Les pieds sâles

Dirty Feet

Dirty feet are good because they mean I have been out. Half of this city's streets are mud and sand. Where there is a semblance of a sidewalk, it is normally not paved. Even wearing runners, socks, and pants sometimes doesn't keep the dirt off of your feet! And the further off the beaten path you go, the dirtier your feet get.

Today, my feet were filthy! I was so far off the path that my chauffeur today, Thomas, had to park because there was no way our 4x4 was getting us down that hill. To my complete surprise, I ended up on the opposite end of town down this hill in a little school with no electricity or running water in a tiny office about the size of a full bathroom with five other people discussing when I would facilitate the Conflict and Power workshop that Jessie and I wrote last year. Thanks entirely to Jessie for the idea and the initiative, we wrote a conflict resolution workshop aimed at women who had been victims of domestic violence in Winnipeg as our final assignment for Karen Ridd's Violence and Nonviolence course. We designed and wrote it, however, with every intention of actually facilitating it after the course was over, and in June we did so for some of the women at Outreach, the Fort Garry Women's Resource Centre's satellite location on Pembina. It was great fun and a success, and such an incredible and wonderful opportunity and experience for both of us. I don't know why, but on a whim I decided to bring it with me out here. I threw it in my suitcase the day before I left Winnipeg. My aunt and uncle had a look at it about a week ago and have been strongly encouraging me and supporting the idea that I explore the possibility of facilitating it here. They have been plugging it all over town, and for the past week I've been trying to wrap my head around it. My aunt mentioned it to a friend of hers yesterday who teaches at the school I was at today, and he immediately expressed interest in getting together with me. Everyone in the room with me was really excited about it, and beginning tomorrow I will set to the enormous task of translating it into French.

When I got home, my feet were so filthy in fact that I had to use Mujinga (our housekeeper)'s scrub brush for cleaning the bathtub to get them clean. It was marvelous.