*The cleat curtains*

Written by PhD Researcher Fairuzah Munaaya Atchulo

Photography: Dilayla Romeo

In Compone market, the mantra is shoes, shoes, shoes! What kind of shoes do you want? What kind of shoes do you need? Ballet flats? Knee boots or ankle boots? Sneakers or platform shoes? Winter boots or cleats? Or even diving fins? Compone has them all.

There are rows & rows of traders all selling second-hand shoes. With how popular Compone is, I expect it to be bigger than it actually is. At the entrance of the market, we come across cleats hanged on horizontal wooden poles. Each cleat is tied to the next by the lace to form something of a cleat curtain. This way, customers have a 3D view of each product. There are notable brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma, with some cleats clearly showing more signs of wear than others.

The cleat curtains remind me of the drying of persimmon fruits in Korea, and my immediate thought is: “What happens when the rain comes?” All the shoes are arranged neatly on tarps; a great testament to the work that goes into unpacking, arranging, and packing these shoes every day for sale. Along narrow passageways, those Mozambican traders arrange themselves in rows to the left and to the right, leaving a narrow lane for consumers to walk as they do their shopping.

Walking along the narrow lanes, I see shoes which I typically would not expect to see in a tropical country such as Uggs, and winter boots. Silvia, our local Research Assistant, assures me that it gets cold enough to wear them. We then encounter several traders scrubbing the sneakers to keep them clean and tidy; also a group of South Africans who have travelled to Compone to shop and pass us by with arms full of sneakers.

The vendors there are mostly middle-aged women, with capulanas wrapped around their waists. They, with great hairstyles, lounge on their tarps to spend a typical slow day on their phones. Only a few try to get us to buy from them. These shoes do really go around - until the best ones are sold, they will sell the rest to other petty traders from other markets.