It doesn’t surprise me that even in the most dire of living
conditions, kids will find toys. In The
Land of Clean and Plenty, we depend on Toys R Us to present us with choices for
entertaining our kids, but where there is no such thing, kids need to come up
with their own entertainment.
I was therefore duly impressed when I stopped at the Amagara
House Children’s Home in Mbarara last month and found two young men who had
just decided they had to have toy cars.
In the first example, shown here, a young man took a water jug, poked
holes for axles and then made wheels out of the lids of food containers. The end product is colorful, solid and
functional, though it could use a car wash.
The second example shown here was created by a young man
named Raymond. The vehicle is made up of
wire taped together in various places forming a bit of a flimsy body that
wobbles and quakes when it is underway.
The wheels are crafted out of the soles of old flipflops, cut into
circles with a razor blade – and remarkably circular, I must say. The vehicle itself is pushed around by a
stalk of sugar cane.
Both of these vehicles provide hours of pleasure for their drivers. And, can’t you just see it, their minds clicking like those of young engineers solving problems to come up with a useful product. To think these kids just a few short years ago were hopeless, hungry, sick orphans with no future. Now they have the time to build clever toys. I can hardly wait to see where life takes these two. Meanwhile, how cool.
