Thabiso loses a shoe

On the surface this little tale may seem entirely insignificant, but it exemplifies in a concrete way the heightened importance of things we would hardly think about in the United States, and the complexities involved in resolving even small problems here.

About six or seven weeks ago, when Thabiso was still living with his aunt, I ran into his teacher one day in town, and she mentioned to me that Thabiso had not been in school that day. He'd had a perfect attendance record ever since we'd insisted on him going to school as a condition of his being able to visit us. So later that day I called his aunt to see if she knew why he hadn't been to school. "Oh yes," she told me, "his shoes don't fit him anymore. They are too painful to wear, but the school will send him away if he doesn't have shoes." I recalled seeing his feet squeezed into a pair of shoes he'd probably had for a couple of years -- a long time for a growing boy -- so after I picked up Scott at the hospital that afternoon, we took Thabiso into town to buy a new pair of shoes. He got the basic black leather lace-up dress shoes which are a part of all school-boys' uniforms here. The shoes cost about 155 rand ($22) -- very expensive for many families here.

Thabiso went back to school the next day proudly wearing his new shoes, and we considered the problem solved. It would seem that the story would end there, but nothing is ever that simple here. About ten days ago, Thabiso showed up "to greet us" one afternoon. It seemed as if something was on his mind, and eventually he told us that one of his new shoes had been stolen. He fingered his erstwhile friend and partner in crime, Senzo, as the culprit. "But why would Senzo steal just one shoe?" I asked. Thabiso just shrugged and insisted that Senzo had stolen his shoe one night when they were at a mutual friend's home watching their current favorite movie "Spiderman" on DVD. (The mechanics and intricacies of how they manage to watch these bootleg DVD's on homesteads with no electricity will have to wait for another entry (it involves a car battery). The thought of these kids having "movie nights" together amused my mother no end while she was visiting. The reach of American pop culture is truly astounding.)

In any case, once movie night was over, Thabiso discovered that one of his shoes was missing (the Swazis remove their shoes and leave them at the door before entering someone's home). One of the other kids said they'd seen Senzo making off with the shoe, so he immediately became the prime suspect. Senzo gets blamed for lots of things that go missing or get broken around here -- some of it deservedly so, but at other times he gets blamed simply because he's already got a reputation as a trouble maker. By the time Thabiso told us about his missing shoe, a couple of days had passed. Neither Scott nor I were inclined to run out and buy him another pair of shoes. Scott went as far as going to visit the homestead where Thabiso had been watching movies the night his shoe went missing. He talked to the mother of the home, as well as several of the children who'd been there that night, and he had the brilliant idea of offering a reward (10 rand, about $1.30) for the missing shoe. On the way home, he ran into Senzo, who vehemently denied stealing the shoe, but Scott wisely offered him the same reward if he should come across the shoe.

Scott and I shared a laugh that night at the thought of these kids scouring the neighborhood for a missing shoe. Thabiso hobbled to school for the next week or so in his old tight shoes, and I seriously doubted his missing new shoe would ever show up. But this past Saturday, I ran into Senzo waiting on the road that leads to Mabuda Farm, and he told me that he knew where the shoe was: he didn't have it, but it was back at the home where they'd all been watching movies the fateful night the shoe disappeared. One of the kids at that homestead had found the shoe and was ready to claim the reward. The only problem was, the family was away and the shoe was locked up inside their home. Senzo promised to come and get us when the shoe was available to be claimed.

The next night, Sunday, Senzo showed up at our door to lead us to the shoe. As it happened, Thabiso was there as well for his daily visit "to greet us." Scott bundled both of them into our car and took off into the dusk in search of the shoe. He returned a short while later, minus the two boys, but with a smile of success on his face. He'd given rewards to both Senzo and the boy who'd found the shoe. He'd then taken Thabiso home to make sure the shoe was a perfect match for the one he still had, and it was. We both hope that this Swazi school-boy Cinderella story is truly at an end, but don't be surprised if there's a sequel. You never know around here...