Fisherprice, eat your heart out

For about six months in 2004 I took care of a lot of children under the age of five. I had spent the previous year in Mozambique, was hoping to return and just about everything made me think of Moz--from booming rap music to smoothies.

So as I would sit in living rooms full of shiny plastic toys, dutifully watching one-year-olds chew and giggle, exclaiming at the development of their pincer grip as they picked little toys or as they managed to put the the red ring first before the yellow, I would up imagine making toys for preschool children in Mozambique. Toys that would help them to problem solve, that would open their imaginations to new and beautiful things, that would develop their little brains just perfectly. Toys that would change the fate of Africa to a brilliant future.

Three years later I can see that this dream was much easier to have than to carry out, but yet I've had a chance to at least start trying. MCC offered me a position in Mozambique as an education consultant, which has about as much concrete significance as a a libral arts major. But it means that I can take time away from traveling or the computer to just create toys.

The first few years I made a lot of things out of clay, but while versitile it's rather fragile. So now we've started using old flip-flops, tire rubber, recycled plastic stuff. Now that we've seen that the communities really do want the preschools and are willing to dedicate time to them, MCC is willing to invest a bit of money in supplies for them. The other day I made this chalkboard stand thing as an example to the teachers of something they can make. If they provide the wood, the beads, the letters, MCC will buy the nails, the wire, the chalkboard.

(One side is an abicus made from beads of clay, flip-flops and coke bottle tops. The back is removable letters made from flip-flops).

I count it a blessing to have the time to create things that can help kids grow into their potential. Most grown-ups in the world have to focus their time on surviving and don't make this sort of things a priority (note, thus, that it's a challenge to convince the teachers here to do make toys to use in the preschools).