here in Ngong, is ours from North America. All those t-shirts you got for free for walking for breast cancer or MS or inner city youth, they're all here. Your brownies/cubs/scouts uniform that your mum swears is packed away in the basement somewhere, it's here. Your Old Navy t-shirt that you were so in love with for like, a month, it's here. Your uniform from your first job at McDonalds, the one you kept "for posterity", it's here. Those neon sweatpants that you were so sure were going to come back into style by now, they're here. It's all here in Kenya, and at rock bottom prices.

So this is how this story of stuff goes: clothing (the stuff) is manufactured in various developing countries around the world. The stuff is carried by boat and plane and truck and train to North America's pristine shopping malls so we can buy it to make ourselves feel good about our nice fat golden arrows. When it's obsolete to us, we give it to the Sally Anne, or Value Village or put it in the bins at the grocery store parking lot to help kids with diabetes or stray dogs or whatever. When the stuff fails as even second-hand stuff in North America, it is put back on the train or truck or plane or boat, and returned to the developing world. What I don't know is if this stuff is donated into East Africa, or if it is sold; but I have a feeling that somebody on the wealthier end of things is making a profit. Is this system sustainable? Is it ethical?

Everybody in North America is at least a little bit aware that "made in China" or "made in Indonesia" is usually synonymous with deplorable working conditions and low wages. We put it out of our minds, as we swipe our debit cards, because we are removed from it, it isn't really real to us. But are we aware that the developing world is also the graveyard for our percieved obsolete goods? How long can we contine to use the developing world as both our provider and our dumping ground for our obsessive need from cheap stuff? What if Africa didn't want our junk anymore? Where on earth would we put all of our stuff?

Okay, so maybe you think I'm over reacting - afterall, clothing is fairly innocuous, it's useful, practical even. But my issue is not with the clothing, it's that we in North America are so painfully unaware of our own impact on the world. We don't know where our clothing goes after we donate it, we only know that it's not our problem anymore. And if we are dumping our old clothing here, what else are we dumping without the general public's knowledge?

Think you're being a responsible citizen when you recycle your old TV/computer/cell phone? Read last month's National Geopgraphic and you'll learn that your obsolete electronics are probably ending up in West Africa. On the coast of Ghana, children who should be in school are instead wandering junkyards of our electronics, breathing in fumes as they burn off the plastic to recover the metal parts which can be sold for pennies.

Yes, old clothing is fairly innocuous, but our idea that the developing world is our personal dumping ground, now that's going to be an issue.