Fashion & Farming: Pink Gumboots

My life is a little busy right now – capstone defense in 36hours and graduation next week…YAY!!

I took some time off to participate in my 1st ever Twitter Conference this morning that was put together by Rockefeller Foundation as part of their Innovative Challange initiative. Yours truly will be putting in her entry under the ‘Farming Now: How will your idea encourage and support young people to enter and stay in farming?” so y’all keep me in your prayers.

So the twitter tweets got me thinking, how can one appear “cool” to youth while engaging them in farming related activities and then boom…I remembered my Pink Gumboots.

You see, I caught on to rainboots/ gumboots being fashionable when I moved to Arkansas in 2010. When it rained, women had them on looking cute with their jeans or tights tucked in. And since I walk from home-school-work in Little Rock, they came in handy on rainy days.

Like most women, I bought two pairs

Like most women, I packed both pairs of gumboots and headed to East Africa

Multi colored polka dotted gumboots, with Teddy in Ngora UG

I got lot’s of ” Eish, what’s wrong with her?..she looks really crazy” looks in Nairobi (Kenya) and Mbale (Uganda) so I shyed away from wearing them during farm visits or on rainy days so as not to be the wierdo.

My niece and I rocking our gum boots in South Africa

To one group of people, I was super cool.
TEENAGERS

Senior 5 (A-Level) agriculture students at Mbale Secondary School liked my gumboots. They laughed at my pink gumboots. They asked me where I got my pink gumboots. They asked me where they could buy pink gumboots. They asked me if I could leave them my pink gumboots.

And when I got their stamp of approval, I wore my gumboots everytime the clouds were grey in the morning or when it rained while I was in Uganda and during my 10-days over Easter holidays in Nairobi.

10 points for Pink Gumboots being a conversation starter & cool among my agriculture students in Uganda.