shoes
How many pairs of shoes do we each have? What is necessary, proper footwear?
As I travel along, I am carrying with me four pairs. Four. This seems to me like a ton! One pair of tennis shoes, one pair of flip flops (for the shower), real sandals (the kind you can actually hike in), and one pair of rubber boots (the mud here after the rain makes anything we call mud season back home look like nothing). At home however, I have probably thirty pairs of shoes (to my great embarassment), just right for different occasions, clothes, activities and events.
However, here in the campo, the shoe of choice (or of economic necessity) is a plastic flip flop, often tied where it has broken, too big or too small for the wearer, and worn for everything. From cooking in the dirt floored kitchen, to walking the four miles to another community or the nearest store, or for playing football with a flat ball with your friends outside the school.
Often times within the family, these shoes may be shared, as there may actually not be enough pairs to go around. One child may wear them to school when they go in the morning, giving them to the other at lunchtime so he can attend class in the afternoon. If it is raining, there is not a worry about open-toed footwear, mostly because there is nothing to change into. Running in the field next to the school is the same; barefoot is the way to play the game after a while, the sandals not only fly off when one kicks the ball, but also break too easily.
So this has all put me to thinking about luxury, about necessity, about shoes. Wondering what it is about that we produce and consume shoes for all occasions, specialize them not only for sports but for types of sports, while kids here run around and cut their feet playing barefoot in order to preserve their plastic flip flops. It seems so connected yet so different and distant, I either don’t know how to, or more likely don’t want to make the connection between these two realities. The unfairness and triviality of the one to the other seems too great to be reckoned with or made sense of.
And I am left wondering, what does it mean to go back to my world with thirty pairs of shoes?
As I travel along, I am carrying with me four pairs. Four. This seems to me like a ton! One pair of tennis shoes, one pair of flip flops (for the shower), real sandals (the kind you can actually hike in), and one pair of rubber boots (the mud here after the rain makes anything we call mud season back home look like nothing). At home however, I have probably thirty pairs of shoes (to my great embarassment), just right for different occasions, clothes, activities and events.
However, here in the campo, the shoe of choice (or of economic necessity) is a plastic flip flop, often tied where it has broken, too big or too small for the wearer, and worn for everything. From cooking in the dirt floored kitchen, to walking the four miles to another community or the nearest store, or for playing football with a flat ball with your friends outside the school.
Often times within the family, these shoes may be shared, as there may actually not be enough pairs to go around. One child may wear them to school when they go in the morning, giving them to the other at lunchtime so he can attend class in the afternoon. If it is raining, there is not a worry about open-toed footwear, mostly because there is nothing to change into. Running in the field next to the school is the same; barefoot is the way to play the game after a while, the sandals not only fly off when one kicks the ball, but also break too easily.
So this has all put me to thinking about luxury, about necessity, about shoes. Wondering what it is about that we produce and consume shoes for all occasions, specialize them not only for sports but for types of sports, while kids here run around and cut their feet playing barefoot in order to preserve their plastic flip flops. It seems so connected yet so different and distant, I either don’t know how to, or more likely don’t want to make the connection between these two realities. The unfairness and triviality of the one to the other seems too great to be reckoned with or made sense of.
And I am left wondering, what does it mean to go back to my world with thirty pairs of shoes?
posted by Hilary King at
5:30 PM
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