KUMASI, Ghana—Have you ever wondered why you drop designer clothes that you've soiled only slightly (or grown too fat for) into the charity box at the supermarket parking lot and never find items of equal quality at Goodwill or Value Village? What happens to the contents of some of those more obscure charity boxes for used clothes?
Well, some 27-year-old West African trader is waltzing about Kumasi's Central Market in your old $75 H&M jeans. It's also possible—though I'm not able to confirm it—that she is wearing that fantastic pink bra you bought, but then were too stupid to remove before you dyed your hair black. In fact, I have seen a stall filled with these very bras.
She may be wearing last year's Nikes that got a bit dirty. They look better than when you wore them because she washes them regularly. She may be protecting her cooked food from flies with your old lace doily, sleeping on the $250 Egyptian cotton sheets that got a tiny stain (which she quickly got out because she is an expert at hand washing), and drying off with the designer bath sheet you also "ruined" during the black hair dye incident. It seems she doesn't care about the dime-sized dot that drove you to throw it into the charity bin.
Trade in used clothes is a huge, thriving business in Ghana. It is larger than the local custom-made garment industry. The used clothes here are called obroni weyu, which means literally "white person ( obroni ) has died ( weyu )." I'm told that's because when a white person died here in the past the clothes were given away to the locals. Anyway, who would give away perfectly good things unless they had died? Really, it makes sense.
Nonetheless, it's shocking to see the sheer size of the industry. There is a shop selling used clothes on every block—even here, in the suburbs where I live. There are women with huge piles of used clothes on their heads walking through the streets ringing tiny bells. You may call them to set down their burdens and have a look through. Some sell only used towels, others bed sheets or children's clothes.
The interesting thing is that a pair of Versace jeans may lay beside a Cherokee brand from Zellers. Used Rockports are found alongside Walmart brand shoes. The price for each is the same. The name tag that means so much to us in North America is meaningless here.
I decided to investigate further. I interviewed several vendors at the obroni weyu market inside Kumasi Central Market, a mile-and-a-half stretch crammed with hundreds of stalls, each with a specialty—towels, bed sheets and linens, children's clothes, jeans, bras, even panties.
A bale of used clothing costs between $200 and $350 dollars depending on the quality. Bales weighing between 100 and 150 lbs are graded into first, second, and third pick.
"Only first pick moves," says 41-year-old obroni weyu vendor and paint salesman Kofi Adom. According to Mr. Adom, "towels move, jeans move, shirts move, dress pant, trainers [running shoes], blanket sheets, football boots, baseball hat, sock . . ." He leans over and quietly tells me, "and brassiere moves."
Mr. Adom's stall sells first pick men's clothing. A pair of used men's khakis can cost as much at $8, dress shirts $5.
Since I have been here over nine months, I, a living obroni, have also shopped here. Needless to say, I insist on a discount. "This used to by mine, and now you are selling it back to me?" I often —no, always—say.
On my largest shopping trip I spent an outrageous $50 at a bootik style stall in Central Market. It was a cramped, but tidy little wooden shack with, thankfully, a changing room and mirror, run by a gentleman in his early 30s named Heavy D. Each item is sold at the discretion of Mr. D, who, with a very authoritative English accent (though he claims he's never been to England), insists that I model each item while he appraises it, pronouncing, "yes" or "no, it's too . . . something."
Though this sounds a bit creepy, it really wasn't. Heavy has a fantastic eye, which is why his shop sells only the best things. For the privilege of trying on the very finest first-pick T-shirts and jeans while listening to the latest dancehall reggae from Jamaica I pay $7.50 for each item. (And I swear I beat him down nearly physically from $9 an item).
Second- and third-pick items are not sold in the 3-foot-wide "streets" that divide the 10-by-15-foot stalls in Central Market, but on little tables along the railroad tracks. These are well-used items sold from between 50 cents and $2.
On one of the rare occasions that another white person I ran into deigned to talk to me, I met a young woman volunteering for the Peace Corps who was looking for familiar items, "you know, like a school you went to, or a club you belong to."
Which brings us to the next question: where exactly do these bales come from?
I asked Mr. Adom. He and all the young men in the surrounding stalls who had gathered to investigate this bizarre oddity—a white lady in the middle of the maze that is Central Market—agree: The best bales come from the U.K. Next is the U.S.
"Whose bales are worst?" I ask. They look at each other and Adom answers, "Canada and Australia."
"What's wrong with the Canadian bales?" I ask. "Good things are not inside," says young Isaac Owusu-Ansah. "Canadian clothes are too big," Adom chimes in, "waist size 42, waist size 90, ha, ha, ha, ha." And they all laugh.
Do you hear that Canada? You are too fat and your clothes are ugly! Well, it was a sobering moment, so I hope all of you Canadians are sucking in your guts and thinking twice about commenting on how huge Americans are. (I'm guilty as charged on all counts.)
Canadian Epoch Times correspondent Zoe Ackah is spending a year in rural Ghana. This story is part of a series in which Zoe shares her culture shock and her thoughts on life in one of West Africa's more prosperous nations. For more articles in the series, visit www.TheEpochTimes.com and search "West African Journal."
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