Toys and Games

There are no toys as I think of them in the compound but there are games and maybe more than 10,000 children for them to go around. Santa doesn't really count in that part of the world. The children, as they invariably do, play their own games and if they want a toy, generally make it. There are no Lego kits. This is a far from comprehensive account of what children make, what I saw made, what it's made of and how they go about it. None of it is copyright.





Boys, all knowing best, with kites



•  Kites - these are popular and the open space of the village football pitch is windy and a favourite place to fly them. You can make a kite from two sticks, readily available in the bush,  plastic sheeting or food sacks, found in rubbish dumps or lying about at the side of the road. Tear to the size and shape of a triangular sail and attach to the frame by some vegetation or dried grass for cord. Job done! There is more than enough rubbish lying about and it's the boys that usually make and fly the kites. It's a popular spectator sport too and gets the kids together, both successful flights and failed attempts.



 

Jerry, with me supervising construction modification Type I to Type II

• Toy Cars - if you want to take the next step along from pushing a stone with imaginary wheels through the fine sand dust, whilst imagining skids and making sounds of engines revving, then you can find an old plastic bottle, as in the case of  11 year old Jerry's ingenius car in the photograph. He made it after school one day where he shares a bookless classroom and one teacher with 98 other children. The plastic bottle top wheels are held in place on axles made from old nails and the whole thing pulled over 2 miles each day to and fro his Grandma's and mam's  house down the side of the really busy main road. The wind, unwanted now, caused a thousand small accidents on the road with Type I but this was solved by my penknife and the addition of stones as ballast to the bottle. If you are lucky enough to get hold of some purpose built toy wheels or an old settee castor, you can always find or fashion a stick and push the wheels around before you. You will be the envy of some of your friends. More elaborate contraptions from budding engineers are cars made from old wire twisted together but this involves more know how, practice and skill and maybe a dad, brother or uncle with access to the materials. I wouldn't know where to start.

Jerry's car, Type II, test drive



 Lad with toy wheel

• Footballs - are the essential accessory, a good one to share and the homemade ones last much longer than any other. Simply find an empty woven nylon sack of mealie-meal or handfuls of dried grass and stuff either/or into a normal disposable plastic shopping bag. Compress firmly to improve bouncibility and form into a ball shape as best you can, before tying off in a knot. Repeat with several, perhaps six or seven, more bags ensuring the outer knot on the outer surface of the ball goes into the next one first - it will improve the roundness and weight distribution of the ball (easier to get what I'm on about here by actually doing than it is explaining here). Before adding subsequent bags, with matches nicked from your mam or on the charcoal fire, burn or singe the outer one lightly and evenly onto the previous one - bags can be added in this way as the ball gets worn out and it will last for longer and you can kick it around, sort of forever probably.  

• Dolls (bebi) - I saw a young girl, of 3-4 years of age, walking along the side of the football pitch towards the team bench one day. I don't know who she was or where she was going. She wore a chintenga, usually worn by women to carry babies, use as aprons, table clothes, hammocks or supports to carry things, food or shopping balanced on their heads, or just in case, or because that's what they wear. They are colourful and bright. You get one with the Chipopolo football team printed on them. I hadn't seen one though, on a girl so young before. As she approached  I had my camera ready to take a picture but as she passed and I saw what she had on her back I didn't. I don't know why. I turned the camera off. Into the top of the chintenga she had carefully placed a dirty empty and crushed plastic water bottle and into the open neck, a clump of dried grass, left sticking out as hair. I don't know who she was or where she was going but she was taking her baby with her and as she walked away there and I watched her, instead of wanting to take a photograph I had a feeling that was like the feeling you get when you want to cry but keep it inside but like I said, you don't know why. 

• Tyres - tyres lie around here and there when no longer on the wheels of cars and they last a long time. Rubbish, assorted in nature, can make a surprising variety of toys. Running around chasing a tyre with your pals can, it seems, create a lot of fun. A lot of children do it and then, when it's time for something else, another game or nshima to eat, leave the tyre for someone else, where they've finished playing it. They sort of make sense.



Dispute during Chiato being played at Packachele School for orphans and those with HIV

• Games - on empty market stalls and at the side of the roads, in the dust outside houses and scratched onto the concrete around school buildings, you can often come across drawn circles and little piles of associated small stones. These are the remnant scenes of a game played after the children have gone. It's Nyanja name is Chiato. It's a fun and satisfying game and I can now compete with and sometimes beat the best of them at it. A game for two or more people, each has 6 small stones or rocks typically 20-50mm diameter, shape unimportant. A circle is drawn on a flat surface. The idea of the game is to retreive, by flicking out of the circle, stones from within and the winner is the one with the most stones when the cirle is empty. The catch is that this must be done by each player in turn in between the throwing of the single stone they retain in their hands into the air and the catching of it. It's all in hand to eye coordination; it feels like trying to rub your belly whilst patting your head. To begin with a player throws one stone in the air and pushes his other 5 stones into the cirle whilst the thrown stone is airbourne, then catchs that stone, all in one movement and with the same hand.. On subsequent and orderly turns clockwise, whilst the thrown stone is airbourne, the player attempts to flick any one stone from the circle before catching the falling stone, again with one hand. The player contiues until he, or if it's a girl, she, 1) fails to catch the thrown stone, 2) the stone flicked from the circle fails to leave its perimeter, 3) moves more than one stone within the circle with one flick. It's easier to play than to explain and pleasing to be succeed at, even for one successful throw, neat flick and cool catch. It has the feeling of the children's national game. Adults don't really play it, they play draughts.

Chiato game being played

Many of the compounds children have to work and finding time to play can be harder work than work for some. They mend clothes, wash them, and, with the devastation caused by aids, are often the principal carers for younger siblings or other members of their immediate and extended familes. They may beg or break rocks into smaller rocks to sell as hardcore. They work on market stalls, selling cartons of beer, corn on the cob or fritters at the side of the road. Or on farms harvesting the maize and working the fields. They can be very busy. Their labour can save families money and bring more food in. Zambians are trying hard to lesson the incidences of child labour and part of the work of the academy helps to safegaurd and provide an alternative future and present for young children.

A girl watching the football unravels a cardigan or jumper for the wool and another at the pitch with a little brother or sister in tow.