Recess

You know how American parents always say “my child has so many toys but he only wants to bang pots and pans together!”? Well in Kenya, they take that seriously. Despite ample play time, our school has very few real toys. The ones we do have were donated by tourists and they are quickly broken or get very dirty since we have no way to keep the dust from blowing in the classroom.

It doesn’t matter to the kids, however, because they have an awesome time with what’s available. Plastic soda bottles make great sand toys:



The boys also love playing with the spare tires that someone donated after they wore out. They race them, slam them into trees, and chase after them when they roll down the hill:



And then there was the time that the maintenance men cut down some branches and just left them in the playground. We’re not sure if they forgot or were just being lazy but the kids co-opted them into a great jungle gym for a while:



They played on the branches for 3 straight days until a little girl fell off directly onto her head (she was fine). Then I took matters into her own hands and recruited the gate man to help me drag the branches off the playground. The other teachers thought I was insane since no one here does anything that isn’t in their job description, but I was annoyed that the matter wasn’t being handled promptly and now one of the kids had been injured. I think they were shocked that a mzungu woman was dragging branches around but the gate guard and I got the place cleaned up pretty quickly.

For the most part, however, I am learning to let the kids play with whatever they find. The first few days I was concerned that they were playing with garbage, running on the playground with lollypops in their mouths, and whacking each other with sticks but then I shrugged off the American and embraced the Kenyan. These kids are growing up perfectly fine just using their imaginations and what’s on hand.