A Giant Garage Sale

On a recent Saturday, we had to travel down underneath the elevated highway that runs through town to pick someone up.  And we ran into the country's biggest garage sale!  It took forever to get through because tables are set up on both sides of the street with pedestrians walking back and forth between tables.  There are many bales of clothes from places in the United States that are sent into this country, and other needy countries throughout the world, that are not always supervised after they get to the dock.  As a result, apparently, the clothing ends up in the hands of folks who actually sell the contents.  As you can see from the following, this is something that happens in the DR.

Here we are approaching the different tables.

This section had all sorts of tops just piled up for the shoppers to sort through.

Surely you could find a pair of shoes here - we don't know if they are sorted by size.

Lots of purses and ties for sale here.

Another purse store - these looked brand new, with lots of gym bags behind.

In spite of the clothes that they have hanging,
most of the folks here were just going through the piles.

Men's shirts section with some packaged quilts on the right.

Here are all the baby toys that you might want.

This is where you can find your sports shoes.  Unlike the other shoe section
above, there is only one of each style here, so you have to take it up to
cashier, pay for it, and then get the mate - smart.  

Can you see these beautiful pineapples that have been peeled, sliced and wrapped up?
 - a nice treat after a hot morning of shopping.

We learned this day where many Dominicans get the shirts that we see them wearing with the logos of schools (we saw one that said "Adams' Atoms" - an elementary school that some of our kids attended years ago), stores, etc.  Do you remember the man in the blog about the Book Fair donation wearing the shirt advertising a taxidermist in Alaska.?  One of the things that we couldn't capture but wish that we could have were all the sounds of bartering, buying, and having a busy shopping day, trying to find clothes for their families.  

We are grateful, frankly that they have this opportunity to cloth their children.  Most of the school children wear uniforms - light blue, white or pink are the colors that we have seen, depending on their school (the pink is freely worn by boys here, unlike the US).  In fact, I saw a fellow the other day in a shirt the color pink of the woman in the photo above, a pair of jeans and some reddish pink tennis shoes!  We also see many men with kids' backpacks that they probably also bought at a sale such as the one above - today, for instance, there was a man on a street corner selling packages of black garbage bags wearing a cute little Cars backpack - so fun!