Mitumba The Second-Hand Road
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The T-shirt of Felix, a 10-year-old German boy, winds up in an old clothes collection point, the starting place for a journey spanning two continents: donated, collected, bought and sold several times over, finally worn by Lucky, a 9-year-old boy who lives in a small Tanzanian village. In some African countries, used clothing ranks first in imported goods. In fact, 90% of the population wears second hand clothes, called “dead white men’s clothes” because no one in Africa would throw away anything still good unless it came from a dead person. Deals, persons and places along the secret route trade routes of the used clothing business, a hidden road that reveals a surprising reality.
In Africa I saw that the rich of Dar es Salaam preferred used clothes because new clothes are such bad quality. I learned that everyone thinks that we Europeans sell our old clothes and do not donate them, whereas the Europeans think that the clothes they donate go to the poor and needy. I saw that Africa is changing rapidly and that the Chinese manufacturers are trying to penetrate the market with new low-priced clothes. When they do, the living whites will have to find another way to dispose of the clothes of dead whites.
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