Why a Booktrail?
Life in a Pakistan refugee camp as seen through the eyes of two young girls
Four Feet, Two Sandals
What you need to know before your trail
Two girls meet in a refugee camp in Pakistan and become friends in the most humbling environment possible. One day on the camp ten year old Lina is excited to see relief workers enter the camp and when she finds a sandal that fits her perfectly she is very happy indeed. She will finally have some shoes! But she has to find the other one first and it seems to be missing.
Then she sees it – on the foot of another little girl. What should they do? How to share the two sandals between four feet. If one girl wears them the other one will miss out. How to solve the problem?
Travel Guide
Life in a Pakistan refugee camp is no place for anyone least of all children. This is a humbling story of the joy that one ten year old feels the day the relief workers bring sandals.
Through these sandals however, she makes a fast and firm friend called Feroza and they decide how best they can both share the shoes rather than have one each. This is the sign of friendship they decide and so learn to live with both shoes between them.
As they had to jostle to receive something from the refugee workers, the fact that they each got one shoe each was rather a stroke of luck. Their bond, over a pair of simple sandals allows them to get through their tough life on the camp and to make life easier as they have to trek daily to get water and get around the camp day to day. Life for girls in the camp is harsh and particularly so for girls.
Each day they wait to see if they are going to be the ones who leave the camp for a new home. If that happens with Lina and Feroza who will keep the sandals then?
This story is based on co-author Khadra Mohammed’s experiences with refugees in Peshawar, a city on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
There is a lovely teacher’s guide to this book and photo of the shoes which inspired the story in the book!
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