Balloons?

On my trip through Malawi I met several times children who asked me for balloons. For a while it was a mystery to me why they wanted to play with balloons and did not ask for other toys instead, or for sweets or money, as I knew it from other countries. When I was asked repeatedly for balloons by children on a beach near Nkhata Bay on Lake Malawi, I decided to get to the bottom of it. There was a British lady at my hostel who was very knowledgeable about the children in the area through her NGO work. She explained to me that condoms had been distributed to people in Malawi as part of AIDS prevention. Unfortunately, in many cases, there was a lack of know-how or comprehension about the use of condoms, which is why some families had apparently given them to their children as toys. I was horrified not only at the thought that young people would not learn the actual use of condoms, but especially at the idea that these children might find used ones and play with them.

Nkhata Bay (Malawi), September 2018