The Culture of Shoes, Feet & Mats

Another funeral this week… that means hours of women gathered together sitting on mats and chanting and saying prayers. Before coming to Africa, I never spent so much time sitting on the ground on mats.

An event on mats

Islanders use mats a lot. You don’t have enough chairs?  A mat instantly provides culturally-appropriate seating for multiple people. If you have a group gathering at your house, most people will expect that the seating will be primarily mats. There are certain events that happen completely on mats (like funerals). Islanders will lay out multiple mats together to create one huge matted surface, either inside or even outside on the street. Mats are a great hosting asset, but there is one rule that newcomers to island culture need to remember: Mats are shoe-free zones.

I heard or read someone theorize that the culture around shoes hinges on the cultural understanding of the cleanliness of the floor and the cleanliness of feet. Apparently everyone recognizes that shoes are dirty, but if you see the floor as dirty, then you might see wearing shoes as protecting your feet. If you see the floor as clean, then you take off your shoes to protect the cleanliness of the floor.

Pile of shoes at event

When we enter an island house, the assumption is that we take off our shoes at the threshold. Occasionally a host will complain that they haven’t swept or mopped recently and insist you keep your shoes on, but a good guest usually starts to take off their shoes at the door (especially if the floor is tiled). But even if you kept your shoes on when you entered, if you reach a mat the shoes will always come off.

For big events there are a lot of people, which means a lot of shoes.The edges of the mats soon have piles of accumulated shoes. Some afraid of theft or just not wanting the hassle of finding their shoes afterwards, will bring a baggy to take the shoes with them or they will hide their shoes somewhere near the entrance to make them easier to find. Once we were stranded on a mat at the end of an event, because the host had honored us by putting our shoes safely in her house.  Culturally we were unable to step off the mat until our shoes were brought to us, lest we dirty our clean feet!

The assumption is that bare feet are clean. And overall I have found that islanders feet usually are. Technically, a ‘good’ islander should be washing their feet five times per day before prayers. And while I know most islanders don’t do this, they do seem to value clean feet. I have been embarrassed a few times to sit on a mat, only to realize that the bottoms of my feet were a bit dirty, meanwhile everyone else was showing clean soles.

We took shoes off at river, too!

There is a lot of this shoes/feet culture that we have absorbed from our years here. We train our kids in the rules.  We immediately start to take off our shoes when we come to a house. We cringe when we see a foreigner walk on an island mat with their shoes on. But it doesn’t mean we get it right all the time. This week I chided myself for not washing my feet before going to the funeral, so as I sat down on the mat, I causally hid my feet under my wrap. :)

PRAYERS ANSWERED
There was an encouraging women’s gathering this past week— with a study and singing, prayer and laughter. We are thankful for some good progress in preparing for the new family coming in Feb and for our teammate who has been heading up those preparations. We are thankful for an outing to the river on the weekend and its cool water on these hot days.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
There is a big gathering being planned for this coming weekend to celebrate the holiday. Pray for the logistics and that it would be an encouraging gathering that would strengthen the island body and that it would inspire all those who attend to share the good news of the season with others. Pray for us in the heat and busyness that we would balance our time well. The boy who stole from us came for one reading lesson, but we haven’t seen him since. Pray that we would be able to have a restored relationship with him and that he would have good influences in his life. May the joy of the season be felt in us and through us!