Balloons!

Rugi walks into my backyard and requests that I give her one of my discarded shoes. She will get a dalasi in exchange and buy candy and give me a piece. I agree, and we walk around collecting a year-and-a-half’s worth of broken flip-flops.

Rugi thanks me and instructs me: when the shoes I’ve got now break, give them to her and she will get a balloon. But she asks that next time, when the shoes break, don’t poke a hole in it! (I had cut up one of the shoes in an attempt at a creative doorstop). And don’t forget!

Rugi undoes her wrap-skirt to retie it. A red balloon falls out. She picks it up and hands it to me. “Take it, I have two. Inflate it, like this.”

Two days later Rugi gives me a miniscule chip of candy, what I presume to be the remaining sliver to a candy she’d been sucking on. She brags that she saved me some candy—did I forget? for the shoes—but Adama did not. Some minutes later Adama gives me a candy, complete; I unwrap it myself.

Oh, and exchanging broken shoes for balloons and candy? I'm surprised I haven't written about this earlier. Maybe I have and forgot. Every once and awhile a man will bicycle through the village, honking a horn, collecting broken shoes and passing out balloons. Someone told me something about the shoes being recycled, but I haven't had the courage to press through the mob of children to question the balloon man personally.