The weekends events

I have to apologize for my blog entries or should i say the lack there of in the last two days. but you see i have had a lot of things on my plate. Anyway Friday turned out to be quite a crazy day. I got a phone call from my mate saying his mate from college had been arrested for buying ganja in long street and that he had to bail him out. I went along for some assistance, obviously without shoes, and got told to wait on this bench because they had to do a whole bunch of papers, talk to the detective etc. etc......

Whilst sitting on the bench this man, and i think his partner walked straight past me and the first thing i noticed was that he was not wearing shoes. I think he had a friend who was also in the bin for the same reason but whatever, he was not wearing shoes. I tried to examine this person, he had a large walking stick a bag on his back and a hat that Im pretty sure was filled with dreadlocks. He had a sense of peace about him, like he didn't have a bad bone in him, he looked like he had the craziest stories.

I approached him with a smile a asked him why he didn't have any shoes. He looked and me with a smile a told me it was cultural. I explained the whole blog thing about how i wasn't wearing shoes and we spoke about it. His name was David and he was a practicing  rastafarian. David explained to me that he wasn't wearing shoes because he couldn't afford them but it was his way to express his culture. He told me that he was closer to the earth when he was barefoot and that meant something in his life. David said that it started out being a week which turned into a month and now he said he had not worn shoes in just over 13 months which is highly commendable in my view. We talked about the positives like how feet become hard on the bottom which is the bodies way of protecting against harmful surfaces, and we talked about the sharp things that we have been avoiding. His shoes had been replaced by his walking stick which he said is with him always. The concept of the walking stick comes form a respect to Haile Selassie (revered as the religious symbol for God incarnate among the Rastafari movement) where in the election campaign of 1972, People's National Party leader, Michael Manley used a prop, a walking stick given to him by Haile Selassie, which was called the "Rod of Correction", in a direct appeal to Rastafarian values.

I find it so interesting how his man does not wear shoes just like me but for such a unique reason, as a member of the Rastafarian religious movement he has distinctive codes of behavior and dress, including the wearing of dreadlocks, the smoking of cannabis, the rejection of Western medicine, and adherence to a diet that excludes pork, shellfish, and milk. Several years ago rastafarians often referred to as "most coarse" wore rough clothing and no shoes (Encyclopedia of slave and rebellion, Volume 1 By Junius P. Rodriguez). 

This is the guy , so interesting and so glad i got to talk to him