Interesting that last month I wrote about Christmas presents, mainly the incredible cost to today’s parents. Well, I’ve just found the Christmas gift catalogue from one of our leading stores lurking in the bottom of a shopping bag. They are mainly for children (unless you are an aging plastic dinosaur fan), but I was struck by the violent nature of many of the toys for boys (no, really, toys for little boys).
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There are plenty of plastic hand guns, including ray guns; there is a Rifle Play Set, which includes a pistol, automatic rifle, what look like darts and protective goggles; there’s a Combat Handgun Play Set, which comes with a pistol, those dart things, goggles and a target board; and then there are sling shots and catapults aplenty, far more complicated and no doubt effective than the ones I, and most youngsters, used to make. I don’t think further comment is necessary.
Changing the subject, two of the world’s top cocoa producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, have teamed up with some of the world’s biggest producers of chocolate and the actual drink of cocoa, to stop deforestation in those countries. The plan, called Frameworks for Action, aims to stop illegal cocoa production in cleared forests in conservation areas. Many of the 22 chocolate and cocoa companies which have so far signed up for the project, are household names in South Africa.*
More on chocolate, it’s a small point, but perhaps an important one. A survey conducted in the United States says seven percent of Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from
brown cows.** Again, no comment necessary.
Now here are a couple of ‘feel good’ stories. A teenager who fled the blazing inferno of the Grenfell Towers in London last June, clutching nothing but her chemistry notes, has been awarded a straight A after sitting for her GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams. Sixteen-year-old Ines Alves wrote her exams in a nearby school just hours after the start of the fire – still wearing her pajamas.
She said that she couldn’t face watching the building burn and just wanted to get on with her exams.**
And then, staff at a school in Yorkshire, England, were somewhat taken aback one morning when a group of Zulu dancers arrived at the school at eight o’clock, asking “Is this London?” The staff explained that no, it wasn’t, and it turned out that one of the performances that the Zulus were supposed to be giving was at a school for children with learning problems in west London. Anyway, they decided that as they were 350km off course, they might well give the Yorkshire children a free show. This they did and the teachers said later on that the children with a normal attention span of a few minutes, had sat glued to their seats for an hour while the Zulus stamped, bounced and sang.** Who can blame them? Zulu dancing has to be among the top cultural entertainment experiences in South Africa.
*Save the Elephants News Service. **The Week: The Best of the British and the Foreign Media.
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