Victorian England meets 1950s USA

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When your family doesn’t have consistent electricity (or any at all), let alone computers, what’s a kid to do? Have you seen the photos from Victorian England, where children run alongside a metal wheel or tire while carrying a stick, and use the stick to keep the wheel moving? I see the same game every time we venture out of Lilongwe. The kids seem as happy in the villages as they do in the Victorian pictures.
Then yesterday, I was walking home from work and saw a group of young boys, maybe 8-10 years old, dragging something behind each them with string as they ran down the street. Turns out they had constructed cars and trucks from liter-sized rectangular juice boxes! It was the coolest thing. They had cut out pieces on top so they could add a hood, windshield, and windows, and while I couldn’t tell what they were using for wheels or an axle, they had them! Very creative. I wish kids in the States still took time to create such things instead of playing video games all summer. I’ll have to start bringing my camera in the hopes that they race them down the street again. You have to see these things!

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