Recycle & Reuse – Page 6

Sudan: School Grounds Brew Home Grown Games

Local school grounds in Sudan are a breeding pool for home grown games. The most popular seems to use any pole available, including those against walls, string & a soda bottle filled with rocks and dirt. Voila, you have a tetherball game at hand. About the only thing not found just laying around is the string and oddly enough that’s what needs to be replaced often, as can be seen by the photo with the variations in colored string.

[Editors note: these pictures were taken during a sand storm]

Another home grown game seems to bear some resemblance to cricket. They throw a small rubber ball at another person who tries to kick it. If they are successful they run between two pre-determined locations, stacking rocks/stones/bricks at each point, until the other team can return the ball to try and hit them with it.

Oddly enough, it seems volleyball is another popular sport. I know of at least four schools which have installed volleyball nets

(This story is from Taylor Martyn, a photographer and missionary in Southern Sudan.)

Plastic Trash Become Drums in West Africa

2000 djembe drums were created from 20 tons of plastic trash. “La Victoire sur les Sachets” is a short video showing their “victory over the plastic bags”.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Football: Handmade in South Africa

2010-soccer-ball

By grassroots reporter Thandile Ntlebi – One of the COSAT (Center of Science and Technology) learners, 17 years old, living in Township Khayelitsha, South Africa. Visit more of Thandile’s stories on Students for Humanity

Young boys are starting to realize their dreams and do what ever they can to make sure that those dreams come true even if they must get themselves dirty.

It’s Saturday around 11am, the community is very peaceful and the quietness makes parents wonder what their kids are up to. Within hours you hear whistles and names being called. Your boy is watching TV until his name is being called; he jumps up and runs as fast as a cheetah.

Around 1pm the field is full of people, as if there will be a fight or a community meeting. When you check it’s just young boys sorting themselves into two teams. After the argument of who should play and in which position, they settle down. The teams go to their side of the field to plan how they are going to win the match. The minimum of players is four; the maximum is eleven players for each team.

The referee blows his whistle and the game begins. Fans give courage to their players by cheering. They make them feel proud and confident. What is amazing is the ball and the field they are playing on. These boys do not have a coach or someone telling them what to do. They don’t have money to buy a soccer ball….. they make it on their own.

This how the ball is made:

Firstly you look for old clothes or blankets. Then you put a few condoms around, which you blow up with your mouth, but not with too much air. Just so it’s the same size as a soccer ball. After this you put either a plastic bag or a piece of old clothing over the condom. Then to make it strong, you tear up the old clothing or blanket into long strips and tie the strips all around the condom to strengthen the shape of the ball and make it heavier. Once you can feel it bounces well, you take a strong plastic bag and wrap it around the ball. Lastly you reinforce it by wrapping strong rope or tire wire around it.

Maybe you are surprised but let me tell you about the field. It is not a play ground or a park but it is a field that is full of drains and the half of it has a long grass and some kind of a wetland and a dumping place. And as we all know that when you are playing soccer you need scoring nets. These boys don’t have scoring nets, but take wood or cardboard that is in the carpet and make poles.

In the end some go home smiling and singing winners songs and others go home in a way sad but still planning how to beat them tomorrow.

These boys are young and know nothing about suffering or what the world is going to bring them in the future. But all they know they want to be famous soccer players and being admired by the world. They come from a poor back ground and they didn’t choose to be there but they can try by all means to change it and make their future as bright as it can be.

Maybe you think I’m crazy but hey, they are the ones who are building things from scratch and are creative if they don’t have money to buy what they need. They are the ones who get their selves dirty just to be seen as a soccer player. These are geniuses don’t you think so?

The credits of the soccer ball photo go to our friend Michiel Van Balen

What Do You See?

I have a talk that I give when people ask me to speak on AfriGadget at conferences that is called, “What do you see?”. It’s a visual and interactive quiz where I take the audience through different images of AfriGadget and ask them what they’re looking at. It’s a lot of fun, and it proves to everyone why it’s so hard for people in the West to come up with contextually relevant life hacks in Africa.

Below are some images from an old family friend who has spent his life working in rural Southern Sudan and Kenya. Under each image you’ll see why it’s interesting. By the way, I too missed the relevance of the flip flops at first glance…

Making use of available resources for a hinge. I really like the way that Ben has used these old slippers and shoe for the hinge of his small kiosk/shop at Butere.

This old chair at Mahanga in Western Province shows the ingenuity of the local carpenters in making use of available resources, with the carton and stuffing from sisal and wood shavings.

Using available containers in a nursery for medicinal plants in Asembo area of Western Kenya.

Making use of a Fanta bottle to channel water from the rainwater downpipe to a storage container in Nairobi.

A special thanks to Roger Sharland of REAP East Africa for sending in the pictures.

Turkana zipper head dresses

While visiting a rural community in the dry bushlands of Elementata I met some Turkana women who were absolutely captivating

Did you notice the creative head dresses? Zippers may have been invented in USA but nobody would have imagined they’d be used for head dresses. I was so awed by the outfits that I forgot to ask where they got all those zippers from – I can’t get rid of the image of all the village men wondering about with gaping flies.