Significance of his crapes

I think that the gym shoes were just objects that really stood out in his mind, quite possibly because of the time he had to walk without shoes and he burned his feet. I think going through such hardship really made him appreciate his crapes, and therefore he noticed them on others. When he was a refuge, and then a soldier, the crapes were a blessing that he needed to survive. I think he chose to leave them in the original language because of his greatfulness to his shoes and the prominence the crapes had in his life. I don think he would have mentioned them so often if they hadn impacted his view of the world. The crapes helped make or break Ishmael life. Without them, as we witnessed on the beach, he couldn travel fast enough to get away from the rebels. I don think many people who have shoes realize how difficult life would be without them. When the villagers took the boys crapes, they not only took their shoes, they took their method of transportation as well. The hot sand made it extremely difficult (more like nearly impossible) for the boys to continue. Because of the extremely hot sand, the boy feet were burned to shreds, making for continuing on their journey extremely difficult. If the boys were not given more shoes or didn find some other method of transportation, I doubt they would have actually escaped the rebels. It may be a cultural point of view. Perhaps in the Sierra Leone culture, the type of shoe a person wears distinguishes themselves from other people. Such as in the american culture, anything from cars to hairstyle can individualize a person. In Sierra Leone, people don have the luxuries of cars, expensive phones, professional hair dressers, or designer clothing so they distinguish themselves by their kicks, or crapes. I did notice that he always commented on other peoples shoes/feet and never failed to mention what kind of shoe they had on, especially while in the bush. At the beginning of his journey I don think the crapes meant so much to him. But by the time he reached the beach where the flaps of skin were falling off of his feet because they were burnt so badly, he appreciated them. These shoes helped him walk so many days throughout his journey. Without these, he would have suffered and not been able to kill the rebels and make it to the rehabilitation center safely. The crapes or shoes were one of the factors that saved his life, which is why he kept them in their original language.