Creative Toys in Haiti
Produced by Grant Fuller for the World Vision Report
Kodayi shows off the "motorcycle" he built with paint can lids and wood at the Pétionville Club displacement camp in Port-au-Prince.
Photo: Grant Fuller
Nine-year-old Pedro stares at the sky and carefully lets out a spool of string as he maneuvers his homemade kite.
PEDRO: When I'm flying them, it's just a nice feeling. I love it when it looks like it's sleeping. When it's so high up and it's not moving. As the wind's pulling it, you're pulling it back just a little bit. And so it's just sleeping, it's just floating in the air.
Pedro's dreamlike description of kite-flying stands in stark contrast to the harsh post-quake reality around him. He lives with his family in this giant, teeming displacement camp. Pedro's parents can't afford to buy him toys, but that's OK with him. All he needs are a few sticks of coconut wood, a plastic grocery bag, some string that was donated to families for their tents, and a little creativity.
PEDRO: First, I take two pieces of wood. I bind them together, and I kind of like turn them into to V, then I take another piece and put it right next to them, and another, and another until it makes a circle. Then I take any type of material I have and cover those sticks, and I take string and I wrap each end of the stick with it. And then I decorate it.
His latest kite features a bag with black stripes and makeshift streamers cut into it. This is a common sight in places of extreme poverty around the world: kids improvising their own toys. Usually, they end up turning trash into treasure. Here in this camp, the signs of creative kids are everywhere.
A bunch of smiling preteen girls play jump rope with a long cord left over from the building of a shelter. They yell out "One sweet!" as they turn the rope nice and easy, and then "One hot!" as they whip it around and slap it hard against the ground.
On the other side of camp, a gang of little boys slide down a short hillside, sitting on lids, flattened plastic bottles, or any shred of plastic they can find.
Other kids pretend to film all the action with juice-bottle camcorders. They cut a square in one side and flip it out for the screen, cut a slit in the other side for a hand strap, and a hole in the bottom for the lens.
And 8-year-old Jean Max Unley pulls his toy car along the dirt path by a string. He made it with a plastic juice bottle, lollipop sticks for the axles, and water-bottle caps for the wheels. He says the car picks up rocks and hauls them around.
"That's for when my car gets a flat tire," he says. "So I can use the rock to change it." Jean Max also has one more bottle cap thoughtfully placed on top of the car.
"That's my spare tire," he says. When it comes to their toys, these kids have thought of everything. For the World Vision Report, I'm Grant Fuller in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Produced for the World Vision Report.