MY VIEW: Would you put on used ‘mitumba’ underwear?

Second-hand undergarments on sale in Mombasa. The Tanzania Bureau of Standards last week launched a nationwide crackdown on second-hand undergarments currently on sale. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Let me ask you, like they ask celebrities on red-carpet events: Who are you wearing? The ideal answer to that question is the person or people who created your outfit.

  • Now, in terms of underwear, who are you currently wearing? Because if it is second-hand (mitumba), the answer should be the mzungu who threw it into a basket and it found its way to Africa.

  • Probably you are wearing some white racist who, like one prominent person I know, describes Africa using the name of one of the things underwear is supposed to cover.

Things are “going under” in neighbouring Tanzania. As reported by Dar-es-Salaam’s Citizen newspaper, the Tanzania Bureau of Standards last week launched a nationwide crackdown on second-hand undergarments currently on sale.

The bureau aims at implementing a ban effected in 2009, where the country outlawed second-hand underwear because they could infect users with skin diseases.

Let me ask you, like they ask celebrities on red-carpet events: Who are you wearing? The ideal answer to that question is the person or people who created your outfit.

Now, in terms of underwear, who are you currently wearing? Because if it is second-hand (mitumba), the answer should be the mzungu who threw it into a basket and it found its way to Africa.

Probably you are wearing some white racist who, like one prominent person I know, describes Africa using the name of one of the things underwear is supposed to cover.

Maybe you are wearing a woman who won the last edition of a tomato festival somewhere in southern Europe, meaning she is quite good at hurling projectiles at opponents.

Chances are that you are wearing some dollar billionaire who was driven into riches by the “short man” syndrome, which is to mean he did not like the way he failed to fill up the front of his underwear and decided to compensate for that in his business undertakings.

Speaking of achievers, maybe you are wearing someone who entered the Guinness World Records for those weird things people compete for elsewhere on the globe, like who can smash the highest number of watermelons with their head in a minute (the record, by the way, stands at 49 watermelons in a minute. It was set by one tough-headed Pakistani man on May 6, 2018).

Blame it on my weird sense of my imagination, but the question of who I am wearing makes me careful on what to wear whenever I am interviewing someone from a foreign land.

MITUMBA BAN

I will never forgive myself if I walk into some expatriate’s office and the welcoming remark is, “Your shirt looks familiar.” That may mean he is the one who gave up the shirt for donation a few years ago, and that it came to Kenya ahead of him.

That will depress me to infinity because I have read a lot about Dedan Kimathi and the Mau Mau war and I don’t think the fighters died for such things to happen.

But I wear a lot of mitumba. Like when penning this piece at home, I am wearing a second-hand Old Navy T-shirt. The pair of trousers is also mitumba, as is the pair of socks protecting my feet from mosquitoes driven into a frenzy by the September heat in Nairobi.

There is a reason for that. Every time I visit a designer clothes shop, I excuse the price tag on the first item as a typo. Well, until I see a typo in every other price tag in there.

I mean, the same garment that hawkers shove into people’s noses on Tom Mboya Street for Sh100 will be selling for a humble Sh3,470 at those upmarket boutiques, often inside shopping malls. I know there is excise duty and all, but …

Back to Tanzania. Is their crackdown on mitumba undergarments justified? I think so. I view it as more of a pride restoration initiative than a fight against skin diseases.

The thinking of the lawmakers who banned the sale, I believe, was to de-colonise Tanzanians. Underwear should be associated with some pride.

The outer garments can belong to anybody in the First World but there is some pride that comes with knowing that the bra you are wearing did not offer “life support” to someone’s bosom elsewhere before it came to you.

There is something to smile about when you know you are the first occupant of that pair of boxers.

I have not heard of a ban on mitumba undergarments in Kenya, as I have seen them on sale the couple of times I have visited Gikomba for a wardrobe upgrade. But I have heard many people around me vow they can never buy second-hand undergarments.

If you are among them, then I propose that we form a panty, sorry, party, and call it the Forum for Restoration of Pride. The party can cause a few undercurrents (hmm) on our moral fabric, I suppose.

Our party will discuss things like Kenya’s sorry textile industry that I’m sure cannot create a cotton T-shirt from scratch.

We will also talk about the “unfinished” business of clothes normally called unfinished, alongside the ripped ones that make people look like a book that starts at the table of contents.

Anyway, who are you wearing?

 

[email protected] Elvis Ondieki is a ‘Nation’ reporter. Caroline Njung’e’s column resumes soon.