Big Mama, little Grace, old shoe, new shoes

The entrance to the clothing market down in Area 2, "across the bridge."


A picture to show a bit of the shoe market.


A picture to show the cleaning touch-up I requested for Scout's almost-steampunk new(ish) mary janes.


Big Mama (occasionally little mama) and little Grace are frequent personalities at our breakfast and lunch tables. Scout sits in my chair beside Finn, uses a big spoon and tall glass cup, decides who says the blessing on the food, speaks in a kind ordering sort of way, serves up the food, puts small pieces of food on Finn's tray.

Grace began as a little blond friend at Kindermusic, but her personality has grown enormously when a little role-reversal is required. She shows up whenever Scout needs to be authorized to be in charge, and it's not a bad trick. (Bailey, Bodean, and Francisca who also began as Kindermusic friends are triplets, sometimes in utero, sometimes as needy tiny babies, sometimes they're learning how to walk, sometimes they're astonishingly matched in accomplishments to Finn.)

Anyway, when the mama-switching began, it was revealing how Scout described her mama self. "No, I'm a big mama. I use a big spoon." or "See? I have big feet!"

In fact, her feet have grown. Outgrown, in fact, all the cute shoes Auntie Brooke has provided us with for the past three years. A friend from Germany was going to pick up some leather shoes for her own kids while she was there for a few days and was ready to choose some for Scout too--traced foot in luggage!--but her 30 Euro price guess nearly (politely) choked me. I decided to give the big secondhand clothing market a try.

I'd only been once or twice--honestly, it's a big deal to get there, and sticking out like a money tree and being offered terrible deals isn't great fun. But I went with a Malawian friend, who lead me down an avenue of detailed used shoes to old shoe heaven. The place where all good shoes (and some really beat up ones) go when you think they've died. Probably two acres of stalls, with shoes of every size, shape, colour. (Not a lot of snow boots, but some!) The best shoes are cleaned, polished, buffed, stuffed hard with plastic bags, and displayed. See those in the picture? Those are all used shoes. Those are literally the shoes we get rid of, because all these are from bales sent out from the rich west.

The shoe market is built up a hill, and in the top-most corner are three guys and a bucket of water and rags and brushes. Each shoe seller has their own cans of black shoe polish (everything close to black gets it). Those not deemed good enough for refurbishment get left in piles you may pick through. There's general calling and excitement when a new bale gets opened--kind of like when they bring out the new rack of unsorted stuff at the DI.

All it takes is to say what size and kind you're looking for, and enterprising young men scamper off to scour the place for you. After two trips and four pairs of shoes, Scout--I mean Big Mama--is now reshod. In little blue leather Puma sneakers, sparkly black leather Mary Janes for fancy, and a pair of flashing LED StrideRite sneakers to grown into. Hot dog! That's what I call a haul!





ps: bonus picture. Just had to show how artfully everything is displayed to sell. Toothbrushes and toothpaste and washclothes for crying out loud! I'm impressed.