Sandals bring smiles

By: SHAILA DANI (Sat, Mar/26/2005)

In a hot and dusty village near Bayji, Iraq, surrounded by miles and miles of desert, at least 50 Iraqi kids are wearing new sandals that were bought right here in Bucks.

The springtime chill doesn’t lend itself to thinking about open-toe weather just yet, but a month-old goodwill project that’s collected 250 pairs of sandals has got Northampton residents doing just that.

The project, Brad’s Sandalmania, was the brainchild of Council Rock graduate Brad Raudenbush, 22, who was sent overseas in June for service in Iraq. The Temple University criminal justice major wrote in a recent e-mail that he thought of distributing sandals to promote goodwill among Iraqis after checking out some Army photos of the region he was heading to.

“In one picture, a 7-year-old Iraqi girl was standing in the dirt with no shoes and was holding a pair of sandals that a soldier had just given to her. It looked like a $5 pair of sandals from Wal-Mart. However, the look on this kid’s face was as if she had just received a new bike for Christmas,” wrote the Pennsylvania Army National Guard specialist.

Raudenbush told his mom, Sue Monaghan, about his idea before he left for training. Monaghan enlisted the help of township Supervisor Pete Palestina, who often takes on military-related projects.

Palestina, who was a Marine for two years in the late 1960s, said he liked Raudenbush’s idea because it was designed to improve Iraqi opinions of U.S. soldiers while helping out a needy population of that country.

Raudenbush is stationed in a primarily Sunni Muslim area, just north of Tikrit, a region that has strong ties to ousted President Saddam Hussein. But Raudenbush said the Iraqis he interacts with almost every day are always positive and polite.

“I have never walked up to an Iraqi and not been greeted with respect. [Disrespect] is not in the culture, even if they do not like you,” he wrote.

“They have no sewer systems and very rarely is there running water. In some villages they live in mud huts with straw roofs. They have nothing but the sheep they herd and the clothes on their back. It was a real eye opener to me and the rest of the soldiers,” he wrote.

Raudenbush said he communicates with Iraqi children through their broken English, his broken Arabic, hand signals and pictures drawn in the sand. He doesn’t have time to let the kids try on the sandals, so he guesses appropriate sizes.

“It doesn’t really matter because they would wear a pair 10 times too big anyway,” he said. “The reaction of the kids is the best part. … They are very excited and usually put them on right away.”

Monaghan said she is pleased with the outpouring of local support the project has received. She said she was worried about Raudenbush’s safety while distributing the sandals, but said he told her his fellow soldiers accompany him for backup.

She sends packages of 50 pairs of sandals to Raudenbush every week and has collected $1,300 in donations for more sandals and postage. Monaghan said she plans to stop collecting for the project in May.