Child's Play: Copying Mom and Dad

A blog about school even though I haven't been there for a while. I miss the kids and found watching their free playtime to be incredibly interesting.

I minored in psychology in college so I have taken a few classes on child development, etc. and one of the things they often say is that children learn by imitating adults. Children copy what the adults are doing and this is the way they learn the spoken and unspoken rules of their culture.

This rapidly comes into focus when you change cultures and see children doing things that you'd never see in the US. For example, the kids at school play matatu. They line up chairs very close together and someone is the driver and someone is the conductor (the person who collects the money). The kids even shout "ferry, ferry, ferry" which is how the matatu conductors in Ukunda signal that their matatu is headed for the Likoni ferry.

This little girl is playing "house":


You see in Kenya, they make brooms out of straw or branches to sweep the areas in front of their houses. Even though this area is usually dirt, they are clearing it of rocks and larger debris. I have to admit, it does make the entrances to the homes look nicer.



See how she's bent over using the broom? This isn't the way an American would do this task but it's rapidly apparent why she does it this way if you observe her surroundings. Women in Kenya bend 90 degrees from their waist when doing tasks like sweeping, washing, or planting. They train to do this from a young age with their play and their chores. After observing this, I attempted to do our laundry standing up and bent 90 degrees, let me tell you, I have not adequately trained for that. I couldn't walk normally for 3 days afterward.

It's not just the girls though. Little boys walk around and swing sticks side to side at the ground practicing the way their fathers clear land with huge pandas (very, very sharp knives about 2 feet in length).

When they play with dolls, they don't hold them in front of them like an American child would. They tie them to their backs with sweaters so they can "wear" them like their moms wear their younger siblings.

See how Yasmin has the baby on her back:


I have never seen a Kenyan child hip-carried like an American child. The mom's have to walk much further distances so they wear them strapped to their backs. In fact, the children actually learn to balance by the time they are about 10 months old and they don't even tie them for shorter walks. The other day I had one child, Ryan, on my back and managed to bend down and tend to the skinned knee of another child and then stand back up all while Ryan just hung on and balanced. I never even steadied him, he just knew how to hold on.

You can learn a lot about Kenyan culture and customs by watching the children at school when they play make-believe. It makes you wonder what a Kenyan dropped into an American school would notice.