Friday, April 1, 2016

Shoe Crazy: Day 2,089

Yesterday, Handsome and I went out to meet the families.  Most of them don't yet have their first-semester grades--they'll probably come out next week--but it's been about 2 months since I was out there.  I had planned to go in February, but one of our cats became ill--we think it was a spinal tumor--and was eventually put down.  So, Handsome's days off became "deal with cat" days instead of "drive shoes to Solola" days.

Anyway, the families were happy to see me and happy to see the shoes.  There is a rule of "one pair of shoes per person in the family," but I just kept recalling the story of the boy who realized that hard work does have rewards, and I didn't deny them a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of dress shoes.  I took my entire shoe stock out to Solola, and Handsome figures we brought back only 25% of it.  The rule mostly exists so that families don't just buy a lot of shoes and then go and sell them elsewhere for actual money.  Additionally, it takes a long time (and a fair amount of money) to get that many shoes bought and down to Guatemala, and my mother (predominantly) spends a LOT of time trying to get the sizes and styles which are most needed.

Some of the women look through the last remaining shoes in the box



Their purchases will be noted in Annalisa's binder

The crates were donated by one of our good friends at COTA and are very helpful for storing project materials.  Thank you!