To Market, to Market...

Before I went to London for Christmas, I did some shopping at the local market.  I made three exceptional purchases:  a pair of brand new size 8 long GAP Always Skinny jeans (MSRP $69) for 10,000RWF ($15), a North Face Windwall jacket (MSRP $120) for 5,000RWF ($8), and a long Vero Moda DOWN jacket with a hood (MSRP $150) for 10,000RWF ($15).  And that was me getting ripped off because I’m white! Here I am wearing all 3:

The only thing I set out to purchase but didn’t find was a pair of black leather boots.  In my pursuit of boots, though, I found a pair of shoes that looked strikingly familiar.  I’m now going to tell you a possible story of that pair of shoes.

Once upon a time (in say, 2002 or so), a high school girl went shopping with her mother at a Target in a medium sized town down south.  On that fateful day, the girl’s mom bought her a pair of shoes.  Black flats with a strap over the front with a little black bow, size 9 ½.  Knowing this girl’s mom, the shoes likely did not cost more than $19.99.  That girl wore those shoes to school with jeans and a black shirt.  She wore them to church with a black dress.  She wore them to the mall and the movies and her friends’ houses.  Such versatile shoes were hard to come by, but she had found them!

Needless to say, when said girl was packing for college, she packed those shoes.  She wore them to class regularly (well, actually only when she was wearing black… she had shoes in every color so she never had to wear black shoes with say, a red shirt).  She wore them to the dining hall and to church.  And one Sunday (in say 2007) at church, the pastor announced a shoe drive.  A collection of shoes to go to an organization that sends shoes to people in need.  To women affected by hurricanes and AIDS and floods and famines and things of the sort. 

Now, this girl had a LOT of shoes AND a serious matchy-matchy problem.  Like, she had over 100 pairs of shoes, and there were certain shoes that she had that went with one particular shirt (with matching belt and earrings) and she would never dare wear them with anything other than that shirt that matched them PERFECTLY.  She saw the shoe drive as a step in the right direction for solving her problem.  If she didn’t have 100 pairs of shoes, she couldn’t possibly be so obnoxiously matchy-matchy.  So she decided deep down in her soul to give away her soles.  She gathered up 75 pairs of shoes into several trash bags and brought them with her to church the next Sunday. 

You may have guessed that that pair of Target black flats, size 9 ½ were amongst the shoes she donated that day.  Several times over the course of the next few years, she yearned to wear those shoes but remembered her selfless donation and hoped that some poor woman affected by a hurricane or AIDS or a flood or a famine or something of the sort was thoroughly enjoying those shoes.

After she graduated from college and worked a couple of years in seasonal, residential jobs, that girl moved to Africa where women are affected by AIDS and floods and famines and such.  Since the equator is so warm, she rarely wore closed-toed shoes, but one December, she decided to go north for the holidays.  She needed a pair of shoes that would cover her toes and be versatile enough to wear with most anything.  So, she went to the market.

Searching for a pair of black shoes her size, that girl came across a pair in her size, mind you, that looked strikingly familiar….  Remembering how much she loved those shoes back in high school and college, she inquired about the price of said shoes.  20,000RWF ($30).  Needless to say, that girl did not purchase said shoes, but did enjoy speculating about the journey those shoes had made in the past 10 years.

Presumably, they were manufactured in southeast Asia, Indonesia with probably $3 worth of materials, perhaps by a person who made MAYBE $1 a day.  Then they were shipped off to America in a big boat and landed in a port where they were put in a big truck and driven down south and delivered to Target.  They were labeled with a price of $19.99 and sold to a high school girl.  She wore them for 5 years and then donated them to a charity that sends shoes to people in need.  They were stuck on a truck and driven to Texas, the home of the charity where they were packaged and stuck on another truck to a port where they were put on a boat and sent to another port where they got on another truck and ended up at a market in Rwanda.  Someone with a stall in that market paid the shipper 5,000RWF ($8) for the chance to sell those shoes to an unsuspecting muzungu.  And suddenly, that pair of shoes that was worth $3 (plus the $1 of labor, I suppose) is re-available to that girl for a mere $30, should she choose to buy them and give that supposed poor woman in Africa who is suffering from AIDS or floods or famine $22 or 11x a typical day’s wage for the average Rwandan.  She did not make such a choice. 

And that, my friends, is the story of those strikingly familiar-looking shoes as I see it.