To quote a character from the film ‘Shooting Dogs’ (an excellent, if difficult, film about the Rwandan genocide) I sometimes feel I’m starring in my very own Oxfam commercial! With this in mind I thought I’d scribble a little bit about some of the clothing worn here, and it’s not quite what you’d expect. (I’ll explain why it is that I have enough time to sit and muse, and at such length in a later blog).
The ‘average’ citizen of this country spends very little of their outgoings on clothing, primarily because they have very little ‘outgoing’ at all, this is a very much subsistence based economy. So many of the clothes are repaired, recycled and in many cases re-adjusted to suit the needs of whoever happens to be wearing them at the time. Football shirts are a predominant theme. I remember a big charity campaign a few years ago for football fans in the UK to donate their old team football strips to Africa.
Well, to all those on windswept terraces across the nation, you can rest assured that, at least some did indeed arrive as intended and are being put to good use. The fact that the clubs have only recently signed some of the players whose names appear printed on the back of the shirts proves two things. How quick the global distribution structure can be, even to the most remote places. It also proves that football clubs are just as tight fisted as ever and change their strip before you’ve even had time to put the last one on!
Obviously the bigger clubs sell more shirts and by default more end up here but I did have the unbridled joy of seeing somebody wandering round in a very old Bristol city top. It is also an interesting comment on how remote, and cut off from the world this area is, that none of people wearing them have any idea what they are. None of the children playing football on the airstrip have ever heard of Ronaldo or Beckham let alone seen them play football.
To say it stops at football shirts would be to do the others of you who donate things a disservice. Whoever played Wake College netball team ’95 and didn’t feel the need to keep hold of their commerative t-shirt, sleep easy in the knowledge it is being well worn here in Africa.
Somebody spends every day expressing to the world his love of Paris and another, his devotion to 'Kid Rock'. A place and a person unheard of here.
Which leads me to conclude with perhaps the most bizarre of them all. A pharmacist in the place I work spends a large percentage of his days wearing a red t-shirt with ‘I Helped Rhonda Celebrate The Big 40’ emblazoned in large white lettering across his chest.
I sometimes lie awake at night with the questions this throws up, spinning round my head. Who was Rhonda? When was she 40? Why did she feel the need to have t-shirts printed? Why did she need ‘help’ to celebrate? Was her ‘Big 40’ a party to remember or just a few mates and a bowl of twiglets affair? Primarily of course, how on earth did that T-shirt get here?
At this point I’m going start sounding like someone from the national missing persons help line but anyhow, if you were at Rhonda’s big 40, of better still, if you are Rhonda herself, please get in contact, and tidy up some very loose ends.
