T-shirt Economy

T-shirts are a valuable commodity here in Yap and secondhand t-shirts are often more valuable than new t-shirts. Several shops sell them, many in neatly folded piles that customers flip through to find just the right addition to their wardrobe, selecting one, holding it up, checking the size, asking the price.

Slogans and brand messages are of no concern. But heat-stamped versus screen-printing is another matter. Heat-stamped images are heavy and hot in a climate where the normal temperature is in the 90s with humidity to match. And they crack. Screen printing is the hands-down crowd favorite.

Everyone wears t-shirts. At work. At home. At church. At school. At funerals. At parties and celebrations. Friday night after work at the Pine Club for dancing, downing Bud Lights, and carousing. Even the women from the outer islands who usually go topless, a perfectly acceptable state of being on this remote bit of volcanic soil and coral, pull on t-shirts at times. Want to get everyone out for a fundraising walkathon around the lagoon? A t-shirt with the sponsor’s slogan will do the trick.

T-shirts are the primary topping for men’s traditional thu’us, or loincloths, women’s lava lavas, or hand-woven wrap-around skirts, kids’ shorts and young girls’ brightly colored, spangle-decorated Filipino skirts. Color-coordination is by happenstance.

But sometimes the messages, worn out of context, offer a moment of hilarity.

Driving a few miles north of Colonia late yesterday afternoon for a meeting at the community house in the municipality of Tomil, I turned right onto the secondary road. Secondary roads in Yap are not paved and potholes create a slalom course for the driver. This particular road is somewhat easier than most because it’s surrounded by hills and valleys of red clay. The tire tracks in the clay’s dust of previous drivers show the way around the deeper craters that need to be avoided. The speed limit in Yap is 20 miles per hour, but on the secondary roads that would be considered reckless driving.

As I slowly turned the steering wheel first over here and then over there, attempting to follow the path of previous drivers but not always succeeding, I noticed an older man walking along the side of the road in the same direction, a walking stick in his left hand, his basket that contained his betelnut in his right hand, wearing a thu’u, flipflops and a sleeveless t-shirt as orange as the red clay that he walked on. The screen-printed, fading message on his t-shirt, elaborately decorated with a road map, read “Take Your Kicks on Route 66.”