We have 110 girls in school this term, over half of them boarders, and they are so gentle and tractable it is a pleasure to work with them. It is pitiful to see how little they know about playing. Their greatest pleasure is watching us play tennis. A few evenings ago I heard an unusual noise under my window, and, looking out, saw a towel tied across the walk between the hedges. On either side of this stood a girl with a flat stick in her hand, and they were knocking across the towel a bundle of rags which they had tied up in some semblance of a ball. Later we took them out, and let each one have a few minute’s real play with real racquets and balls, and, when I put the racquet in a girl’s hand, she would gasp, as if to say, “Can this be really true, or am I dreaming?” (Miss Lucy Starling in Foreign Post, May, 1910.)
DOLLS, CENTRAL AFRICA
The first two dolls that arrived in Toro met with a very mixed welcome; the children howled and fled in terror, but their mothers showed a most profound admiration for them. At first they held the doll very gingerly, but finding that nothing happened to either one or the other, and the doll still smiled at them like the Cheshire cat, they became great friends, and begged that they might borrow it for a few days to play with.
Whether it was the large circulation that those two dolls got, or the gradually increasing confidence of the Toro children in the white ladies, the fact remains that in a few months all childish prejudice had disappeared, and often a little voice was heard asking for “a child that causes play.” When this was known in England, over one hundred dolls were sent to me from two working parties. I never saw such a wonderful doll show as they made. They were all displayed on our verandah, and the house was literally besieged with men, women, and children for some days.
A bride, beautifully dressed in white satin and kid shoes, who even in her wedding attire cried “mamma” and “papa,” was sent to little Princess Ruth, but the report reached me that King Kasagama had constituted himself guardian, and kept it locked up in his study for slack moments!
Apolo, our faithful native deacon—confirmed bachelor—asked me in secret if men ever played with dolls, and beamed with satisfaction as he most triumphantly carried one off, peacefully sleeping.
The others were given out to the little girls who had been most regular at the school, and were noted for having come with clean faces and bodies.
When the boys saw that the dolls were only given to girls, some borrowed their sisters’ garments to try and appear eligible! I did not know till then they were versed in such cunning! It was so pretty to watch the joy and even playfulness that those dolls brought into the lives of so many little ones who had scarcely known what this meant till then. Christianity has completely revolutionized child-life in Toro.