Shoes and MORE!

October 30, 2009
A few weeks after writing about our “football experience” and the lack of shoes, a friend from home let me know that they wanted to buy shoes for the kids along with their Sunday School class! Excited and grateful, I told them that they were more than welcome to buy them, but that it might be much more cost effective to send the money and let us buy the shoes here. It also deleted the possibility of getting stuck at customs for weeks on end! So, with excitement, I told the kids that they would ALL get new shoes! We collaboratively decided that the boys would go for shoes first since some of the girls couldn’t go today, and the girls would go a few days later. There was no way that I could handle taking 15 kids to the market at the same time!

So, Friday after school we headed out to buy school shoes for those who needed them and fun shoes for everyone! You talk about constantly counting... I had nine boys in tow, on a street crowded with hundreds of people and vendors! We walked and walked, and I felt kind of like a shepherd herding my little flock of sheep through unknown pastures with 3000 other sheep roaming our grass! We made it to the school shoes shop, and found the right shoes for the boys, and then it was time for the fun to start!

I allotted each child 1000 rupees (it seemed reasonable to me!), the American equivalent of 13 dollars. With excitement, the boys began talking of how they would buy shoes, pants, sweaters, etc with their rupees. I told them they could buy whatever they chose as far as shoes and clothes go, as long as they stayed under their 1000 rupee budget! So, to my amazement, the kids picked out shoes, for 400-500 rupees. Some got Converse high tops, some got nice tennis shoes, and all range of shoes in between!

The rest of their money had to go to clothes and such. With eager excitement, the boys picked out jeans, and almost every boy got a new pair of jeans. Then, we moved on to sweaters and watches, cleaning out our rupee supply! I’ve never been so impressed with the spread of a few American dollars. And I’ve never been so impressed at the intensity of male shopping! Every boy had a partner that they had to keep in tow, and we darted from shop to stall to street corner, shopping for the best for each boy!

Exhausted, we began the trek home, piled down with bags and boxes and shoes and jeans and watches and smiles and hunger! There’s nothing quite like walking home with more bags than kids, in the pitch black of night, along these highways with no streetlights or stoplights! Very concerned that I was going to lose a kid, the older boys were required to hold the younger boys hands, which they easily agreed to do! When we got to the most major road, which we had to cross to get back to the hostel, I was sure we were all going to die. I’ve never been so concerned crossing the street, but when you’ve got a herd of boys in tow, things are a little more complicated! Needless to say, we made it home alive, hungry, and worn out, but very very thankful for our newly acquired treasures! I don’t think I’ve ever heard the words thank you so much in one night! And the girls were so gracious about it! They’re so excited to go themselves, but they were just as excited about the boys’ treasures. I was very impressed! It made for an incredibly fun and exciting evening!!