Second hand clothes in Africa

  Sometimes i want to stay naked, other, times I want to wear something nice. So I can say weather temperature and mood drive us on what we want to wear. Second hand clothes are exported to Africa from Europe as there is a multibillion worth market for them. They have become the most popular commodity in the market. But why the sudden popularity? One is because they are cheap to buy unlike the locally made clothes. 

  Most of them say and argue the fact why should you pay all savings for that one elegant dress so as to look like Cleo patra while you can pay for less and dress to kill. Evey country in Africa has a nickname for them like in Kenya the clothes are called mtumba. It is the white man who said that a stitch in time saves nine but I think it's true because all the stitches from Europe are saving Africa from walking naked "partially". But let us look at the bright side of the growing sector which has employed a quarter of Africa's growing population. 

 Is it taking away the African mode of dressing? I prefer to call it black fading into white " soft colonisation ". The designer in Europe is always emerging with new Beyonce kind of looks and at the same time the African youth is busy with Sharp scissors reducing the size of his communal clothing so that he or she can have " j z's and L gaga" wear. Now I know it is hard to keep up with the kardashians. That almost took me a minute if you know what l mean. 

  Four years a go the so called mtumba was not celebrated that much. Because some mtumba the women would wear only created havoc in market places and some of them would be stripped naked in local towns and fingered by men publicly in the name of wearing abominal clothing and others would be raped in thick bushes just because. But all that fuss has not shaken the African millenniums even an inch. And by far what was being considered abomination is becoming fashionable and a thing to admire.