Fashionable Footwear

So, for anyone who doesn’t know us personally, this will probably give you a pretty good reason of why to be glad that you don’t.

For less than $4.50 total, our family was able to go to the market and purchase brand new plastic shoes. Yep, you read that right, plastic shoes. Remember all the hype about Cr*cs and how the non Cr*c wearers would bash the Cr*c wearers and self righteously expound on how utterly stupid plastic shoes made you look? I totally agreed with them – plastic shoes do make you look dumb and frumpy, and come on people – who would pay that kind of money for a plastic shoe? I sure never did – I went for the off brands : ) At the same time though, who cares HOW dumb they make you look, as long as they’re comfortable? And really, a plastic shoe can last FOREVER. Even when your dogs chew off the backs. You can get them wet, you can clean them easily, they float in water and are brightly colored so you don’t lose them in the Lake, they’re easy for even a two year old to get on or off by themselves… Plastic shoes were God’s gift to people. Especially Ugandan people and those of us who live amongst Ugandan people.

Now, before I paint for you a picture of all Ugandans tromping around in stupid looking brightly colored plastic shoes, let me make this clear – they don’t. The middle to upper class would probably die before they stuck their feet in such a stupid looking shoe. Instead they would rather walk MILES (seriously) in high heeled or stiletto (so not kidding!) shoes for the women, or shiny black REALLY pointy toed shoes for the men. And these shoes require POLISH – and lots of it! I doubt most of these people would even put their children in such tacky looking plastic shoes either. The rest of the population, and the Graces who don’t really fit in anywhere, we’re the ones who wear plastic shoes. And if the adults still can’t find it within themselves to wear them, they put them on their kids! Which is why these suckers are so cheap. I bought Frankie’s for $1.00 and Ella and mine for about $1.50. Brand new.

Ugandans are SMART. Not only did they figure out the wisdom and durability of a plastic shoe, but they started making different DESIGNS as well! So now a family like mine can all be wearing plastic shoes but not only in different colors but different designs! Seriously, talk about a different plastic shoe for all occasions. Jeesh!

Ella's style are the cutest, me thinks!

I just got done reading Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. Lets just say that the book was so well written that it even had ME convinced that I myself was truly born to run too, and in my bare feet! It had quite a lot of interesting information about the sports industry and most notably, the sports shoe industry, and about the human foot and how, quite simply, it was made to run, carry your weight, and not cause a lot of injury to the rest of your body while you were running on it. Duh, I mean, it’s on the bottom of your body and God did put it there. Sports shoe sellers however lead you to believe that you can’t run without an expensive sports shoe, which actually end up causing a ton of running related injuries. By actually running bare foot your body naturally figures out the best way to carry yourself when you run, to avoid pain. Which is why so many bare foot cultures who do a lot of running, don’t have running related injuries. Expensive shoes provide so much cushion and try to help the runner avoid pain, that the runner can then run however they want and end up throwing out their back, knees, tendons, you name it.

So anyways, after reading that, I was ready to confiscate my children’s shoes and make them walk with me bare foot on our daily evening Pack Walks. But instead I compromised by buying us all new, cheap plastic shoes. Now we should be all set to hike Mount Kilimanjaro!