You may wonder what will happen to your favourite tee-shirt your spouse insists you donate to charity. You've been told you can't wear it anymore because it's "too faded for public" or the hole in the armpit deems it "inappropriate" for gardening and climbing ladders.
But it has a history. You remember playing baseball in it as a teenager, or the time you and your dad bought matching ones at the amusement park, or when your best friend gave you her favourite one because you were moving away. It's not just cotton with sleeves, it's part of you.
Realizing you will never stop hearing, "That shirt is so not sexy!" you reluctantly toss it in the pile for charity. And with a tear in your eye, dump it at Goodwill or in that bin that's been taunting you at your local grocer.
On the way home, as your car radio blasts Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" (and yes, you brought the CD with you in preparation) you think nobody will appreciate that tee-shirt like you did. When Whitney hits her last "Yoooouuuuuuu", you come to your senses. You think about the journey your tee-shirt will embark upon and hope that it will make somebody else as happy as it's made you.
Well, you my friend, have made someone happy. There's a good chance it ended up in Liberia.
There are many Liberians walking around in tee-shirts with slogans like, "CANCER SUCKS!," "Martial Arts Momma", and "I Do My Own Stunts." I saw the latter on a three year old in a village that doesn't have access to clean drinking water. My friend Jess saw her small town U.S.A. school gym tee-shirt on a 70-year-old man walking the streets of Monrovia.
In every city you in which you wander throughout this country, you will find someone selling these wrinkly just-off-the-boat tee-shirts. They're floating on bent coat hangers in the market, or in placed in piles under umbrellas. They're folded into wheelbarrows, carted around by teenaged boys with pipes comparable to Schwartznegger's.
No, it wasn't the fantasy you imagined. It wasn't given to that poor man on the corner who chews on his lower lip all afternoon because he doesn't know any better or donated to an adult orphanage. It was sold to the everyman.
It's not all bad. You've boosted the economy in a country with an 85 per cent unemployment rate. And more than one person has profited along the way.
I've imagined it like this. The cargo ship arrives in Monrovia with a container of clothes including your tee-shirt. Someone on board makes a 100 per cent profit when he/she sells the clothes to someone waiting at the port. This person then loads them in trucks and sells them to their contacts in various cities. Those contacts sell them to local store owners. And then shop keepers resell them to the public. Four times sold.
Four people on this side of the Atlantic are profiting from your good will and your ability to let go.
And at least you won't be called unsexy anymore.
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