Childhoods Stolen

Childhoods Stolen

From Paper Planes to Guns: Aljazeera Reports

Above, stills from a recent brief Aljazeera video report, transcribed and summarized below, on the surge in popularity of military toys among Sudanese children. Even if you don’t speak Arabic, the scenes captured in this report speak for themselves. We hear from children desperate to have their own wooden replicas of guns with which to re-enact war games, their mothers’ deep disquiet on being persistently pestered for these toys, former music teachers and instrument makers who have turned from crafting lutes and guitars to making strikingly realistic wooden guns, and child psychologists on the alarming longterm impact of this growing trend. For me this brief report encapsulates much of the tragedy of a war that will scar generations of Sudanese to come.

Title illustration, still from the close of this Aljazeera report. The young Abubakir marches home from his make-believe battle, wooden gun slung proudly across his shoulder. Meanwhile childhood clamours for a real truce.

Watch the Report Here:

Transcript Below; My Thanks to Muna Zaki.

Summary of the Report

Correspondent Tahir al-Mardi is quick to warn us at the outset that what we are witnessing in the opening scenes of this report are neither military nor theatre drills. They are the re-enactment of some of life’s cruelest scenes as lived by children in Sudan, revealing just how far the ongoing war has permeated childhood imagination here. The story of these youngsters’ childhood – childhoods which should be filled with folktales and exercise books, is being written not with lead pencils in schoolbooks but to the sound of (lead) bullets. Fingers barely able to grasp pens are fashioning tanks out of cardboard and mortars / cannons or artillery out of used food tins. And into this new landscape have come blacksmiths and carpenters as demand for toy weapons booms, (up to 0:50).

Interviewed by Aljazeera in his workshop, the musician turned carpenter explained; “I am someone who studies, plays and teaches music. Because of the war and all the circumstances I found myself in, I mean I felt I could usefully make toy guns – I felt that instead of guitars and lutes I should make wooden guns. I have to say my whole outlook, my understanding of culture, has changed – now I think in terms of the sake of the nation, (up to 1.18).

Young mother Milaadh, reluctantly accompanies her son to carpenter’s shop selling these toys, making it clear all the while that she has been constantly pestered by her son to buy him a toy gun. She has now finally given in to his demand for the sake of a moment’s peace. “Guns, guns, guns all day – that’s the only thing in their heads. It’s doing my head in,” she explains. She is clearly conflicted by her decision as she goes on to emphasize that children shouldn’t have any exposure to guns at all – that it isn’t right and that adults had seen enough of real guns, (up to 1.54).

Childhood in Sudan is a world where tanks, not paper planes now hold sway and as the innocence of childhood games is lost to the cares of the battlefield; with it come grave warnings for the future by psychologists who see children’s imagination becoming oriented towards war rather than peace, (up to 2:09).

According to the psychologist interviewed at the close of the report, what we are seeing in Sudan is a very dangerous phenomenon with implications for children’s future psychological health. She warns children may become violent or suffer states of nervous agitation. She urges parents first and foremost not to buy these toys and to find alternatives to them if they have already bought them.

You can see a detailed lexical analysis of this text in my sister blog shortly.