Women's Cotton Skirt Second Hand in Bales, Uganda

Women's Cotton Skirt Second Hand in Bales, Uganda

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Jostling for space, people jam the crowded footpaths crisscrossing a massive open market in downtown Kampala, Uganda's capital.ladies cotton skirt second hand in bales uganda african style used clothes Shoppers crowd the stalls that specialize in secondhand clothing, sifting through underwear for pairs that seem new and trying on shoes despite getting pushed around in the crush. The vast Owino Market is the nerve center of this frenetic trade.

It is a part of a fashion ecosystem that operates on the fringes of a larger, increasingly fraught global debate about how and where we produce and consume fashion, and its impact on the planet.ladies cotton skirt second hand in bales uganda african style used clothes The issue has become especially contentious in Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni last month announced plans to ban imported used clothes. He says the shipments amount to "dumping" and stifle development of local textile industries.

For Mama Prossy and thousands of other traders in Uganda, a ban would spell disaster. They hawk their goods in scores of large, open-air markets across this country of 45 million people, at roadside stands and in malls where it's possible to buy secondhand clothes marketed as new. Traders buy the clothes from wholesalers in Europe and then sell them to consumers, most of whom are impoverished rural Ugandans.

The clothes come from places like Germany, Italy and the United States. Some are discarded by Europeans or Americans; others, including some worn by the military, were donated by Ugandans in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when a massive influx of refugees settled in the nation's capital. The garments are then shipped to Uganda in shipping containers. The government has been cracking down on the trade, threatening to confiscate the goods of anyone caught violating the law.

On the banks of Lake Victoria, a company called Southern Range Nyanza uses cotton grown on Uganda's fertile plain to make 13 million yards of fabric a year. The firm's managing director, Viren Thakkar, estimates he can sell the same shirts in Uganda for $3, less than twice the cost of what the used-clothing trade brings in from overseas. But he says it's impossible to compete with the cheap imports that flood into Uganda from Kenya, Tanzania and other African countries.

It is a Saturday afternoon in December, and the truck carrying the Trans-Americas container with Susie Bayer's T-shirt pulls into a warehouse in an industrial district of Kampala. It parks beside a building with a sign that reads Merchant Warehouse, and seven customers await its arrival. Among them is a heavy woman in her 40s with a flapper's bob and a look of disgust on her fleshy face, who everyone calls Mama Prossy.