My occassional trips to the local malls and my one-time visit to the area’s outlet store complex has made me aware of a strange phenomenon. This was new to me, but apparrently not to my new friends here.

“Check the labels of the stuff you’re going to buy”, they said.

At first, this statement barely registered through the clearance-price-shopping-induced euphoria that clouded my judgement. And then, slowly but surely and clearly, I began to see…

Brand-name sneakers: Made in China
Popular line of leather bags: Made in Hong Kong
US-brand tank tops: Made in Russia
World-renown jeans: Made in Indonesia
High-end sandals: Made in Mexico

But it was the lingerie from a well-known women’s line that made me stop in my tracks. “Made in Israel”, the tag said.

I paused for a long time in that store, surrounded as I was by exquisitely-designed sleepwear in satin, cotton and lace, and wondered what the Israel-based makers thought of these hip-hugging, t-backed sexy underwear that women in far-off U.S. of A would be wearing.

Did perhaps one or two workers in a crowded factory in that war-torn country also pause in their work to wonder at the sheer luxury and extravagance of lace-trimmed boy-leg panties? Did they, at that moment, begin to form their own American Dream? Or did they snort in disgust at a society so pampered and frivolous? Or were they perhaps too numbed by work and worry to even think any of these thoughts?

Ah, my own thoughts were to deep to ponder for too long inside a lingerie shop. That day, I simply moved on and continued browsing somewhere else.

But on another, perhaps more fateful day, I came across a t-shirt in the clearance section of another big-name store. It was, in many ways, just your average crewneck, except that the cloth’s material was softer and a bit heavier. It was priced at $1.97, down from $12.50. That in itself would’ve been good enough reason to buy it. Then I saw the tag. “Made in Lesotho”, it said.

Lesotho? Where on earth is Lesotho? I jogged my brain for any geopolitical memory of Lesotho, but to my utter shame came up with nothing.

Without a second’s hesitation, I went to the cash register and bought the shirt.

Posted under Navel-Gazing