Playing House

Our little neighbor Nacore has a charming way of poking her dirty little hands into everything. She’s inquisitive to say the least.

One afternoon, Nacore’s figure wandered into my tukal, bound and determined to pull me away from the lesson I was trying to plan. Not yet ready to be interrupted, I settled this little lady down with a bag of plastic bears I hadn’t yet taken over to the school.

Her play was so interesting, so familiar, that it didn’t take me long to leave my working perch on the bed.

Sitting beside her, I watched her without redirection.

After putting every bear into one meandering line, she carefully divided the bears into small family groups. A mom, dad and several children were always represented, with the wee one either on the back of the mother bear or breast-feeding in the front. Next, each small bear child was given its appropriate Didinga birth order name.

Watching her play I was pulled back to days of yesteryear. Long afternoons spent in my parents’ loft playing “Block People”, Barbies and dolls with my sisters.

Nacure, a girl growing up in a remote Sudanase village, a girl who has never set foot in a toy store or lumbered glossy eyed in front of Saturday morning commercials, plays ‘house’ just like I did all those years ago in Valleyford, Washington as a girl.

Is it just me, or is this somewhat strange?

Though I haven’t tested it, I am super curious to see how a little Didinga boy would play with those same colored bears. Do you think that he would put them in small family groups, taking good care to breast-feed the wee one? I am guessing not!

A bit of nurture, a dab of nature and a great deal of God’s handy-work knits together the little boys and girls of the world.