When you look in your closet...

When you think of JCPenny's, think of a sea of rainbow colored umbrellas on a dusty dirt road in Maputsoe... Imagine the grey, tin-roofed factory, smoke-stacks looming high overhead. Watch the sweaty bodies, clad in brightly colored moshoeshoe and beautiful African print cloth, escape into the afternoon sunlight. They overwhelm with chatter; a roar of voices, jubilant after release. Now you see the area transform... An idealistic, bustling African market not 10 meters away from the imposing shadow of sweltering warehouses. Women haggle over used clothes, piled unceremoniously on ripped tarps.  Chicken feet roast on open flame grills. Laughter. The blare of a taxi horn. A hot, arid wind. People disperse in all directions, back into the throngs of Basotho life.

When you wear Levi-Strauss, think of an over-stuffed bus transporting villagers home... From the mindless labor of a mechanical factory to the peaceful tranquility of a tiny mountain village. From the epitome of globalization to the peace and seclusion of a tiny, mud-walled rondaval in the Maluti mountains. Imagine the hands your favorite blue jeans started in... The Mosotho woman who could never afford to wear them, but who's family will eat papa and morroho tonight because you can.

When you think of Walmart, try to conceptualize the multi-national corporation. The power and money that links our countries. Think of interdependence... A Basotho labor force simultaneously exploited and empowered. People made richer, while being irreparably chained to poverty. Think of inequality and opportunity. Intimately linked; impossibly complex. Brand-name shoes for a full belly. Cheap clothing for a child's education.

When you look in your closet... Think of Lesotho.

With Love from Lesotho.... Mary E.