Travels of a T-Shirt

By Paul Murray 

Like most triathletes and competitive runners, I accumulate more race T-shirts in one year than a normal person can wear in a decade. Occasionally, a special shirt is a “keeper,” like my Kona Ironman World Championship finisher tee, but most wind up on a shelf in the back of my bedroom closet. That was the destination for the 2002 CDTC Crystal Lake Triathlon shirt. The design was not my favorite, and I didn’t like the color, so it landed on the reject pile.

Years later, I would discover that my discarded T-shirt wound up halfway around the world – in an open-air market in Tanzania.

You may ask, how did this happen? Read on and learn how this rejected shirt’s travels exemplify international connections among diverse people.

By December 2002, the stack of unwanted tees threatened to become an avalanche of multicolored cotton; it was time to clean house. I bundled the castoffs and hauled them to the HMRRC Hangover Half Marathon. The race was a collection point for unwanted T-shirts and used running shoes.

When the last runner crossed the finish line and race director Ken Skinner presented the awards, he loaded the donated clothing into the trunk of his Toyota. Terry Rooney’s barn was the next stop. There the accumulated shirts and shoes rested for the winter and spring. By June, Terry had gathered more than a thousand shirts and several hundred pairs of running shoes – enough to fill a small Penske rental truck.

Terry transferred his cargo to an Albany warehouse operated by the Orphan Grain Train, an international Lutheran relief agency. Runners’ contributions were merged with clothing gathered by Capital District church groups. Volunteers sorted and packed the goods into a container that was trucked to the port of Newark for shipment by sea to Africa. Months later, when the freighter arrived in Durban, South Africa, its cargo was auctioned off to wholesalers from several nations.

Geoffrey Milonge, a young Tanzanian entrepreneur, purchased one giant bale of surplus American shirts, and transported them to his home in Dar es Salaam. Soon my shirt was on display in his city’s Manzese market.

So, how did I discover the unlikely destination of my donated T-shirt?

Fast forward to winter 2010. My wife and I were spending a weekend at a Stratton Mountain Resort condo with three other couples. None of us are avid downhill skiers, so we spent most of our time lounging around a cozy fireplace, reading, and enjoying each other’s company. My friend, Dick Shirey, an economics professor, was absorbed in an academic monograph. “Doing research for one of his courses,” I thought. Before long, Dick walked over, book in hand, to the couch where I was reclining.

“Paul, I think you’ll be interested in this,” he announced, passing his volume to me. Its cover displayed a plain white T-shirt bearing the book’s title, “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.”

“Interesting, but not exactly my cup of tea,” I answered, eager to get back to my John Grisham best-seller. But Dick persisted. He explained how the author, Georgetown University professor Pietra Rivoli, traced the life of a T-shirt from a Texas cotton field to a Chinese factory to a used clothing market in Africa. It was a clever device to demonstrate global economic interdependence, I agreed. But why was Dick insisting that I examine the page he held open?

When I examined the page more closely, I saw a photo of a serious-looking African vendor surrounded by a host of colorful shirts. Dick pointed to the photo’s upper left-hand corner, to the only shirt where lettering was visible. It read, “3rd Annual Crystal Lake Triathlon, August 24, 2002.”

“Holy cow. That’s my shirt!” I exclaimed. I was astonished. “How in the world did it get to Africa?”

Now I had to learn more. I eagerly snatched the book from Dick’s hand.

“The Travels of a T-Shirt” explained how my shirt became an international traveler, and how the markets, power and politics of global trade are linked in a web of economic interdependence. My triathlon tee’s temporary abode in my closet was only an intermediate stop on its long-distance journey.

I still marvel at the series of coincidences that helped me trace the journey of my cast-off T-shirt from an Averill Park triathlon to an Albany warehouse, to an Africa-bound freighter, to a Tanzanian bazaar, to a book by an American economist.  

“The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade” was selected as the best scholarly book of 2005 in the category of Finance and Economics by the American Association of Publishers. It has been translated into 14 languages.

 If you’d like to donate race T-shirts (or lightly-used running shoes), please bring them to Fleet Feet in Albany or Malta, iRun Local in Saratoga Springs, or the Mohawk Hudson River Marathon Expo in Albany on Oct. 10.

Paul Murray (murray@siena.edu) of Albany is a retired sociology professor at Siena College in Loudonville. While Paul’s Ironman days are behind him, he continues training for shorter events.