"Susie Bayer" and "Jesus" Essay

Joseph Wangombe

Engl 102

2/17/2011

1.      Compare the structure of "Susie Bayer" and "Jesus"

“Susie Bayer” and “Jesus” essay are both chronological essay,  in the sense that both follow an event from one stage the other. The use of English language in Jesus essay is simplified by the missionaries as much as possible. This is to make the kids be able to understand the message of the missionaries. The beginning paragraphs of the two essays differ a lot. In Jesus essay the writer begins the essay in the form of an anecdote. The case is different in Susie essay, the essay kind of tells you early enough what the essay will be taking about. That is in the very first sentence.  “If you've ever left a bag of clothes outside the Salvation Army or given to a local church drive, chances are that you've dressed an African.”

2.      Give 3 examples of facts obtained in research by the author.

a.       Americans buy clothes in disposable quantities-- $165 billion worth last year. This is found in the fourth paragraph.

b.      Edelman estimates that more than a third of the donations that Call Again receives ends up in Trans-Americas' recycling factory. Goodwill Industries, which handles more than a billion pounds a year in North America, puts its figure at 50 percent. Some sources estimate that of the 2.5 billion pounds of clothes that Americans donate each year, as much as 80 percent gets trucked off to places like Trans-Americas.

c.       The owners of Trans-Americas, Edward and Eric Stubin, father and son, are more open than most in the industry, though they wouldn't share their annual sales figures with me. In 2001, used clothing was one of America's major exports to Africa, with $61.7 million in sales. Latin America and Asia have formidable trade barriers. Some African countries -- Nigeria, Eritrea, South Africa -- ban used clothing in order to protect their own domestic textile industries, which creates a thriving and quite open black market. For years, Africa has been Trans-Americas' leading overseas market for used clothing, absorbing two-thirds of its exports.

3.      Give 3 examples of places where the information came from an interview, and state what you think the question was.

a.       One day a few years ago, relief came to them in the form of a young man named Eric Stubin, who runs Trans-Americas Trading Company, a textile recycling factory in Brooklyn. He said that he was willing to send a truck every Tuesday to haul away what the women didn't want and that he would pay them three cents a pound for it. ''You never heard two people happier to hear from someone in your life,'' Edelman says. Now every month 1,200 or 1,300 pounds of rejected donations are trucked to Brooklyn, and every three months Call Again gets a check for $100 or so, money that goes to charity.

The question could have been “How did you come to learn of Trans-American Trading Company?”

b.      ''We get the good, the bad and the ugly,'' Eric Stubin tells me as we tour the factory. ''Ripped sweaters, the occasional sweater with something disgusting on it, the pair of underwear you don't want to talk about. We're getting what the thrifts can't sell.'' There are more than 300 export categories at the factory, but the four essential classifications are ''Premium,'' ''Africa A,'' ''Africa B'' and ''Wiper Rag.'' ''Premium'' goes to Asia and Latin America. ''Africa A'' -- a garment that has lost its brightness -- goes to the better-off African countries like Kenya. ''Africa B'' -- a stain or small hole -- goes to the continent's disaster areas, its Congos and Angolas. By the time a shirt reaches Kisangani or Huambo, it has been discarded by its owner, rejected at the thrift shop and graded two steps down by the recycler.

The question could have been “ Are all the clothes that you get bad?”

c.       But there are many Africas, and used clothing carries a different meaning in each of them. Christianity tenderized most of the continent for the foreign knife, but the societies of Muslim West Africa and Somalia are bits of gristle that have proved more resistant to Western clothes. In warlord-ridden, destitute Somalia, used clothing is called, rather contemptuously, huudhaydh -- as in, ''Who died?'' A woman in Kenya who once sold used dresses told me that not long ago Kenyans assumed the clothing was removed from dead people and washed it carefully to avoid skin diseases. In Togo, it is called ''dead white man's clothing.'' In Sierra Leone, it's called ''junks'' and highly prized. In Rwanda, used clothing is known by the word for ''choose,'' and in Uganda, it used to be called ''Rwanda,'' which is where it came from illegally until Uganda opened its doors to what is now called mivumba.

The question could have been “Which part of Africa are the clothes going?”