Sole Brothers
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January 31, 2013
by
Paul Salopek
Footwear is a hallmark of modern identity. How best to glimpse an individual’s core values at the start of the 21st century? Look down at their feet—not into their eyes.
there no money in that country so they have less thing
i agree in africa there are some part that is not as wealthy as other parts.
That they don’t look at people eyes they look at their feet
the people over there have no money to buy any shoes.
why are his feet so nasty looking is really bad do they they have shoes
whay are with him why were they so late
they dont have alot of money so they are very poor
they dont look at pepole eye they looka at there feet
im only here to write poems so who ever doesnt like it, too b… (more)
im only here to write poems so who ever doesnt like it, too b… (more)
This just goes to show that there are places that need help and aren’t getting it. We are supposed to be the country that helps, why are we not helping? im sorry if im too sympathetic, but its just that we dont help others but ourselves.
In the affluent global north, where fashion caters to every whim and vanity, shoes announce their wearer’s class, hipness, career choice, sexual availability, even politics (the clog versus the cowboy boot). It is disorienting, then, to be walking through a place where human beings—millions upon millions of women, men, and children—slip on identical-style footwear every morning: the cheap, democratic, versatile, plastic sandal of Ethiopia. Poverty drives demand. The only brand is necessity.
I feel bad for this guy because he has no shoes to protect his feet
In Africa, it’s hard to survive when there’s no food and it’s hard to find water to drink when being thirsty for several days.
What meager protection plastic sandals offer seems superfluous on feet like these of Mohamed Haota, the cameleer. Photograph by Paul Salopek
If I had the ability to help any country I would help Africa right there and then and help make the kids and adults feel better and good about them selves
Available in a limited palette of chemical hues—black, red, brown, green, blue, purple—the humble, rubbery shoes are a triumph of local inventiveness. They cost a pittance to manufacture. Any pair can be had for the equivalent of day’s field labor. (Perhaps two dollars.) They are cool—permitting the air to circulate about the feet on the Afar Triangle’s blistering desert surface. And home repair is universal: Owners melt and mend the molded-plastic straps over wood fires. The ubiquitous sandals of rural Ethiopia weigh nothing. They are recyclable. Finally, modest as they are—the footwear of Africa’s poorest—few other shoes can claim their own war monument. (Soldiers on both sides of long and tragic conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea wore them to their deaths in battle.)
They don’t have alot of money to be buying things.That some people are home less.
they don’t have money to buy shoes or
to build stores for shoes.
if there was no wars no country’s would be destroyed or poor
not really , there are different parts in Africa that are wealthy like Ghana and Libya and such.
they walk on a ruff surface so that surface messes up there feet
Having donation box’s on the corners of NY is part of helping out Africa with things that they really need and things that parents, adults, and especially kids really want in there life’s.
Our binary camel caravan—A’urta, or “Traded for a Cow,” and Suma’atuli, “Branded on the Ear”—has been joined at last by its two long-lost cameleers, Mohamed Aidahis and Kader Yarri. These men caught up with us from our departure point at Herto Bouri, crossing gravel pans and rumpled badlands after days of quickstep walking. In the manner of life here, no explanation was asked or given regarding the nature of their weeklong delay. They were late. Now they were with us. Each wore matching lime-green plastic sandals.
In Africa there are kids who die from being starved and kids feet gets ruined by walking barefooted
My thoughts was they meant that they people that came to their village and wore the same plastic sandals those people was one of the other people.
Guide Ahmed Alema Hessan (left) wears the “American walking shoes” he requested for the trip. But cameleers Mohamed Aidahis (center) and Kader Yarri eat up miles the way most rural Ethiopians do— wearing an ounce of molded plastic on each foot. Photograph by Paul Salopek
They wear American walking shoes
some people over there would have they’re family members / relatives send them some shoes and clothing from America but some of the people there , would like to keep their everyday life ritual.
The surface of the Rift Valley is a palimpsest of footprints stamped in the dust by millions of cross-thatched soles of injected plastic. Yet if Ethiopia’s popular sandals are mass-produced, their wearers are not. They drag their left heel. They mar the right shoe’s molding by stepping on an ember.
Imprinted on every footstep: One thing not made in China. Photograph by Paul Salopek
the surface that they walk on is ruff and they have no cars so they have to walk on hard rocks with plastic uncomfortable shoes for along distance of time.
Weird cause everything was made in China
no most of shoes in america are not made in china Alot of them are made here.
Ahmed Alema Hessan, our guide north through the Rift Valley of Ethiopia, knelt the other day on the trail, examining the shoes’ endless impressions.
“La’ad Howeni will be waiting for us in Dalifagi,” Alema said. He pointed to a single sandal track. La’ad was waiting in Dalifagi.
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