African Toys

While working in Mali, West Africa on a school in a relatively remote village of Begnemato, about 60km from Bandiagara, I was also doing an M.Phil in Geography at the Doctoral School of Geography, Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris. I had noticed little boys making these wonderful little toys mostly from scrap Professor Chantal Blanc-Pamard introduced our class to a wonderful UNESCO French publication on "Toys, games and Play of the children of Ivory Coast" (roughly translated). Taking cue from this I started buying toys from children of Bandiagara (which was my base) and also placing orders for them. As children came to know of somebody paying them to make toys, they started swarming my field station, where we would strike deals. These are images of that collection. I wanted to bring the same back with me and had placed them carefully in an iron chest, which however has remained there. I have lost trace of the same.

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