6/25/11 Sheltered

It’s the shoes. Everyone here is poor to some extent, but it’s the ones without shoes that I notice are the poorest. For a long time, I hardly notice and pay little attention to feet but when I was walking alone in the town center of Kibwana, I look down at the feet of women selling their produce on floor mats on the dirt or children carrying large containers of water on their heads and see their tough beat up feet lacking the soles that my feet have never been without. The more I think about it, the more I notice it. In the ruttiest of huts, the entire family is barefoot tending to animals, machete-ing grass or playing. When I join the local boys or girls for soccer they are all barefoot. I think about trying to be tough or at least relating to their experience but realize real quickly that I won’t even last 5 minutes before stepping on some sharp rock or thorn or scorpion. I look down at my sensitive feet that burn in the hot California beach sand and my roughly pedicured toe nails and see yet another class and socio-economic distinction.

If you’ve ever been to sub-Saharan Africa and worked with locals, you may take funny notice at the secondhand clothing that Africans wear. It’s pretty much the clothes that are not only secondhand and left for the Salvation Army, but it’s the best of the best that don’t get sold. Sometimes you see a Blockbuster or Cracker Barrel employee polo and other times you see pick up lines, neon colored track suits, band camp tee shirts or other obviously unwanted apparel. Growing up, my parents always bought clothes brand new from department stores. I honestly didn’t even know what Salvation Army or secondhand clothing was until like college. Even shopping for clothes at Wal-Mart never really crossed my mind unless it was a t-shirt needed for a sports team fabric painting session. My family was not wealthy, at least not by north Jersey standards. But here was an entire village and possibly country or majority of the continent that lived off of the most used and unwanted shoes, shirts and items. I think it was after being exposed to this norm last summer that I stopped shopping for clothes for myself and if I did buy some, it had to be unbelievably cheap.