So I’ve been trying to think how to tackle blogging about my trip to Malawi and it keeps feeling way to big. So I’m just going to start blogging about little things that come to mind rather than wait for the “big profound post from the sky.” Because let’s be honest, that would mean I just never post about it.

One thing that struck me when we arrived in Malawi was the dress. Perhaps this just reveals my ignorance, but I had expected clothing much like what the Maasai tribe in Kenya wear. Instead the clothing, in both urban areas and out in the villages, was very western. With the exception of some of the women – they would wear long skirts and then wrap them in a layer of fabric called a cha-ten-gee. These pieces of fabric often had very colorful vibrant patterns that would be rare here in America. But aside from that, the clothing was very western.

In fact it’s not a strech to say that most of their clothes had been worn by Americans at one point. Apparently most of the thrift-stores where we donate clothes pack it up in bulk and ship it off to other countries for dirt cheap. It’s a practice called “clothes dumping” and while some say this offers clothes cheaply to those who are poor I can’t help but wonder how it stifles the chance for local entrepreneurs to build a textile industry. The practice of clothes dumping has been outlawed by some countries like Indonesia and the Phillipines because they see it as a threat to local textie business. There’s a healthy debate about whether or not clothes dumping is helpful or harmful to poor countries. I can’t help but feel a little weird about it though. To think that the clothes I pack up and take to goodwill would end up being sold to someone in Africa is odd to me. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I guess part of me wishes that they had a uniquely African way of dressing and weren’t wearing hand-me-down t-shirts with Denver Broncos logos on them (yes, I saw this). I just wonder if what I meant as generosity was twisted into something that makes it harder and harder for a seamstress in Malawi to feed her kids because she can’t sell the clothes she makes for less than my used clothes are going for.

I’m not sure. I do think that it would go a long way, if I met the people I gave my used clothes to. This stuff seems to happen when there is some third party or institution mediating our generosity. When we give to the poor, but never meet them stuff like this seems to happen more easily. In his book The Irresistable Revolution, Shane Claiborne says that one of the subtle layers of insulation that separates the rich and the poor is charity. He goes on to say that “we can volunteer in a social program or distribute excess food and clothing through organizations and never have to open up our homes, our beds, our dinner tables.” He goes on to say that he’s not convinced that when we get to heaven Jesus will say “When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me.”

So Africa isn’t just making me rethink how I love my neighbor all the way across the world, but how I’m called to love my neighbor here in New Jersey.