As a Junior High student in a Mexican school you are required to have a uniform and shoes. In a poor family having a small income ... $320 per month ... and seven kids, you just have to make do, Junior High school uniforms and backpacks cost around $90 each.
Ricki and Tomas are two brothers about the same size. Ricki, twelve, is in Junior High and his brother Tomas, eleven, is in grammar school; they have one pair of shoes between them. They make do by sharing the same shoes, When Tomas returns about noon, he takes his shoes off and Ricki puts them on and heads two miles down the dirt road to his school.
As a kid I was poor too, and ran all summer barefoot, but I had a better option than that. I had a good pair for Sunday and my "feet" world wasn't dirt but cement.
When I came Saturday afternoon, the boys were running around barefoot and in pajamas. I kidded them about wearing their pajamas so late, then I looked at the clothes drying on the fence. Mom stripped all the kids down to essentials and washed the clothing that was left, which wasn't much.
The family, like others in the neighborhood, buys their water from a tank truck that comes by every few days.
Yes, we paid for one uniform and two pair of shoes. These kids need school. I looked at all the boy's school books and grades, then gave them each $1.00 for their good grades ... a world of need, so close, and yet so far away.
