500-word Wednesday

Note: Not for sensitive readers

Mmmmm, yum!

We in the West have become so sophisticated, with the food we eat, the gifts we give, the cars we drive and the toys we play with. How often haven’t you watched children, after presents have been opened, having more fun with the packaging than with the gift itself; or toddlers having a whale of a time playing with whatever they can find in the kitchen cupboard? (Like Tupperware and ladles and plastic whatsits)...

When it comes to food, don’t get me wrong, sometimes I long to be able to pop out for a quick meal from Tim Hortons or to stand in line at Krispy Kreme for hot, fresh, straight-off-the-conveyor belt doughnuts. But this here place is like living on another planet. Sure, we have several pizza places (most of which use vile French-tasting smell-like-old-socks cheese) and we have one proper coffee shop and one fast food place (called something bizarre, like Happy Feet) on the other side of town. I was invited to join friends there for supper last week, but still don’t feel 100%, and it was raining, so I reneged. When it takes an hour and a half to get there and back through the choke of Tana’s traffic it just doesn’t seem much like “Fast Food”. I could pop across the road for some desiccated fish, a string of grasshoppers, or something drowned in oily batter, I guess, but my stomach gags at the thought.

Children here very often have to look after their
younger siblings as parents go out to work.

Photo: Len de Beer

But I digress. Most families where I live don’t have two Ariary to rub together, and so the children play with what they have. That’s usually broken hand-me-downs, or making do with a huge dose of imagination, a holey metal mug and a dried-out branch. I have a photograph of Evan asleep clutching an old garage door remote, pretending it was for the TV. I have another of a Malagasy child asleep in the same pose as Evan, but clutching a stone. I have no idea what he imagined it to be.  

Some friends who just returned from the countryside were telling me how the kids seek out birds’ nests, catch the little critters – some of which are barely able to fly – and then tie pieces of string to their (the birds’) legs. This turns them into something like feathered kites or helium balloons bobbing in the morning sky and the children take bets about whose bird will stay up longest. They have great fun, until the playthings crash to the ground too exhausted to continue. Cruel? Maybe, but how would they know any better. These children learn to fish, kill and clean a chicken, work the rice paddies and carry water on their heads before they are six. Many don’t ever make it to school.

My friends also saw one little girl catch a grasshopper, pull its legs off, bite its wings off and then give it to her littler brother to play with. What? Yep... Life sure is different out here in our wild wild west...

A simple game requiring skill, finesse and speed - played anywhere, with whatever stones one can find.

Evan clutching his remote and the little Malagasy child with his stone.