Boutique.

I was not deterred by the squatter camp resemblance. The smells wisped through the air with a mixture of burnt corn, evaporating sweat, musty and freshly washed clothes and dust. I didn’t bat and eyelid at the screaming babies or the yelling vendors. The sun beat down on all of us, blazing above with all its glory. This was an open-air, rubbage-dump-like, second-hand-clothes trading-floor. It was about the size of a soccer field. There were hundreds of little “stalls”. Each one consisted of a piece of black plastic, that was piled high with clothing, laid over the rocky bare earth.

I would draw in a deep breath, smell the odor that only this place had, and find my sense of power. As many teenage girls do, I loved to shop. I was in control of things here; I controlled my money; I controlled what I chose and sometimes I even controlled the prices, I didn’t care how long it took, I would find my bargains. That look of determination would enter my features just as it does any teenage girl who loves to shop. But while they were gracing the aisles of luxurious malls and delving through racks of modern, designer clothes, I was swooping down towards the ground rummaging through mucky, “nearly-new” clothes. Everything was at my feet; I had to hunch down to sift through the pyramids of clothes. We fondly named this place “bend down boutique”. All Zimbabweans knew this was the name for it. The irony of it being a boutique was something to giggle at and the bending down speaks for itself.

Like many girls do I had a shopping buddy. Her name was Rosie. We were kindred spirits when it came to “BDB”. We were also best buddies, she was a year younger than me but we did everything together. We weren’t in the same classes in high school, but we made up for lost time at lunch time or on the weekends. Our budgets were limited but we thought it was worth the sacrifice. We saw it as many women see thrift-store shopping, time consuming but well worth it. My favourite moments were ones when we would find outrageous fashions from the nineties and hold them up to our bodies.

“ Look at me, Rosie. Puffed sleeves really suite me; don’t they?” I would say, holding up a giant pink and blue flowered blouse with oversized inflated shoulders. “Awwww, what about this awesome neon green and orange track suite?” Rosie would counter, with matching tops and bottoms. “It would really suite you, Amy.” I would chuckle at her antics and then keep rummaging through the clothes. Our “friends”, the vendors, would laugh with us and hold up items they thought we would like. Once in a while we did like them, but most of the time they would be tiny mini-skirts with mesh tanks tops, or something like that.

We shopped together because it was more fun that way. It may have been because our parents thought it was safer if we weren’t alone. We never felt threatened. The vendors new us by name. Sometimes they called me “Rosie” and Rosie, “Amy”, “White girls all look the same.” We didn’t mind. I found it just as hard to remember their names. Eventually I remembered some names, Amai Bertha or Sekuru Love-more. We usually remembered the names of the peddlers that had the “best” clothes. Some of them would even fold piles of shorts and shirts, and make it easier to look through the clothes.

All the clothes came from Europe and mostly America. Africans often don’t question where things come from, and we didn’t. In our young, teenage, shopper’s minds, we were simply excited to be able to afford “new” clothes. Once in awhile I would find something with a Goodwill tag on it. I am not sure how I knew what Goodwill was, but I did. I remember slightly flinching at the thought that these clothes may be meant for someone other than me. But it wouldn’t stop me. I never really wanted the Goodwill clothes anyway because they weren’t new. I considered it more of a feat to find something with a price tag on. Once in awhile I would find a shirt with a $20US. I had no idea what the exchange rate was but I knew that the 400 Zimbabwean dollars I would pay was well worth it. At that time $400Z would have been about 20 cents in the US.

Time-after-time I would receive a marriage proposal. Glistening white smiles would greet me and offer their hands in marriage. I would always smile and politely decline, knowing I would be back and they would ask me again, so the offer was always on the table. I never really thought they were serious. But I secretly wondered if I said yes what would happen. It’s very normal for white girls to be proposed to; it seems there is a hidden agreement that we won’t say yes and they know that. I think it was more of a joke to them, to see if they could really get us to say yes.

If it wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was clothing one, “Amy, I have good body-tops for you today, body-tops, body-tops, body-tops!” I never was sure what a body-top was, but I always smiled and thanked them. Somehow we all found pleasure and security in this distorted way of shopping. As many thrift shoppers do, Rosie and I went almost every Friday afternoon. Once in awhile we would beg either of our moms to take us after school, and sometimes we went on both Friday and Saturday. For us, it was an adventure we wanted to see if there were new things, or get great deals. We also didn’t have much else to do, so this was a form of entertainment.

Around the time of the 2004 Olympics, Zimbabwe had a swimmer, Kirsty Coventry; she won one gold, one silver, and one bronze. This was very unusual for Zimbabwe; she was one of the very few who has ever represented our country. Needless to say, her name was everywhere, even at BDB. For a few weeks whenever I would I go to bend-down I would have everyone yelling at me “Kirsty Coventry, Kirsty Coventry” and waving swimming costumes in the air. A sales pitch that was somewhat unusual, however, it must be noted that I was one of the few white girls who shopped at bend-down, if I was white it was assumed I was a swimmer. I was a swimmer, but second-hand swimming costumes weren’t something I wanted to purchase. I did purchase a yellow Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt. I had no idea what Abercrombie and Fitch was, but even though I didn’t, I still felt like I had “status” because of it. As women often do, they would ask, “Where did you get that?” and I would always reply, “bend-down”, knowing I had a one-of-a-kind item.

My Abercrombie T-shirt had had quite a journey. It was one of those that did have a Goodwill tag on it. How did it get from the original buyer to me? Year after year many Americans will purge their closets of unwanted clothing. Americans, on average, give away or throw out 68 pounds of clothing and other textiles each year, 2.5 billion pounds total, according to the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles trade association. This clothing is often donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. If the Salvation Army or Goodwill does not sell my T-shirt, what is its next destination? It is sold to what they call brokers. The brokers are the ones who divide the clothing into bundles depending on value and type of clothing. These brokers then sell the bundles to foreign countries such as, Japan, Chile, Tanzania.

So there I was sitting on the black plastic. I would fumble through shorts, t-shirts, jeans, socks, bathing suites (swimming costumes) and even underwear sometimes. My mom would come with us sometimes. I was often embarrassed with her shopping choices, Rosie and I knew the “good-stuff” we knew what to look for and what not to look for. My mom, however, had no problem shopping for underwear. We would tell her to quickly buy it and put it in her bag so that no one else would see her. Like any teenage girl I would say,

“Awww mom that’s disgusting, you can’t buy someone else’s underwear.” To which she would reply, “I will wash it, and its in perfectly good condition, so why not.”

There were so many in-between brokers for the clothing, that no one knew the clothes weren’t necessarily meant to be given out for free. It was legal for them to be sold and re-sold and re-sold. No one seemed to know that Zimbabwe banned the second-hand-clothes-trade in 1994; this was 2004. If Zimbabwe had banned the trade, then that meant the country could not buy straight from the brokers. To get the clothes they would have to be smuggled in through neighbouring countries. Zimbabwe may have banned the clothes trade, I speculate, for two reasons: one, if the government had no way of “sharing” the profits of this trade then they would want none of it. Or, they were afraid of constant foreign export and what that would mean for exposing all the other corruption within the country.

We always washed our clothes from BDB. In fact, most of the time we washed them two or possibly three times. Once I had this black t-shirt with a picture of a cartoon character on the front. I loved it. Cartoons were very “in” at that time as well as the fact that we couldn’t find them in Zimbabwean stores. The shirt had terrible pit-stains and the smell was abominable. I tried to get the stench out. I tried everything, hot water wash, cold water wash, spray and wash, spray deodorant on the shirt, another hot water wash; nothing worked. The shirt had to be thrown out. Sometimes our bargains didn’t quite work out.

Everyone was so friendly and willing to bargain that I never imagined any of them smuggling those clothes in from Mozambique. Police continued to increase security at border posts, so how were the clothes still coming in? The police were willing to take bribes; they were always willing to take bribes; the clothes still came in. Often if the clothes were confiscated, they would still corruptly be shared amongst police and end up in the markets again.

The customs officials at the border posts are also smuggling through these clothes. Customs officials are said to make less than US$200 a month but they are buying posh cars and houses because of smuggling. Police are said to earn less than custom officials and so they make more money by smuggling also. It has been said that smugglers prefer to work with police officers because they demand less than customs officials. The smuggling has become more and more serious over the years. Smugglers have made this their livelihood and will do anything to keep it that way. It has been reported that they have become “mafia-like” in their operations. They work at night and they have confidantes among security officials. They even have vehicles with cameras that are sent out as “spying missions” before they transport the clothes.

I never thought about the fact that buying things from this market restricted my business in normal stores. My family could never afford the clothes in the normal clothes stores, Meikles or Edgars. Most of the clothes in these stores were not made for skinny white girls; they were made for the more voluptuous figures.

However, in neighbouring countries like Uganda the national textile industries are not surviving. Used clothing is said to account for 81 percent of garment purchases. Different African countries are dealing with this issue differently; South Africa cut off imports in 1999 and Nigeria, Ethiopia and Eritrea have imposed certain bans on the clothing. Although the clothes were banned in Zimbabwe, they were still everywhere and still to this day are helping the decline of the local industries.

I had hoped that my little yellow Abercrombie t-shirt had made it to me through the correct means. Sadly, when things goes through so many loopholes to get to an end there is often at least one corrupt step in the path. Did it start with the re-sale of freely donated clothing in the U.S? Or end with the smuggling of this clothing from African Nation to African Nation? That is a hard line to define. While all that illegal trade was going on, Rosie and I simply shopped. We were oblivious to the means in which our favourite clothes came to us; most shoppers are.