A Child Is A Child

When I moved into my little mudbrick house in the village to which I was assigned in Mali, West Africa, I brought drawing supplies for children because I thought mothers would bring their children when they visited me and I wanted something fun to welcome them with. Also, I wondered what children living in a mudbrick village would draw. I was amazed at their sophistication. Without television, without textbooks, without knowledge of the world other than what might drive by them or fly overhead, they drew the same complex and fanciful ideas as children anywhere else might draw. Children are children wherever one goes. I managed to save just these few drawings before my work with the adults took my time away.

Caption: Drawings by two Malian 9-year-old children visiting at the mudbrick home

of Annmarie Throckmorton 1980.