Wiffs of nostalgia

For more than eight of the last nine years I have been living the life of the minority of one. I've been the gringo, toubob (white person), straine (foreigner) and now the makua (again, white person). The one and only in each village. This means leaving a way of life I can navigate by remote control, to enter a new one with a myriad of challenges for the unknowing. Also left behind are memories of a prior life but also there is the promise of fabricating new ones. But at times and at random there have been these triggers that have brought back wiffs of nostalgia of what seems to me to be, a former surreal existence. What is in the picture has been one of these such triggers. That platform sneaker brings me back to my hey day during the disco era of the 70's. I've cringed as I passed it several times daily. It was in the middle of a trash pile along the main path I use to and from the house. I didn't believe anything like that existed anymore. What I did this afternoon was take it, stand it upright and take a picture of it for this blog entry. The couple of people watching me must have thought, well, who knows what they thought of the white guy taking a picture of a platform shoe from a garbage pile. The funny thing was that the next time I passed the spot where I last left the shoe. It had moved from the side to the middle of the sandy path. Plus as I returned along the same path a few hours later it was 'poof', gone. I am wondering if by giving this, which is to me a trigger, the importance of taking it's picture that I gave it some mysterious value. In turn, in someone's mind it became a must have. Either way, thank goodness it's gone. Imagine two years of multiple daily remembrances of the disco days.