Describe a toy you enjoyed playing with as a child

Well, the toy I want to describe is a wire car. Maybe it sounds strange, but in Kenya, where I grew up, many children play with this kind of cars. It is made from old wire, like from coat hangers, and the wheels are made from rubber from old slippers. It has a long stick so you can push it and steer it while you are walking behind.

My cousin Otieno made it for me when I turned seven. He was fourteen at that time and he was very good with his hands. I remember he spend almost one week to make it, and he even painted the body with red colour.

How I played with it? Every day after school I used to push it along the road to my friend's house, and we made races down the hill behind the church. If a wheel fell off, I fix it myself with my father's pliers. Sometimes I put mangoes on the back and pretended I was a lorry driver who was delivering fruit to the market.

I liked it so much because it was made only for me, not bought in a shop. All the boys in our street was jealous. Also, I think this toy is the reason why I am interested for engineering now, because it taught me how things work.

The toy that really stands out from my childhood is a wire car, which is something you'll see a lot of in western Kenya, where I grew up. It's basically a model pickup truck made out of bent coat-hanger wire, with wheels cut from old rubber flip-flops and a long steering pole that reaches up to your hand, so you can walk behind it and turn the front wheels.

It was a present from my cousin Otieno for my seventh birthday. He was fourteen and already the person everyone on our street went to when a radio or a bicycle broke, so I suppose it was natural that he'd make something rather than buy it. He even painted it bright red.

I used to take it everywhere. I'd steer it all the way to school in the morning, and in the evenings a few of us would race our cars down the slope behind the church, which usually ended with somebody's wheel flying off into the bushes. I'd also load it with mangoes from our tree and pretend I was delivering them to the market.

As for why I loved it so much, I think it's because it was one of a kind. Nobody else had a car quite like mine, and because it kept falling apart, I had to learn how to fix it with my dad's pliers. Looking back, that's probably where my interest for engineering came from, which is what I'm studying now.

If I think back to the toys I had, the one I was genuinely attached to was a wire car. They're a bit of a tradition in Kisumu, where I grew up: you take a few coat hangers, bend them into the frame of a lorry or a pickup, cut wheels out of a worn-out flip-flop, and attach a long steering column so you can guide it along as you walk.

Mine was handmade by my cousin Otieno, who was fourteen at the time and something of a neighbourhood mechanic. He gave it to me, painted bright red, on my seventh birthday, and I later found out he'd spent the best part of a week on it, straightening the wire with a stone because he didn't own any proper tools.

I played with it pretty much non-stop for about three years. On the way to school I'd steer it round the potholes as if I were a matatu driver, and after school there'd be races down the hill behind the church, with half the street cheering and arguing about who'd won. When it lost a wheel, which happened constantly, I'd sit on the doorstep and patch it up with my father's pliers.

What made it so special, I think, was that it had been made specifically for me, and that set it apart from anything you could pick up in a shop. But it also taught me something without my noticing: that if a thing breaks, you can take it apart and work out why. I'm now in my second year of mechanical engineering, and I'm fairly sure that little red car is where it started.