Sometimes my travel recollections are less memories and more hauntings. I’m haunted by a legless beggar in Nepal who chased me around a stupa swinging wildly at my legs with a stick. I’m haunted by the smile of an orphan in Guatemala. I’m haunted by the smell of a dump in Cambodia.

I never know what will trigger a travel haunting. The other day I was speaking at a high school in San Francisco and another one surfaced.

I was in the village of Matlab in Bangladesh. My translator, Dalton, was giving me a tour of the village when a serious looking man approached us. He grabbed me by the arm and led us through the worn dirt paths around rice paddies and ponds until we stood in a home next to a dying old man, the serious man’s father.

The man thought I was a doctor. The man thought I could save his father’s life.

And, you know what? Maybe I could have.

I’m not a wealthy man, but in Bangladesh I am. At the time I didn’t have thousands of dollars at my disposal, but for a few hundred I’m sure I could’ve transported the dying man to the best hospital in Bangladesh. Maybe he still would have died. Maybe he would have died more comfortably. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference whatsoever.

I did nothing. I apologized and told the man I wasn’t a doctor and that I could do nothing for his father. It was awkward. I was ashamed.

How much does it cost to save a life? And what lengths would you go to or how much would you give to do it?

These are questions I’ve been pondering a lot lately. Between my new travel haunting, the earthquake in Haiti, and my reading of Peter Singer’s “The Life You Can Save,” I’ve been thinking about what I can and should do to make a difference. Singer argues that living an ethical life involves a mix of personal philanthropy, local activism, and political awareness. He dispels the whole “for the price of one cup of coffee per day you can save a child’s life” myth and takes a realistic look at how and why we should give.

I’m somewhat politically active, and in 2009 I tried to become more active locally. I joined Big Brothers and Big Sisters (my little brother is a cool kid and we have a lot of fun – Hey Alex!) and Teamwork for Quality Living, which is a great organization that engages the community to overcome poverty together. But my giving hasn’t been the best.

I might have donated $200-$300 last year, which Peter Singer would definitely say is not enough. I could tell Singer that we incurred the cost of having a child, starting her savings plan, and health insurance costs that skyrocketed, and we weren’t in a position to give much, but he still wouldn’t be satisfied.

I’m not a good giver. That’s what I’m beginning to see. That’s what Singer has helped me to see. I can’t afford to give a lot, but I can afford to give more than I do and I’m ethically obligated to do so.

It’s not tough to punch in my credit card number online and click “donate.” I can do that as well as the next fella. But there are so many great organizations out there how do I choose which one to support? Where will my money have the biggest impact?

Allow me to introduce my project to answer these questions: ten4tues. That’s $10 for Tuesday.

Each Tuesday I plan to share to which organization I am donating $10 to and tell why I chose them. I’ll search out charity organizations like Charity Navigator and GiveWell to aid my decision.

By the end of the year, I’ll have donated $520, which still probably isn’t enough. But writing and 2010 comes with its own uncertainties and I don’t want to commit myself to something beyond my means. At the end of the year if I can give more, maybe I’ll choose my favorite charity of the year and do so.

I hope to not only educate myself, but others too. In fact, if so inspired by that week’s organization, I hope you’ll join me in donating to them. Once you do, leave a comment that you donated on this blog or on my Facebook wall or send me a reply on Twitter (use the hashtag #ten4tues) and I’ll enter you to win that week’s prize.

Since I just brainstormed this idea and I’m a couple of weeks behind my $520 goal already, I’ll simplify things this week.

I will be donating $30 to CARE’s Haiti efforts. If you’ve donated a cent to assist any organization’s Haiti efforts, let me know and I’ll enter you to win Singer's "The Life You Can Save."

My in-laws match.

Their shorts are different patterns of the same four colors.  Their leather sandals are the same shade of brown.  Their shirts are His and Her polos.

No one wants to think about their in-laws underwear, but if I was a betting man, I’d bet on theirs matching.

Gloria, my mother-in-law, deserves most of the credit (or blame; it depends on your perspective) for this.  Jim, my father-in-law, could care less.  Jim and I have this in common and it’s why I have a purple shirt.

I also have a pink shirt, Annie, my wife, says it’s salmon -- as if that makes the shirt more manly. Men catch fish while drinking manly beer and floating in manly boats. Fish stink. Men stink. Therefore a color named after a fish must be manly, right?

Not even close. It’s pink.  A man wearing a pink shirt falls at either end of the fashion spectrum: they  care a lot or could care less.

I care more about where I am wearing than how it looks.

The biggest event of the year in our neck of corn country is the Great Darke County Fair in Greenville, Ohio.  Every year my in-laws go as a matched set.  Jim doesn’t mind because he gets to eat whatever deep fried food he wants.

This year was a special year for us.  It was Harper’s first Fair. (Here she is riding a pony.)  Anyhow, I came out of the bedroom in an outfit that I picked out and, knowing that she has a little of her mother’s fashion sense, I asked Annie if what I was wearing was acceptable.

“That’s fine,” she said. “I really don’t care what you wear.  I don’t like any of your clothes, anyhow.  We need to get you a new wardrobe.”

Some might be offended by such a statement, but not me.  I was terrified by it.

A whole new wardrobe!  But I know these clothes.  I know where they were made.  I know a lot about the companies who made them.  I’ve had a few pair of my jeans since high school.  Oh the memories.  And to just chuck them all away in the interest of fashion and style and replace my well worn and familiar threads with strangers. How heartless!

Since I try to be a more engaged consumer now, shopping isn’t easy. To replace my entire wardrobe would be a lot of work.  Annie just doesn’t want me to start wearing clothes that aren’t ten years old, she wants me to acquire a wardrobe of which she approves.  This means we would have to go clothes shopping, an activity that we dread individually and one that we despise doing together.

“Oh, I like this shirt,” Annie would hand it to me.

“Yeah, it’s okay.  What color is it?” I would ask because I’m a little color blind.

“It’s midnight,” she would say.

“It looks purple,” I would respond trying to convince myself that purple wouldn’t be manly but midnight would. To survive at midnight one has to make a manly fire or perhaps fashion a manly torch.  What can be more manly that carrying fire?

So I would try on the shirt and just when Annie would think that she had sealed the deal, I would ask, “Where was it made?” Or I would say, “I’m not so sure about this brand.”

It’s tough finding something that meets both of our requirements.

In order to preserve our marriage, I’ve made some guidelines for clothes shopping at our local mall:

1) Avoid department store labels.  I would rather go with an established brand like Levi’s than JCPenney’s signature label or Wal-Marts ironic label Faded Glory.

2) Nothing from Wal-Mart or Wal-Mart-like stores unless it’s a T-shirt and it’s hilarious (I have my weaknesses).

3) If given a choice between something made in China or somewhere else, go with somewhere else.  What’s right in China is what grows the nation’s economy and for the most part this makes labor rights wrong.  It’s okay to buy shoes made in China because it’s tough to find any that are made elsewhere and going barefoot stinks.  (I’m not calling for a boycott of China, it’s just how I feel.)

4) Reference the pocket-sized book The Better World Shopping Guide by Ellis Jones.  The guide grades products, retailers, and brands on their social and environmental practices.  Patagonia gets an A but none of their products are found at our mall.  But Levi’s, GAP, and Eddie Bauer get Bs and are.

In a pinch, these are my quick and dirty standards. They aren’t perfect.  What I would really like to see are the major retailers providing ethical options that cost a little more.  We have organic/natural aisles in all of our local grocery stores, so why can’t we have a few racks of socially and environmentally conscious clothing?

(Take a few minutes and write to your favorite retailer and ask for an ethical option.)

We went to the fair and while most folks were fashionably dressed like my in-laws -- although not quite as color coordinated -- there were plenty of others whose outfits made mine look stylish.  Those fresh from the cow barn wore the appropriately named  (crap)-kickers.  Others toting huge stuffed bears had made their own alterations -- cutoff shorts and cutoff sleeves.

We all have our fashion standards.

If it weren’t for China, my baby daughter, Harper, would be naked and wouldn’t have anything to play with.

When you have a baby girl, everyone wants to buy her clothes (especially when she is the cutest baby ever!).  Somewhere between thanking the gifter and keeping the giftee from chewing on the wrapping paper, I sneak a peak at the made in label of the onesie or sleeper, the plastic ball or the toy puppy, the teenie dress or tiny skirt.  The tag almost always reads “Made in China.”

Other than shoes (80% made in China), I’ve never seen a category of clothing so dominated by a single country than baby clothes.  If China shutdown, we’d have a bunch of bored, half-naked babies crawling around our living rooms.

I’m always grateful that someone walked into a store, thought of my little girl, and dropped a few bucks on her, but I’ve never been too big on clothes as gifts.  This is deeply rooted stuff. Who doesn’t remember shaking packages only to hear the swoosh of clothes and thinking, “That doesn’t sound like a He-Man action figure. Oh no, I think it’s clothes!”?

Now it’s even a bigger problem with me.  I tell the gifter that they shouldn’t have and then they tell me that it was no problem. Besides, it was on the sale rack and they bought it for only $2. I think about the onesie’s journey from China across oceans and continents and marvel at the $2 price tag.

It makes my head spin.  How is that possible?  I can’t mail a T-shirt to my neighbor for $2.

Harper has about 200 outfits (this might be an exaggeration, but it’s most likely not) and most of them have been gifts and nearly all of them were made in China.  I’ve come to accept it, until last week when I received a package from my buddy Larry.

I shook it.  It sounded like clothes.  I expected to find a cute outfit made in China, but I found so much more.

It was accompanied by a note:

Had a friend of mine design and knit this dress for Harper. The design is adapted from a dress she made for her daughter’s 2nd birthday.
-    Larry

And another handwritten note from the dressmaker, Susan:

It’s been a pleasure creating this one-of-a-kind dress for Harper!

Susan even wrote out the washing instructions, because, really, who knows how to care for bamboo silk?  Who even knew bamboo silk existed?

And she posted the dress on her site and named it after Harper.  The dress is officially known as Harper’s Lollipop Tree Dress.

Forget the economics and politics of Harper’s Made in China wardrobe. What has been lost isn’t our connection with clothes, but with the people who make our clothes.

The note from Larry’s friend got me thinking.  What if every item of clothing we wore came with such a note.

“Hope you like this Elmo shirt. I stitched the collar.” Signed Li Xin.

Maybe then we would pause before buying a garment, which has traveled tens of thousands of miles, for $2.  Maybe then we would think about the workers who stitched our clothes and if it’s possible for them to feed and clothe their own kids while getting paid the tiniest fraction of a onesie.

To me Harper’s Lollipop dress is the most beautiful garment in her wardrobe. From the smile on her face, Harper agrees.

Readers of  “Where Am I Wearing?” will no doubt recognize this story about my visit to a blue jean factory in Cambodia.  Of course, the book wasn’t accompanied with an over abundance of hand gestures. Enjoy!

Do you know where Lesotho is? I’ll be honest, I don’t.

I do know that it’s in Africa. I look it up on Google Maps every time I wear my favorite corduroy pants that were made there. But I just can’t seem to commit to memory where in Africa Lesotho is.

“Lesotho” doesn’t seem like a real name of a country to me, but more of an assassin’s name in the StarWars. Each time I try to remember where exactly Lesotho is, I start imagining what the assassin would look like: how far his eyes are apart; the type of laser gun he favors; and other such nonsense. I picture the assassin wearing my brown cords blasting princesses and Jedi into smithereens.

This is the way my mind works. It can’t be helped.

So, where is Lesotho, let me look…

I can’t believe I couldn’t remember this! Lesotho is in - and by “in” I mean completely surrounded by - South Africa. There can’t be many countries completely surrounded by one other country. Stick that in your back pocket and save it for Jeopardy. It’s my gift to you.

Speaking of back pockets, let’s get back to my cords. They were made in Lesotho for GAP. The Lesotho-GAP combo might sound familiar because they were recently in the news.

An investigation carried out by the London Sunday Times found that a factory that produces for GAP and Levi’s was dumping their garbage in the garbage dump.

That doesn’t seem like much of a story, does it?

But there are needles and scissors in the factory’s garbage, which are hard on the bare feet of the kids who scour the dump for anything of value.

Dumps in the developing world are awful, awful places where the poorest of the extremely poor try to make ends meet. I visited one in Cambodia and the physical anguish of trying not to vomit or cry while holding my nose was only outweighed by the mental anguish of what I was witnessing.

But what can we expect of the brands or the factories? Should the factories have a special repository for sharp objects?

Heck, I’ve thrown away a dull pair of scissors before and even razor blades. It’s just that nobody is walking across my garbage looking for something of value. Maybe the factories could use some kind of receptacles like doctors have for sharp objects. But I bet they would be dumped and picked through; a pair of scissors can be sharpened and sold.

So, I’m not really outraged by the factory using the garbage dump for their garbage. However, the fact that a river downstream of the factory runs denim…that’s kind of a big one.

From the article:

Dark blue effluent from the factory of Nien Hsing, a Taiwanese firm, was pouring into a river from which people draw water for cooking and bathing.

This news is a blemish on Lesotho’s garment industry, the largest private sector employer in the country, which has been considered a sort of success story and a hope for a brighter future. Bono’s clothing line, Edun, sources as much of their products as possible from Lesotho. In this powerful video, Bono pleads for other apparel brands to follow him in sourcing from the country.

Other brands did follow. And other factories sprouted. They brought the good - jobs . And they brought the bad - denim rivers.

Hopefully the pollution into the river from the factory making our GAP and Levi’s jeans can be halted. Hopefully Lesotho’s economy can grow so parents can get good paying jobs and their kids don’t have to work in the dump.

Development isn’t perfect and neither is the garment industry. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask more of our brands and the factories they support.

At the end of the video, Bono is seen in a village in Lesotho carrying a crying baby. I’m up late writing this and, for a moment, I thought that it was my own baby girl Harper who is down for the night. The cry sounded exactly like hers.

If that’s not enough reason to do better and ask more, I’m not sure what is.

Kelsey Timmerman is the author of Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes. He believes that corduroys are nothing more than socially acceptable sweatpants.  If you want to learn more about where you are wearing, participate on Twitter or email him at kelsey@travelin-light.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .