The shoe repair guy said, wistfully, No one ever brings me clean shoes.
I handed over mud-crusted boots that needed re-heeling and felt like a shit.
*
I love travel. The more places I go, the more I feel alive, connected, humble, curious, ignorant, desperate, hopeful, optimistic, realistic, fatalistic.
I hate travel. The more I go, the less I feel like staying.
*
One day I shoveled sand in a rocky Addis Ababa alley and sang Gershwin to a little girl who giggled and held my work-gloved hand. A passerby kissed my cheek and said she felt as though she were my sister, and I felt like the luckiest person alive.
And now I feel more deeply lonely than ever. I thought it was supposed to be the opposite.
*
For 6 Birr (35 cents), a shoeshine kid scrubbed my muddy kicks with soap and water. He didn't complain about dirty shoes. But, sitting there while he labored with a dirty rag and scraps of soap, I still felt like a shit.
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