OUR FAVOURITE TOYS

“Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.” - Grace Abbott

Poets and Storytellers this week has given us the theme of “Brothers and Sisters” to write about. I’m always struck by the huge size of families in countries where poverty is the rule. And yet it seems that those big families of many children are happy in their misfortune, and it is touching to see how the siblings look after one another with love and affection.

Our Favourite Toys

A hard life our lot, where every day is a struggle,
Where putting bread on the table is hard labour,
Where drinking water is never taken for granted:
A life that cheats death every day.

A hard existence, where everyone works
To eke out a living, and children grow up early,
To till the barren soil, trying to raise a meagre crop:
A life that gives pleasures rarely.

A poor man’s lot, where bitter food is eaten greedily,
Where hunger never goes away completely, and disease kills,
Where most children never get a chance to grow up:
A life of want gratefully stopped short.

Our favourite toys:
A ball of rags kicked stealthily, in between chores;
Worn plastic containers, no good for reuse,
Grabbed avidly, to make toy houses, cars and drums to beat:
In secret, while we steal a few moments to play.

Sticks, pebbles, twigs – and if you’re lucky –
An old bicycle wheel, to make of them whatever
Your boundless imagination desires,
Rubbish transformed into wondrous things;
And most precious of all:
Your kid sister a living doll to care for…