Barefoot

Becoming immersed in a culture can be described in shoes. Shoes take you places, protect you, indicate your purpose in wearing them. Take the expat, for example. Heels are the essence of expats. They are shiny, pretty, and formal. Heels take part in fancy events and indicate status within the society. Only the balls of the feet touch the ground, and all else is elevated above it. Expats take part in the shiny parts of the culture in which they live, and never experience all that is part of the life around them. They are limited in their mobility, but they enjoy the status that comes with wearing them.
Tourism is another way in which one can get closer to a culture. Tourism is experienced as wearing tennis shoes. Tennis shoes are meant for comfort. The tennis shoes allow one to walk around, see all there is to see and continue on their way, but yet stay within their comfort zone. There is a barrier separating the tourist and the culture, and the tourist prefers to stay within this barrier of the tennis shoe. Tennis shoes are for continued walking, and the tourist never becomes fully immersed in the culture because they are simply striding through, seeing the popular and beautiful attractions, and continuing on. Tennis shoes protect them from the obstacles on the road, and therefore the obstacles of the culture.
I belong to the group with no name. We are not travelers or journeyers… that implies transition. We are not immigrants… we plan to move on some day. We are the group that wants to immerse themselves as much into the culture as they can; the group that plans to stay and learn and become. I am a part of a group that will live among a new culture and experience all there is, the wonderful as well as the dreadful. The group that is barefoot.
Being barefoot is no easy task. The barefoot person must walk slower, feel all the crevices and pebbles in the ground; we experience all the bumps and difficulties that come with living in another culture in sharper form, yet we can also feel the sand beneath our feet and wiggle our toes in the grass. There is more intimate contact with the world around us, as our bare feet feel everything. Our skin is the only thing separating our feet from the ground, just as our own cultural standpoint is the only thing separating us from this other world. We are fully exposed and at the wrath of another people, another culture. We may hurt more, but we also feel more than people wearing high heels or tennis shoes.
However, the more we walk barefoot, the more calluses we create on our bare feet, making it easier to navigate in this other place. Our fragileness slowly eases away as we become a bit more comfortable in our surroundings, yet never forgetting the fact that we are stripped of our comfort zone, even though we are forming a slightly new one the more we walk barefoot. We are learning to jump the crevices and avoid the pebbles, we are learning where to find the softest sand. We are learning the ins and outs of the culture and are now comfortable here, even though we can never be fully a part of it, we have come to understand it and appreciate it for its quirks and beauty and difficulties. We are barefoot but tough.
And when it is time to leave, we will move on to another place, discover new obstacles in the roads, and feel new warmth on our toes. And we will yet again start by tiptoeing slowly around, and figuring out the best ways to navigate in a new place. We will create new calluses as we discover the joys and hardships of a new culture, allowing ourselves to continue growing and walking barefoot around the world.