I sewed a kids shoes together today… 

There’s a 12-year-old kid named Rogerilio that goes to school at Villa el Salvador and has had the same pair of sandals for as far back as anyone can remember.  Looking at them, you can almost hear them begging to be put out of their misery… thrown in the trash for God’s sake as they wouldn’t even be of any use to a scrap pile.  They were in one piece.  I can say that, but just barely as the strappies had long-since come unglued from the insoles and the insoles from the rubber soles.  One shoe was in pretty good shape with most of the straps still connected to the soles.  But the other one was connected by only two of the straps and even that was threatening to come undone as they’d been sewn together before and the decaying white string they’d used before was on its last leg.  I also had to dig a few rusty nails out of the insoles as someone had used what tiny bit of shoe-repair knowledge they had to produce a temporary fix that more resembled a risk of tetanus.

Luckily, I had a few large (like, extra GRANDE) sewing needles as I have been trying rather lazily to make curtains to replace the seventies-style lemon-lime blinds in our room.  With these needles and a ball of yarn, I went to work tyring to repair these well-worn sandals for the 5th or 6th time in their lives.  As I worked, I got to thinking about it… How is it that I came to a point in my life where I´m sitting on the floor in Peru sewing together a pair of sandals for a poor kid that I´ve really only hung out with once or twice.  Taken completely out of context, I´d never believe it either.  But here I am, thinking I´m just a little volunteer that helps wrangle kids long enough for them to learn something.  Turns out we’re good for a lot more, which is always fun to know, and I was really excited to use my homegrown sewing skills to act as a shoe repairperson for a few hours. heh heh heh… 

And in the end, I was thinking of Mom.  Since she taught me to sew at the age of (what? five?), I’ve sewn together the most random things from ripped jeans to book covers to curtains, but never shoes!  Even though he’ll probably never know that my mom was responsible for his shoes lasting a few more months, Rogerilio will be happy to get a little more use out of them, especially now that he won’t be poked in the foot by rusty nails.  Thanks mom!

We’ll try to give them to him on Friday.  In the mean time, he’s wearing a new pair of purple high top (off brand) Converses that someone from Canada donated through one of Bruce Peru’s volunteers.  He seems to like them, despite their purpleness, especially because his friend Steven expressed some envy for them.  So hopefully, in the end, he’ll have a choice of footwear, probably for the first time in his life!  We’ll see what Andy’s new hot glue gun can do about keeping the insoles and the rubber soles together.  Maybe that´s a good ol’ Alabama duct tape job!