Lilongwe Used Clothes Market

The used clothes business is quite the happening affair in Lilongwe. Clothes that originated from Goodwill, charities etc etc in the U.S. and Europe arrive in bales that are about 5ft by 5 ft and are bought by individuals. They then take it to their stall (a covered space with plastic on the floor) in the market and open up the bales. The shopper then sorts through the piles until they make a find. Other clothes are also washed, ironed and hung up for better presentation. There does seem to be some sort of method to the madness on how the bales are put together. IE some will be all men's shirts or kids clothes or whatever. Just like consignment shopping in the States you never know what you are going to get: some stuff is junk and other times you will find a name brand with the tag still on it! The whole city from expats to villagers shop here and the prices range from about 100 kwacha for a simple kids shirt to several hundred for a jacket. Sometimes it is depressing to look at an item that has a garage sale tag for 75cents and you are paying $2 for it. However, clearly most items are worth more than they are sold for at garage sales.
We have been shopping here the last 2 years for Christmas gifts for our staff and their families. This year they have a total of 12 kids so we needed quite a lot and it was hot! So hot that while I usually really enjoy these sorts of things i was desperate to leave before we were halfway through our list! We finally gave up before we got everything so I will have to make one more trip - on a cooler day! Once we got everything home and washed it all looks quite nice except for one pair of pants that is too worn in the knees. What actually prompted me to write about this is that last night as I was hanging up a very cute dress that is about 2 sizes too big for Karis I realized that it is in perfect condition AND reversible. Very cool. So I think we will be keeping that one for her and I will buy another one to give as a gift...
The downside to all of this is that apparently this type of thing has actually been really detrimental to the local textile industries in several African countries. Local textiles just cannot produce clothes as cheap as these can be sold... Yet another thing that seems like really good thing initially but once you learn more about the economics not so helpful after all...