Play is an Imitation of Life
Lilongwe, Malawi … The visitor to most parts of Africa are surprised with how quickly children seem to mature. This is especially true in Malawi, and other regions of the sub-Sahara where life requires their contribution for family survival. This fact is seen when driving along M-1, the only paved road covering the entire distance of the country. For that matter it can be seen when driving along nearly any road in Malawi. Children are seen doing almost any work being done by adults. The fields are filled with small boys and girls cultivating the crops. Girls are seen everywhere with buckets of water or maize meal on their heads helping with the family chores. Boys are busy clearing fields, and helping with other family needs. For the first time visitor it is startling to see children 4 or 5 years old walking dangerously close to the roads. Yet they seem to survive. They learn early, and their contributions to the family are critical, since there are no social programs to assist the parents when they grow old, it all falls to their children. Even in youth they are needed for the family to survive, especially for those families who live on the small farm plots that make up over 90% of the population of the nation.
What is it that makes Malawi children appear to mature quicker than children in Europe or America? The question was posed to Mama Cecelia T. Kadzamira.
“Perhaps our children mature so quickly because they live such a difficult life in the village,” Kadzamira explains. “Life is hard and they must learn quickly how to survive. Little girls begin at 3 or 4 to play at carrying water on their head to cook meals. They will follow their mothers back from the river or well carrying water just as she is. Then when she goes to prepare the meal for the family the little one goes to her little group of sticks, and pretends she is also cooking a meal. Play to them is living life as they see it in their family. They do not have toys, as children do in the west. Their play imitates real life.”
Kadzamira continues, “They do not have television and other things to distract them. They only observe what they see their parents doing. It is the same with the boys, as it is with the girls. The boys start very young working in the fields with their fathers. They too, mature very quickly because of the hard work the entire family must undergo in order to survive. By the time they are 5 or 6 they work in the field beside their fathers and older brothers to cultivate, plant, weed, and harvest the family crop. I think this causes our children to mature very quickly.”