Toy Cars

Last Updated:

2021-07-15

Yellow, Art, Watercolor paint, Vehicle, Mode of transport, Wood

Captured:

2007-07-05 ~ 2007-07-12

Mbinda, Republic of Congo

Whilst children in developed countries play with shiny pre-formed plastic toy cars, their counterparts in the Congo are building their own.

The universal activity of boys playing with cars is one as old as the automobile itself. Yet with the introduction of pre-formed toys made with lead, tin and now plastics, meant that fewer children would learn the joy of building their own toy vehicles.

You can learn more about the boys of Mbinda making their toy cars below, or you can watch the video, Bamboo Racers, to see how they are made and played.

Resourcefulness & Ingenuity

I had seen the resourcefulness and ingenuity of children building toy vehicles from Morocco all the way down through West Africa, and desperately wanted to learn more about their construction.

In each place that I passed I saw toy cars made from all manner of discarded materials; wire, wood, rubber, plastics, reeds and bamboo to name a few. Each material's properties persuaded a different approach to construction, something I had learnt myself training as a sculptor of fine arts from my late teens, but here, very young children were teaching themselves about these properties through trial, error and mimicry of design.

In the village of Mbinda, Congo, are many fine examples of toy car construction built by their owners. Children of Mbinda focus on the use of bamboo, since it is in abundant supply, but also use several other materials to construct a complete vehicle, all of which are easily found from discarded objects. Specifically, an Mbinda toy car requires the following materials; bamboo, wooden dowels, string, plastic plumbing pipe, bicycle inner tube, and rubber sandals. All of these materials are fashioned into a vehicle using a single tool, a kitchen knife.

Children of Mbinda have honed their skill for building toy cars by scouring their environment for these materials, applying them to the design of a vehicle and using the minimum of tools required to achieve that design. Anyone in the car production industry will instantly see how these children are developing an understanding for the fundamentals of automotive manufacture. When you see these children engrossed in their industrious process, you wonder, who is the poorer, the underprivileged children building their own toys, or their privileged counterparts pushing pre-moulded plastic from one place to another.

In the process of building one of these cars, the children of Mbinda have learnt which discarded resources are most abundant in their environment and the subset of these materials which are best suited to the creation of their intended designs using a very limited tool set.

Production Line

The boys of Mbinda have a lineage in their manufacturing process. Generations of children have adapted to making car parts from the resources in their environment and then perfected the process of assembling those parts. These boys don't haphazardly approach their construction as if they had never witnessed the process, on the contrary, there is a clearly defined system for building a toy car in Mbinda, which has been passed down through the village playground year upon year.

I watched one boy, Boupoulou Blague, assemble one toy car completely from scratch, not a single hiccup in his process, moving swiftly from one stage to the next without hesitation. The process by which the boys of Mbinda now abide, is the one that Boupoulou demonstrated as described below:

1. Bamboo

First, using the ubiquitous kitchen knife, the bamboo is stripped, split, measured and cut into the required pieces that will form the chassis, body and fairings of the car.

2. Wooden Dowels

Next the wood is stripped and split into small dowels with one sharp end, that will act as nails which are used to pin the bamboo pieces together.

3. Axle Sleeves & Suspension

Once the chassis, body and fairings have been assembled, the axle sleeves (made from short plastic pipe) and suspension (made from strips of bicycle inner tube) are put in place. The 2 strips of rubber inner tube are stretched, one along the left and right side of the car's undercarriage and simultaneously wrapped around the rear axle sleeve. The front steering axle sleeve is attached later.

A Helping Hand To Cut Strips Of Inner Tube To Use As Car Suspension

4. Wheels & Axles

The wheels are circular pieces of thick rubber cut from discarded rubber sandals (flip-flops). The wheels are then attached to a thin wooden axle that is slid into the axle sleeves. The wheels now spin freely in place.

Turning Front Wheels In Plastic Bearing Sleeve Held By Rubber Suspension Strips

5. Steering

This is the moment when the front axle sleeve, axle and wheel assembly is added to the car. 2 small grooves are also cut into the front plastic axle sleeve which is where 2 long pieces of string will be attached to the front axle sleeve. The 2 lengths of string are then pulled through a whole in the chassis and then tightly wound around a long steering rod. The steering rod has a bamboo steering wheel attached to it and the car is ready to drive.

Mimicking Design

Each boy of Mbinda has a favourite car that they have seen pass through their village. Of note are Land Rover, Toyota Hilux and the indomitable Mercedes L Series Truck.

The boys replication of these designs shows their acute sensitivity to model shapes and features especially given there are no publications or computers lying around Mbdina for children to get pictorial inspiration from, so they most likely made these observations when the vehicles were passing through or parked in the village.

Bwanga's Bamboo Toyota Hilux Double Cabin

Play

Many young boys of Mbinda wander the dusty streets with their toy cars pushed in front of them at the end of their chest high steering wheels. Often I caught glimpses of children carrying objects in the load carrying backs of their vehicles, often fruit or vegetables. They are role-playing a part of adult life that they might aspire to, driving a big load of fruit or vegetables somewhere. On one occasion I saw 2 boys driving towards each other, then as their trucks met side by side, the boys would stop to chat, perhaps to share knowledge of the road ahead or catchup on family matters, just as the adults might do, then finally start up their wheels and continue to pass each other by.

Boys also race their cars, and in doing so, discover new strategies they must employ to harden their vehicles against the rough terrain of their rugged village roads. During a race that was organised for my benefit, we saw several cars require attention in the pitstop for repairs after some rough and tumble. There is certainly skill involved with running behind these vehicles and steering them at the same time.

Childhood Souvenirs

Local men of Mbinda explained to me that many boys will keep their treasured toy cars well into their adulthood as a souvenir of their childhood and a golden memory. Such attachment shows the deep bond boys develop when building their very own toy cars.

Conclusion

The role-play and racing games that surround the toy cars are lots of fun, but for me the most striking aspect of this form of play is the process of making the toy cars that teaches the boys of Mbinda how to assess local resources and tools to achieve their design goals. This enterprise of building their own toys bestows the objects with the children's resourcefulness, ingenuity and aspirations.

Culture: Universal

Era: 1900 ~ Present

Properties: constructionEngineeringDesignMechanical analysisRole-playRacingResourcefulnessIngenuity

Components: BambooRubber sandalsBicycle inner tubeWooden dowelsPlastic plumbing pipeString