project 52: toys

We live in a place where most people have less than us. There are Tanzanians in our neighborhood who make more money than us, but not most. There are always people at the gate asking for work, or money, or both. Many of them live in houses that look something like this.

Sometimes a little bigger. Sometimes with a metal roof. You can probably imagine that the kids don't have a lot of toys. Ok, in most cases they don't have any toys. Walking around the neighborhood I see kids playing with all sorts of things. Making mud with a stick and an old plastic container. Playing with a corn cob that has had the dried out corn removed. They turn ordinary things into toys, much like the child who plays more with the box than the toy that came in it.

As Jude reaches an age where he enjoys playing with other kids, I'm faced with a dilemma. If a child comes over to play what will they think of all the toys? Jude doesn't have nearly the amount of toys that many American children do. We can't exactly buy good toys here, so the bulk of his are things we or visitors have brought over. I have no desire for the kid to be drowning in stuff, but I like for him to have some things. His new Duplos have already provided hours of creative play time. His books encourage reading and language development. The food and kitchen toys I'm planning to give him next Christmas will provide opportunities for dramatic play. I don't want to throw out all the stuff, but what do I do when his Tanzanian friends come over to play? Hide the toys in the back? What if we just share and give his friends some of the toys he's grown tired of? Will they see it as a friend sharing something they have plenty of or a white person giving them something because white people are the ones who have all the stuff? I don't really have answers to any of these questions. These are just the sort of things I'm dealing with raising a child in rural Tanzania.

These questions all came up this past week because Nathan came over to play. Here's a picture of him with Jude.

I ended up clearing all the toys out of the living room except the Duplos, which Nathan loved. They also watched a DVD called Shaun the Sheep which has no talking so it is any language friendly. Still, I'm not sure if this was the best approach and how I should handle future play-dates.