Children Playing Hashmi
This post is written by Kali Rubaii and co-author Debra Ellis:
A neighborhood in the US has basketball hoops, driveways, cars, and swept sidewalks. It has green lawns, garage doors, and it’s almost always empty… Here in Amman, Jordan, no one would call that a neighborhood.
In Hashmi, a predominantly refugee area, there are no driveways, no swept sidewalks, and definitely no grass yards, but the streets are always lively with children. Poverty has a steady grip on this neighborhood, and the lack of resource is glaring, but in many ways children are better off. They laugh and play in the streets together, safely unsupervised and free to develop life skills that American children never will. For whatever reason, even in this densely populated capital city, children still have a true neighborhood.
Boys of all ages play soccer in the streets or vacant lots, resourcefully constructing goal posts out of discarded rebar. Girls as young as 2 drag their dolls through the dirt, distracted in girl-talk. Yesterday on our walk we saw children playing hopscotch and rollerblading (sharing two blades between four boys, which as you can imagine requires a lot of diplomacy). From our bedroom window we can always spot a gaggle of children arguing and negotiating their own social rules without adult interference, observation, or worry.
Many parents in the US still remember playing unsupervised in streets this way, but now their own children find “play” on a routine of scheduled activities. When they do play in parks or shoot hoops at the end of a caldasac, it is not without the watchful eye or regulating voice of an adult.
While we offer children material wealth in the US, we no longer offer them neighborhoods, for it is in the absence of materials, schedules, and parents, that children gain life skills. In Hashmi at least, a neighborhood has nothing to do with a physical environment, but is defined instead by a social atmosphere that allows children space and time to develop, rather than be developed. We have robbed our children of the organic opportunity to learn conflict management, power dynamics, resourcefulness, and empathy.
It is possible that we have deprived our children of the most potent tool for conflict resolution by taking away their neighborhoods. In a world besieged with violent conflict, what will this mean for the future of American children as they interface in a globalized civil society?
Hello, What thought-provoking words and ideas. I ctaully came looking to reconnect with friends from FSU in Tallahassee,Capital Nautilus, and a wonderful trip to visit with debra and Jaz and baby Kali. Is this the same posting this blog? Even if not, keep us the wonderfulwork you are doing.
Tara and Carliayn Harmon
Tallahassee, FL
This is she!
Perhaps the US has a strong community after all, since we can find long lost friends (or their daughters) through a blog about neighborhoods
[...] which Iraqis accurately view as incapable of its keeping its children safe the streets (see previous blog: the Meaning of [...]
I was sitting on a low white wall on State Street in Santa Barbara last week, waiting for my Dad to pick me up. I had just been dropped off by the ride-share, and was listening to my ipod while watching the pedestrian traffic. One family stuck out in my memory. It was composed of a young couple, a husband and wife and their two young boys. The couple was walking hand in glove, whilst their youngest son held firm to his fathers belt strap. An idyllic scene. But then I noticed the other boy, about 15 paces behind the rest, with his head down, and his palms up, holding a black tablet. He would look up every now and again to reassure himself that he was still safe. He was watching Finding Nemo and giggling to himself intently. This scene of individual comfort, is in some ways the idealized epitome of the American Dream, the suburban dwellers utopia. This kind of excessive consumption of “entertainment” is rampant in our society today. It has gotten to the point that parents, with the financial means, have resorted to “handing off” their children to electronic nannies, personalized TV sets in the backs of car seats on road trips, and the ubiquitous ipods that drown out the sounds of the real world, the world that is ever so less interesting. The depth of the consumerist individualism is what is so new and frightening as a new generation grows up with their iphones, ubiquitous wireless access and Xboxes. Normal, traditional “child play” is social, not isolated. As you write, the youth of Amman are really children, the youth of America seem to be little more than broken in and over sensitized future consumers. Remember those three boys in the country club playing their play station game? They are trying to engage with one another, but are sucked in to the digital temptation of flashing lights and sounds of gun shots and explosions. They express their friendship with one another through killing “the enemy” aliens, rather then playing ball or dragging their dolls through the dirt, enjoying “girl talk.” I am so glad that when i was growing up my parents never had the money to buy me video games or televisions or a personal computer. I feel that if i was “blessed” with the material wealth of that boy in Santa Barbara, the richness of my enjoyment of flowers and trees and the sea would be far less spectacular.
Graham,
It will be very interesting to watch this electronic generation as adults. Will they be able to couple and sustain families? Will they chronically vote for war? Will they be lonely? We already don’t know our neighbors. We already live so differently from children in Amman. Perhaps our generation, and those of us who either escaped or were “deprived” of electronics and personal isolation will take measures to overcome our lack of neighborhoods. I do know that limiting a child’s TV time is not the solution. It is about transcending the physical spaces we have structured and walking through doorways and spending time in public parks and changing the shape of our physical surroundings in order to reconstitute the texture and quality of our social spaces. If we can’t relearn how to socialize, are we on a dangerous path to mass socio-pathology in which we lack the empathy and warmth that make humans human? Thanks for your comments, and for making me think about this again. Love Kali