Whiskey Baby

Whiskey Baby

Whiskey Baby

Discarded plastic whiskey bottles go a long way here.  Entrepreneurs collect them, fill them with sweetened food coloring mixed with water and sell them to bus passengers who hang out of the windows at the many stops along their journey.  The travelers yell out to the vendors, while the vendors are yelling out to the passengers, pushing their wares.  Somehow the transaction is completed despite the cacophony.   Small children in the hospital corridors toss back swigs of water in these Mozambican-style water bottles.  When I first arrived, I wasn’t sure what to make of all the toddlers drinking what I thought was some kind of clear alcohol. I had started to wonder if my secondary project should be a children’s AA program.

But the most creative and heart warming use of these bottles are the toys created from what we would regard as refuse.   A group of boys in my neighborhood cut out a square section on the front, secured elastic bands across the length, and fashioned guitars.  There was actually sound, and not all that bad, when you consider that the entire effort had its beginnings as garbage.  Dried strips of pineapple leaves served as shoulder straps.   A halfway decent sound, utility and trend setting recycling, all from a discarded item.

Usually the whiskey bottles are outfitted with wheels made from the red covers of medicine bottles and turned into cars.  As many people here are on HIV medicines, TARV, these empty bottles are a familiar site, littering the yards and streets.  Four bottle tops serve as wheels placed on either a whiskey bottle, also a common item littering the streets, or on the original plastic rectangular medicine container.  Personally, I prefer the whiskey bottle model.  Think sports car with oversized drag racing tires compared to a Buick station wagon, the kind my mother drove around with her brood of six unruly kids.  (We also were known to hang out of the windows, yelling, on our annual winter trips down south.  But there were no vendors to yell back to us. Or sell us sugar water. Though I do remember our antics did result in numerous stops at Stuckey’s for pecan and key lime pie.  And of course, this reward only increased the frequency and decibel level of our howling.)

Boys and Their Cars

And, little girls, seemingly being genetically disposed to care- taking, this half of the knee high population sees empty whiskey bottles and immediately thinks baby dolls.  Cast off pieces of hair, store bought braids that were formally woven into their mother’s or sister’s heads as sculpted works of art, (now also trash remnants littering the roads), are inserted into the bottle opening to create a baby doll.  Within minutes the children are loving these ‘baby dolls’ and carrying them on their back, wrapped in a tight cloth, as their mothers did with them.

Whiskey Baby Love

The best thing about these toys is the lack of attachment.  Important at the time for entertainment, and having provided an opportunity for creativity, resourcefulness and construction skills, once the kids lose interest, the toys revert back to disparate pieces of trash, once again taking their place as litter in the yards and streets.  It’s like the parallel universe of the toys on the Lost Island in the Rudolph Christmas movie.  There is no guilt, no sadness, no crying children or crying toys, no need to rescue and repair these items.  It is just trash, utilized in its original intent, again by kids seeking to play and then back to trash.  Plain and simple.

Parents do not mob toy stores to purchase the latest must-have item for these kids.  Children’s rooms are not amassed with playthings, collected, kept on shelves, shoved in plastic bins and closets, under beds, and in attics.  (Children here don’t have shelves in their rooms.  Actually, they don’t have rooms.  And attics don’t exist either, just so you know. )  Kids don’t cry when their toys are lost or left behind.  These kids simply don’t have toys, the way our kids do, or the connection and regard for such items.  And, it doesn’t seem to be such a bad or sad thing.   Nor do these kids seem any less happy with their trash-made cars and dolls.

A friend of mine became so sad when I told him about these Whiskey Babies. He told me he had never imagined there were little girls in the world without dolls.  In a world where life is tenuous, when the focus is on the here and now, when life is lived not on the fringes but clinging to the threads, the plastic whiskey bottles that drown out the pain in the adult world can oddly enough bring about joy for their children.