Keeping up appearances

Hello all!  I decided that it was time to do a new post.  Today has been so busy...milk, sweeping, mopping, cleaning, laundry, making bread...I'm glad to have a chance to sit down for a bit.

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Mom and I were talking the other day about something, and I thought it might make an interesting blog.

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I have let myself go in the area of appearance and such.  Really.  Of course appearances aren't everything...we should be more concerned with what's on the inside - but when it goes too far the other way, that's not good either.  This is somewhat of a struggle for me...I'm not sure if I'll be able to adequately put it into words, but I'll give it a try.  

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Living here doesn't lend itself to prettying you up.  People look at us differently here {of course} - we're not natives, we live in a different kind of house, in general we have more money than they do, and we're white.  Since people look at us so differently already (we're the ones "Oh, from Amerika!"), I don't dress myself up as much as I would in the States.  I don't want to seem to be saying "look at me!" with my more "fancy" (I use that term loosely) American things. 

I wear flip flops quite literally everywhere I go.  Each morning my hair goes straight up in a clip.  My daily attire consists of a big t-shirt (Most of them are hand-me downs), and an old skirt or kanga I got from the market, or stretch pants.  

Sometimes I stop and actually look at myself...what happened?  It didn't happen overnight, but because three years of being with people who mostly have only a tattered, stained kanga, or tattered, stained pants to wear with a ragged, stained shirt, maybe some shoes, maybe not.  Even so, I don't have to look like a cave woman!  

So I resolve to wear some earrings {Hey, I've worked up to studs!}, and maybe put some lotion on my feet, but the next Sunday an old lady comes to sit by me.  Her kanga is worn and holey, as is her shirt, her sandals are made out of old tires...and her feet.  Her feet are slightly deformed from having such a hard life, her toenails are all split, and the skin so cracked they would be impossible to ever fix.  Then I look down at my own feet, then back at hers...and I had been worried that mine are sometimes dirt stained or not as smooth as I'd like.

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I would love to get all prettied up sometime and have somewhere to go, or have something to do that I have to get a little prettied up for.  But there isn't, which is perfectly okay, but just because some around me are like that old woman, doesn't mean I should completely let myself go.  I'm trying to do better, but I look at that old woman's feet, and it's a strange, mixed feeling.  I want to do better with myself, but as I look back at the old woman smiling at me with her toothless smile, I wonder...how can I?

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{please note: I did not take this picture, and I don't own it...I found it on flicker.com, but it maybe is just a tiny sample...}

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