I was recently walking with a friend called Njeri in town when her shoe strap snapped in the middle of the street. Limping with one shoe on her foot and the other in her hand, we walked to the nearest shoe store in order to buy a replacement. Fortunately we didn’t have to walk for long since there was a Bata shop a street ahead, that we were both relieved to duck inside.

While inside the shop being attended to, she pointed to one of the shoes on the rack and said, “That shoe made me cry so much!” It was a kid’s shoe with a low heel and black patterned leather fronted by a small belt that was held in place by a brass buckle on the side. Njeri wanted a pair of those shoes when she was a kid, and her mother insisted on buying her a less glamorous pair of shoes. Hence the tears that are to be remembered many years later.

As we went back to walking in the street after getting a new pair of shoes, I narrated to my friend about my desire to have brown shoes when I was a kid. Back then, we knew of only 2 shoe retail shops in Kenya; Bata and Tiger. Bata shoes were cheap and easily affordable and catered for the needs of students and ordinary Kenyans with a modest shoe budget. And perhaps as a result, the shoes were black with unimaginatively dull designs. On the other hand, Tiger shoes had a variety of colors and looked very cool whether in the shop window or on the foot of a wearer. They also had an image of a Tiger printed on the insole (as opposed to the same old Bata logo), were a bit more expensive, and if you wore a pair, you were definitely ‘with it’. One of my cousins owned a pair of Tiger shoes, and I used to think that he was the happiest kid alive. Of course my Dad would never hear of Tiger shoes especially since Bata shoes were guaranteed to last for a long time, and just required a replacement of shoe laces once every few months.

One of my buddies called Dan told me his shoe story that still makes me laugh to date. Dan came from a very poor background and in the school where he went, only a single kid had a pair of shoes. As a result, all the other kids admired this one ‘rich’ kid and did everything to be in his favour. The best that would happen when one was in Michael’s good books is that he would let you wear his shoes during the 40 minutes break time between morning lessons. Within a short time of joining the school Michael was so popular that he had a line of students waiting to wear his shoes each break time. He came up with an ingenious solution; one kid, one shoe. As a result, Dan ended up being one of the kid’s who regularly enjoyed wearing one of Michael’s shoes over break time.

When my Dad got his first pair of shoes in his late teens, it was several sizes smaller. Coincidentally it happened on a day when he was going on a group field tour to Ngong Hills. Excited to show off his new shoes, he put them on and went to climb a mountain. You should watch his face when he tells that painful story!

One of the reasons why we tell such stories is to remind ourselves where we are coming from. Coming from a place where something would seem so out of reach and then being in another place where that becomes something to laugh about gives hope that there are still many great things to come. Why do I say that? Because it is an assurance that all the things that I might think are beyond my reach right now, will soon be in abundance, just as the pair of shoes that anyone who has ever cried about are right now. Can you look back and see your little achievements over the years, no matter how trivial they might seem? They say, “He who does not thank for little will not thank for much”, so get ready for the much by thanking for the little.