Memorial– home to the second hand clothes sales in Moshi

The majority of people in Tanzania either wear Kanga or a similar thinner cloth or used second hand clothes from the Western world. There are new clothes available but they are too expensive for most people here. The clothes are shipped over from USA, Canada and England.

GHTA received a large donation of clothes from a former volunteers company a few weeks ago – the post here isn’t great so it took a long time to get here and then got stuck in customs for a while as they were adamant more tax should be paid.. corruption is everywhere! Even in DHL! Monika decided to give all of the clothes to a former student Lavina for her to start a used clothing stall at the local used clothes market – Memorial.

Lavina actually failed her final exams at GHTA but tried hard, she missed a lot of school as her husband tragically died on week 2 of school from malaria leaving Lavina with no income and 2 children to look after, a story I hear so much here.. She is a lovely lady and thanks to this donation has an opportunity to start a business!

On Saturday we went to visit her at the market to see how she was getting on and what her future plans are. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take many photos as Monika advised against it, a former volunteer almost got arrested taking photos there so I decided not too.. okay maybe I took a few sneaky ones!

The market was hectic, so many people and so many used clothes! The clothes stalls were made out of wood with clothes hanging everywhere, you had to duck or walk through the clothes to get past the stalls – kind of like busy washing lines!! There was also clothes dumped in piles on Tarpalling sheets – perspective customers where crouching down sorting through what was there – totally bizarre I’ve no idea why it wasn’t all sorted out!

Lavina had a sheet on the ground with her stuff on, she had sold all the stuff from Europe and had since bought more. Apparently the clothes are shipped over to Dar already in large bags, bought by an organization they are then transported to major cities. Once received in Moshi they are sold on twice a week in a pot luck fashion – the Memorial vendors buy bags and will not know the contents and how sellable it is until it is opened. The contents of the bag is then marked up and sold to the cliental at the market.

Memorial market - Lavina's stall

Nellie and Lavina at Memorial pre sorting her stall!

Monika and I started sorting through the jumble and I found a nice purple suit at the bottom with a cute matching strappy top, I put it together and layed it out and within a minute we had a customer . I find that there is limited creative thinking here, all the stalls were very similar none particularly stood out and no one was trying anything new to attract customers.

After sorting out Lavina’s stall we headed to look around, we passed a shoe stall with some nice high heels, I then spotted a Goodwill sticker on one!! (for UK readers this is the donation place in USA for unwanted clothes) Then I realized the majority of this stall came from Goodwill.. um if you ever wondered where that donation went it probably went to this very market in Tanzania, but while you give it away for free money has changed many hands to get it to here!! OMG I felt sick! Goodwill did so well out of me when I left the USA…

On route home we swung by our cleaners house, also a former student Hidaya – aka Mumma Joseph – all mothers are known by the name of there eldest or most popular child rather than their given name! She has 2 children and lives in a very cosy house. We were welcomed in (karibune – welcome in Swahili) for bananas and Chai tea. her 2 boys are so sweet – Joseph and Jeffery.

Mumma Joseph and her boys!!

They are both just recovering from illness, one had malaria and was in hospital and the other had a serious bug from the water. They seemed fighting fit when I got there tho and was happy to pose for photos for me!!

The boys and their cute cousin doing thumbs up