The first day I was traveling with the missionaries through Kaokoland we stopped in a small village called Warmquelle. This was the location of their first community discussion informing the local people what the goals were for their new organization, Kunene for Christ. The meeting was in Afrikaans, translated into Damara and Herero, with no English. After about an hour my mind started to wander and I decided to leave the protective shade of the fig tree to explore the village. Not long after leaving the tree I spotted a group of children playing on a hillside not far away. I made my way over to them and was amazed at what I discovered: four little boys using a three inch black plastic pipe as a sled on about four or five layers of jagged rocks. I can remember growing up sleigh riding on nice powdery snow complaining when it turned slightly icy but these kids were half naked running up and down the mountain from rock to rock barefoot and appeared to be having the best time of their life in the process.
The three inch plastic pipe was used as the sleigh for all four boys to ride. One would go first on his butt to make some semblance of a path to follow. The main objective of this boy was to remove the numerous rocks blocking the way. Just remember that this mountain is like one giant rock heap where nothing can grow because it is just layers and layers of loose rock. Once a vague path was cleared, the boy would scurry back to the top to join the others for the ride. I assisted then with a push but was gentle, not wanting to propel them to their deaths. They didn’t even make it halve way down the hill and even though I could not understand what they were saying, I could tell they were not pleased with my lackluster pushing. So, the next time I pushed them as hard as I could and they went flying down the hill screaming and yelling with laughter. They were pleased and I continued to push them many more times. What amazed me most was how fast they were able to ascend the mountain after their ride was over. They were all barefoot but could run up or down the rocks faster than I could with hiking boots. Just watching them ride down the mountain bouncing off of rocks ending up in one big heap of mangled body parts was painful for me but then again, they loved it.
This is not an isolated case of African children’s resourcefulness. Instead of going to Toys’R’Us or Wal-Mart to buy toys, kids use anything from discarded plastic pipes from failed irrigation projects to empty Kiwi shoe polish cans and even scrap metal to make their own toys. Find any trash pile and give a couple of kids ten minutes and they will come out with some toy or device to amuse themselves. What is even more amazing is that the same toys are made by different children across Africa. I have seen the same toy trucks made from scrap metal, bottle caps, and random other pieces of trash in small towns in Tanzania, Namibia and everywhere in between. These trucks are no laughing matter either. They are very detailed in their construction having gas pedals, gear shifters, steering wheels, small pieces of paper with made up license plate numbers and a long pole extending up to the desired height of the creator to push, “drive”, it around. I didn’t fully appreciate this similarity until I put my trip into perspective. I realized that I have been traveling thousands of miles throughout most of Sub-Saharan Africa, seeing vastly different cultures and landscapes, but still seeing the same underlying human spirit represented by children turning trash into toys. If kids that are thousands of miles apart can each independently construct identical toy trucks from trash, what does that say about what we really need to make us happy -the latest industrially manufactured Tonka dump truck with its toots and whistles or scrap metal to make our ‘truck’?
December 11, 2007
The Art of Rock Sledding
