Bamboo Racers

I had just crossed over the border from Gabon into the Congo and stopped at the first village, Mbinda. It was early evening and felt I could probably drive a bit further before stopping for the day. But before I could leave some interested villagers, Rock Ilele and Clotaire Nzanguila, had many questions for me to answer and invited me to stay so that we could chat longer.

I was just pondering the notion of stopping for the day when some children went past us with their toy cars. Ever since I first saw children building their own toy cars from Morocco down through West Africa, I had wanted to learn more about them and see if I couldn't make a nice video about the process. My compatriots were very keen to assist me in this endeavour, so I heartily accepted their invitation.

The next day I started by drawing a group of the toy cars, which drew much attention from the gathering crowd of onlooking boys.

Ilele and Nzanguila expained to the children that I would like to film one of them making a new toy car. The boys confered with each other and pushed forward their elected car builder, but only 5 minutes passed before a slightly older boy rushed to the gathering and was subsequently thrust into the hot seat, replacing their previous candidate. Obviously Boupoulou Ivanou Blague was the best representative of the village on building toy cars, so there was no question of his taking the rightful place in front of the camera.

Boupoulou started building a new toy car from scratch with bamboo chassis, body and fairings. He split, measured and bent bamboo into the pieces he needed and pinned all the parts together with sharp wooden dowels that he also fabricated himself. There was no hesitation in his process, as if he had done this a thousand times before for himself and perhaps also for the younger children who didn't yet have his skills. All the other boys of the village watched speechless with only the occasional shove or scuffle, they obviously paid great respect to Boupoulou's process and his acumen in the field. Next we saw the suspension and axle sleeves being made from bicycle inner tube rubber and plastic piping, followed by the wooden axles and rubber wheels cut from old sandals. I couldn't help but laugh at the sandals, as it had been several weeks I'd been passing through villages where I had wondered

"Why on earth are there so many filp-flops with huge holes cut in them everywhere I go ?"

finally, I had my answer, children had been reclaiming the discarded sandals to cut new wheels for their toy cars !

After about 1 hour's work Boupoulou had built the entire car and was attaching string from the front axle sleeve to the steering rod, ready to roll.

Boupoulou agreed to an interview where he systematically explained all the processes of building the toy cars and his hopes that following this line of play might help him find an occupation related to vehicles in the future. It was a lovely interview. Boupoulou also agreed to participate in the bamboo toy car race that Ilele, Nzanguila and I had been planning.

The boys who had all been waiting patiently these past 2 hours, watching me drawing, filming and interviewing could now join in the days fun with a race of all their cars. To help me remember all of them and later match their faces to their own constructions I asked each boy to say his name and model of vehicle into the camera. Some were shy, some were bold, but all did very well to take part.

Since there were so many boys with their cars, we couldn't fit them all width ways across the main dirt road. So we split them into groups that would compete for a position in the final. Perhaps Boupoulou had got a taste for the limelight, but then again he was the eldest, took first place and was very happy to appear in front of the camera once more to celebrate his victory. I enjoyed asking him what he thought of the others in the competition:

"Quesque tu pense de les autres dans la compétition ?"

to which he confidently replied

"Ils sont faibles"

That was the end of the day and another video about a game in the bag, pretty good going for the first stop in the Congo.