Q: How do the Indians I see in the pictures got the clothes that they wear?

A: The Miskito Indian villages are very remote and deep in the jungle.  The natives grow simple crops, mostly rice and beans and cassava (root).  They paddle their surplus crops to Puerto Lempira – Many days away via dug-out canoe.

In Puerto Lempira they can sell a canoe full of harvest for the equivalent of several dollars.  It is with these few dollars that they purchase items that they cannot make form trees etc. in their jungle.  Items such as machete and files to dress their tools.  They also buy clothes.

Clothes are brought to this frontier town by local merchants on the ocean coastal trading ships.  Used clothing is purchased in 100 pound bales.  Men, Women and Children.  The bales are broken down into sizes and sold on the street.

RTF does not interrupt this fragile supply chain by donation clothing.