Africa - Cat's Cradle

When it comes to languages, I am mostly stuck with English. The portion in my brain that handles language is just plain weak. Yes, I studied French in high school. Yes, I lived several years in Japan. The truth is that I am just not that good at learning second languages. When traveling through Africa I had the most success with learning some Swahili. I learned my numbers. I also learned a few very important phrases such as "That's expensive. How about a discount?" I never could do any of the African clicking dialects. Like in Europe most of Africa speaks multiple languages. The people of Africa at least know 1) their mother tongue, 2) the language of the village or tribe on either side of them, 3) the national language, and if formally educated, 4) English or French. Most of the places I traveled in Africa were to regions where few were formally educated past the 6th grade, if at all. Therefore, I had to be creative if I wanted to communicate, especially with the children.

Here's what I did. If a child or a group of children were near me, I usually pulled out a string from my pocket. I then started forming cat's whiskers, a broom stick, or Jacob's latter with the string. Once I got their attention, I usually motioned for one of them to come over and play with me. Sometimes I had to prod a little but usually I got one of them to hold out his/her hands. I would then teach him or her to play cat's cradle, a string game that I used to play as a child. Sometimes the first child could not get it so another child would excitedly volunteer. By this point I would have a crowd of children around me. I would then help a second child play with the first child. Eventually the 2 could play together without me. The above picture is of 2 boys from the nomadic Bushmen tribe of Namibia playing cat's cradle together. The picture to the right is a Tanzanian boy playing with his sister while waiting for mom to finish making lunch.

In some villages I went to, the very youngest children were initially scared of me. One reason for this is that the children are told if they do not behave a white person (mazungu in Swahili) will come and take them away. I wonder where they got this crazy tale? So sometimes the children would slowly come towards me out of curiosity but then run away once they got close. Sometimes they would get an older sibling to come with them. I usually would pull out the string at this point and catch the attention of the older sibling. Once the older sibling gave the o.k., then we could all play together. The picture on the left shows me making Jacob's latter. When I first showed Jacob's latter, one child from this Malawian village yelled out fishnet, because to these children of a fishing village it looks like a fishnet.

The Malawian boy on the right was the fastest one to learn how to play cat's cradle. He really had fun with it. There was almost a sense of pride at learning it first, especially since some of the other children struggled with it. Unfortunately for him I later learned that he lost the string.

I always left at least 1 string behind so that the children could teach the other children in the village how to play. If you ever happen to pass through Africa and the children are playing cat's cradle, it is possible that someone in that village learned from this American mazungu.