Toys in Tanzania...
There are many toy options for children in Tanzania. Most Tanzanian children make their own toys from trash found along the road. You will often see that their soccor balls are made from wadded up trash.
The toys that are avaliable for sale are usally stuffed dolls. These dolls are shipped from second hand stores in America, like Goodwill, to Tanzania. They are often dirty and broken but sometimes you can find some cute things. I don't mind buying second, second, hand things so I thought I would stop buy one of these side street places and buy some "new" dolls for the kids. When examining them I noticed that they were all crunchy. Yes crunchy ! I ended up buying three stuffed animal type of dolls, a dinosaur, a horse and a dolphin. They cost about a dollar for each one. When I got home I gave the kids each their "new toy". They loved them! But it wasn't long until one of them busted open with plastic trash coming out. I looked at the dolls closer and noticed that they had been cut, re-stuffed, and re-sewn. I then realized that the guy selling them was cutting the backs of them open, taking out the soft stuffing, and refilling it with plastic trash, and sewing it back up. To him, the soft stuffing was pretty valuable. He could resell the stuffing to someone who makes pillows or things.
So I guess that I bought my kids some pretty trashy toys. :-)
Well, you may wonder if I trashed the trashy toys... Nope, I sewed them back up and let my kids still play with them. After all this is Africa...and my kids are happy with what they have, especially when they see so many who have no toys at all.
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