By the bootstraps: Handmade Zimbabwe shoes an unlikely global hit

Описание: By the bootstraps: Handmade Zimbabwe shoes an unlikely global hit:
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 In a tiny factory producing handmade boots and shoes in southwestern Zimbabwe, leather cutter Misheck Sibanda is on another hectic shift as he tries to keep up with soaring global demand. Leather cutter Misheck Sibanda works at the Courteney boot company in Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo. Image: Zinyange Auntony / AFP  Orders are piling in and new workers are being recruited at the Courteney boot company that seems to defy all the odds as Zimbabwe is battered by decades of economic misery. ADVERTISEMENT  Founded in 1993, the firm has recently ramped up production to just 30 pairs a day, all of them made meticulously by 14 employees in a one-room workshop in the second city Bulawayo.  The city, a former industrial hub, has suffered the brunt of the country’s collapse since 1980 that has left behind mass unemployment and a landscape of derelict warehouses and ghostly abandoned factories.FEATURED STORIES LIFESTYLE Some Ayala Alabang residents protest building of center LIFESTYLE Open 24 hours: 2 million new books on sale at 50-90% off LIFESTYLE Two women stay in hotel that doesn’t exist  But in one unmarked brick building, Sibanda uses his sturdy cutting machine to press shapes out of locally produced leather skins at the start of a process that turns out boots selling for between $140 and $500 a pair.  “We sell internationally to the first world, even though we are a third-world country. That alone makes me smile,” Sibanda said, deftly handling the soft leather skins.  “People are tired of manmade materials, they want natural products like ours.”  Sibanda and his colleagues are behind an unlikely business story based on a skilled workforce, traditional methods and decades-old stitching machines to produce classic outdoor boots and shoes.    Prized by a small band of aficionados, Courteney boots have soles made from natural tree rubber imported in blocks from Malaysia and uppers made from the hides of Zimbabwe game such as buffalo, kudu, wildebeest and crocodile.  Using only hides approved under the international CITES conservation regulations, it also makes boots from ostrich, impala and even hippopotamus. ADVERTISEMENT  “Wild, free-range leather does more to preserve the natural environment than cattle ranching,” the company says.  The same 15 basic designs have been unchanged for years, eschewing the fickle trends of fashion except for a few colorfully dyed women’s boots.  Exporting mostly to the United States, Europe, Britain and neighboring South Africa, the boots are paid for in precious U.S. dollars,the key to survival in Zimbabwe’s economy as it lurches downwards.  The country, hammered by hyperinflation 10 years ago, is again being roiled by a currency crisis, government mismanagement and fuel shortages.  Many businesses have folded and investors have fled over the last 20 years, but the Courteney Boot company is rushing to keep up with orders.  Each shoe can take up to two weeks to make, and three extra staff were employed last yea
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