If a fair skinned stranger walks down the streets of a village in Ethiopia a crowd of shrieking children always follows. Kids who have reached too far from their homes unnoticingly change with new ones – it’s not going to happen that a white person is left without an entourage. Since it does happen very rarely over there that a white person is strolling in the outer reaches of the town so everyday activites are halted and the yelling and the shrieking seem to be rising from great excitement and curiosity.
Alongside the shrieking gang of kids there is sometimes a reserved one who is pushing his or her so called wire-vehicle or some different kind of a homemade toy. Anything left over in the household has been used up in these stick operated toys: bottlecaps, rusty wires, broken pieces of plastic.
Some are kicking around a ball which compared to our balls seem everlasting. The balls are made out of old plastic bags which have been rolled together so tight that they form a hardened spherl. When possible old rags have been used as well. Depending on the creativity of the ballmaker some other sorts of “fine” methods have been used. These balls are smaller than the football that we are familiar with, possibly to save on material because there is obviously no wrappers or other litter lying about on the village’s streets.
Besides these “cars” and balls the under three year olds from wealthier families have an old deodorant bottel between their fingers. This is a sign of luxury because even trash of a certain sortiment is expensive stuff.
For example there is a round-bottomed coffe pot in every household which is used to boil coffe on the coals. If the water has been boiled and the coffe is ready the pot is placed on a stand made of empty bottlecaps. It seems these are made by young men who have reached their teens. There is a hole in the cap and a wire runs through it. In the beginning the trivet is colourful but after couple of uses turns dark greyish. All around Ethipopia that has a population of 100 milion the trivet is the same in every family. I have tried to find out the predecessor of this metallic trivet but my question seems to be the wrong one because I haven’t gotten an answer yet. Trivets have always been exactly like this.
If you reach from the village streets to the suburbs games appear on the streets which are familiar to us as well. Toy football players movable from both sides by handles. Deciding by the sounds on can guess – there’s a big match taking place.
There is always some game tables around the market and on the curbs of bigger streets. Plenty of leisure for everyone with enough interest since the crowd is also participating by covering the handle handlers with their bodies.
Over there children are the biggest blessing in the family. Until the first steps every baby clings to it’s mother. They don’t spend their days growing up in the kindergarten but helping out their older sisters and brothers around the house and playing with simple homemade toys.
The society changes and the 6 year old statistic – 6 children per woman – has nowadays dropped to 4,4. Don’t even know what would be reasonable to wish for them with these decreasing numbers.