Shoes on the Doorstep
Here is one of the first things we learned upon arriving in North India, and we learned it before we had even set foot inside our landlord’s door:
Leave your shoes outside.
This rule wasn’t a big surprise, as we had gotten used to slipping our sandals off at the door of our home in West Africa. We had carried the tradition back over the ocean to our apartment in Pasadena, where we had a spot just inside the front door for our shoes.
In fact, we have learned that the shoes-stay-outside rule is followed in most cultures of the world, especially non-Western ones. In many places, like where we live now, animals such as cows, sheep, and chickens populate the out-of-doors, and we’d rather not bring any unpleasant traces of them into our homes. Carpets are expensive, and carpet-cleaning is done by hand. In traditional cultures where honor is important, guests show respect for their host and his home by entering with bare feet.
I’ve also learned to glean information from the shoes I see outside the door. 
When I go out to visit, I can often guess whether my neighbor is at home by whether I see her shoes on the front step. Returning home to our apartment the other day, I was greeted by the cheerful sight of four pairs of fancy girls’ sandals outside the door; our landlord’s cousin was visiting with her four daughters! I imagine that my long American-style flip-flops were happy to join them on the doorstep, where they have come to feel at home.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged shoes by Lisa