INGENUITY

I have to say that I am perpetually amazed by people’s ability to make something out of nothing here. My own Mayguver skills are put to shame!  When something is broken, there’s a way to fix it. When it seems like the space is too small, there’s a way to make things fit. And when you’re a kid who grows up with few (if any) toys, you make up your own. My favorite are the cars made out of pop cans, plastic bottle caps, and old wire hangers. They are crazy cool! The kids at Itipini are constantly teaching me new games that they’ve made up using rocks, tin cans, cardboard scraps, or whatever else they find lying around. Today, I played something like jacks, but with a pile of pebbles. You throw one rock in the air and catch it three times. In between throwing it and catching it the first time, you pull rocks out of the circle. Then, in the next two throws, you have to put all but two rocks back in the circle. If you can do that, you get to keep the two rocks and go again. If you don’t do it, you get nothing and your turn is over. The goal is to see who can get the most rocks! It was actually very entertaining and challenging. I feel like sometimes kids’ creativity gets stifled by all of the made toys, video games, and television in the Western world. It’s all done for them and they play how the toys are designed to play (for the most part). On the other side of that, I suppose not having trash and rubble as your only toys would be nice, too. The important thing is this: Creativity is priceless. Have you created something today?