Young children in poor rural areas in Zambia have few if any manufactured toys to play with, so they make their fun themselves from whatever they can find around them.

In almost every village in the Eastern Province, boys can be seen pushing handmade trucks and cars, intricately pieced together from wire and bottle tops. This is a craft that is passed down from father to son to brother, and more hours are whiled away hammering and twisting the metal than actually playing with the finished vehicles. Younger boys make simpler cars out of old cardboard boxes or empty detergent bottles, pulled along by string or a stick.

Football is by far the nation’s favourite sport, and the game is played by most boys from an early age. Children seldom have real leather or plastic footballs to play with, so they make their own by tying rags or plastic bags around each other, like the boys of Makwatata village have done in the video below.

Girls, like those of all ages the world over, play house by imitating their mothers sweeping, cooking and washing. Both boys and girls are expected to help out with simpler household chores which some turn into a game in itself, and most families take their children to the fields to help when they get a little older.

Girls also learn to braid eachother’s hair into intricate plaits from a young age. In one of the photos in the gallery below, a girl is having her hair straightened by another girl, using a tin can filled with hot embers from the fire.

Anything large that can be pushed or wheeled, like old car tyres or bicycle wheels, provide endless hours of entertainment for boys and girls alike. Chasing games, and other forms of group play like singing and dancing which don’t require any equipment are also popular, especially among girls who emanate the chitelele dances performed by older girls and women.