Trail runners know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But that route may not be the most scenic, the most rewarding, or the most enlightening. There's a lot to be gained from a roundabout route.

A handful of local runners learned that on the circuitous path to deliver running shoes to Africa.

Most running shoes are good for around 500 miles. The off-road enthusiasts known as Trailheads began an initiative to squeeze bit more mileage out of theirs -- roughly 8, 000 miles -- all the way from North Carolina to a new home in Malawi.

The Dzama School in the village of Lilongwe got 12 pairs, and, wisely, one pair was given to the guard at the warehouse where the boxes were being stored, said Lillian Brown, a Trailhead runner currently living in Malawi.

"Recipients of the shoes were very grateful, " Brown said. "You could see almost giddiness in the women's faces when we distributed them to the executive committee of the Dzama School. Shoes are a little easier to come by in the city, but in the village areas, good strong shoes are much scarcer."

Brown is working near Lilongwe at the UNC Project, an initiative of the UNC School of Public Health. She and fellow Public Health student and fellow Trailhead Mariah Hoffman had each spent extensive time in Africa, and both had seen the need for shoes among the residents.

"Initially, while she was in Africa working, Mariah sent an email to the Trailheads email list, describing the need for shoes, " said Brown. "Mariah left Malawi before the shoes arrived, so I sort of inherited the Trailheads' shoe project. I think Trailheads like Bob Kern and others in Chapel Hill took it from there."

Hoffman, now studying at the UNC Medical School in Chapel Hill, is the daughter of Irving Hoffman, who began the UNC Project in the 1990s.

"Everybody wants shoes there: it's the number one thing everyone asks you for, " Brown said in 2007. "They want shoes more than money, and I figured it would be pretty easy to get old running shoes from the Trailheads."

Local customs

The UNC Project is a collaboration between UNC and the Kamuzu Central Hospital of the Malawi Ministry of Health. Malawi is located southeastern Africa, bordering on Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. With people mired in poverty, insufficient nutrition, widespread HIV and AIDS, the life expectancy in Malawi is now estimated as low as 36 years. The child mortality rate is nearly 10 percent, according to Wikipedia.

The UNC Public Health mission in Malawi is attempting to identify progressive, culturally acceptable ways to mitigate HIV and STD transmission.

While the notion of used shoes for Malawians certainly reflected a commendable endeavor, organizers often found themselves confronted with formidable challenges over and above the mere mileage and the expense of shipping.

"The biggest hurdles were the money...and the logistics of getting something like that through customs," Hoffman said. "They make sure you're not selling them and that they're not new. There's actually a clause that, if they're shoes, they can go in, but if it's clothing, it's more difficult."

Financial inertia

The Trailheads ( www.trailheads.org) share a common love of running and other off-road activities. The group's annual Little River Trail Run has generated thousands of dollars for the Little River Park and Recreation Area in northern Orange County, and the Philosopher's Way Trail Runs each spring raises funds for Carolina North Forest Management.

Trailhead Bob Kern said the group collected about 1,500 pairs of shoes at donor bins in the Open Eye Café and at Fleet Feet Carrboro, plus from local schools.

"But the cost to get them over was just prohibitive," Hoffman said.

A surfeit of donated shoes created a bit of financial inertia, and the forward motion of the project was maintained by the vision of Trailheads like Kern, David Elam, and David Jelley, along with additional Trailheads who stepped forward with donations of time and money.

"Admittedly, we didn't think through the consequences of our actions when we undertook the project," Elam said, "but we also believed that the consequences of inaction were more severe than the consequences of our naive actions."

"We could still only ship a portion of the shoes that were collected to Malawi," Brown said, "and then getting them out of customs was difficult on this end."

Brown added that initial intentions to distribute the shoes among Malawian children reflected a minor oversight.

"Unfortunately the planned recipients were children (and) adolescents with feet too small for the shoes," Brown said. "Since the shoes were almost entirely adult shoes I had to start from scratch."

Little feet, big gains

All involved emphasized the impact of several hundred pairs of shoes from Chapel Hill and Carrboro making it to Africa and onto little feet in Malawi.

"A pair was given to a mountain guide from the Mulanje region in Southern Malawi who ran 30 miles on the top of the mountain with my friends," Brown said. "One pair was given to a mountain guide in northern Tanzania who is training to break the Kilimanjaro ascent-descent record."

Perhaps most remarkable was the use of the shoes for those who are grateful just to walk.

"The last of the shoes in Malawi were distributed to the 500 Mile Centre at Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe where they build prosthetic limbs for disabled children and adults, " Brown said. "They're being fitted on the end of prosthetic legs."

"I can't imagine a service that provides a more immediate and dramatic improvement in the quality of life to a person," Brown said earlier this month. "Getting something that allows an individual to be more mobile, and therefore have a more normal childhood, receive an education, and participate in society more fully must be truly transforming."

Elam said he wasn't concerned if a pair went missing here or there in the process.

"If you take a box of 100 shoes and leave them out in Carrboro, there'll be some taken, " he said, "but at the end of a week, you'd still have 80 pairs there. If some used shoes went missing in Malawi, then that just tells you something about the incredible need for shoes there."

More needs

Still, a surplus of over 2,000 donated shoes remained in North Carolina with no destination. Then David Elam contacted an organization called Soles4Souls, Inc. ( www.soles4souls.org).

Elam took 1,100 pairs to a distribution center in Roanoke, Ala., where Soles4Souls gets them to folks who need them.

"This organization sent quite a few, for example, to Hurricane Katrina victims," Elam said.

Local organizers now believe that all the donated shoes are or will be on the feet of those who need them most. However, they might take a different approach to any future endeavor.

"I think I'd donate the shoes to an established organization with experience shipping and established distribution plans," Brown said.

"Even the Soles4Souls folks said, 'If you want to (help), then just raise money,'" Kern said.

Nonetheless, Brown said, "it was cool to connect with the community here in Malawi outside of the usual research activities."

"I think the real story is that there's so much that can be done that's not being done, " Kern said. "There's just so much waste over here that ends up in landfills and that could be put to use in other places."

"In the end, a lot of shoes made it to Africa," Hoffman said. "All the shoes got donated, and we couldn't send them all to Malawi, but all of them got distributed to people who needed shoes."

Elam echoed Hoffman's sentiments: "What seemed like a good idea at the start, still felt like a great idea at the finish."

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