Our Happy House Of Dolls

Etta and Charl are proud ‘parents’ to three lifelike dolls which they treat like normal children

- Carla Coetzee

Three small children snuggle up to their mom and dad on a sofa in the family home.

“Vlooi is the apple of my eye,” Charl Venter says, gently stroking the little girl’s hair. Heinrich is sitting on mom Etta’s lap and his sister, Michelle, is wedged between her parents.

It would all be a normal, happy family scene – except for the fact that these little ones are reborn dolls, toys that look uncannily like real babies.

And for the Venters, they help stave off the pain of not having children of their own. Sometimes, Etta and Charl say, it feels as if the dolls are living, breathing kids “who could be crawling down the passage any minute”.

“If only it were possible,” Etta (40) says wistfully.

Each of the dolls have their own personality with their own likes and dislikes, she adds.

“They make us happy,” Charl (49) says. “They comfort Etta. If she’s having a rough day at work, I’ll send her a picture of the kids getting up to some or other mischief and that cheers her up.”

Charl has two adult kids of his own but Etta has never had any children.

“This is therapeutic,” she says. “It fills part of that longing in my heart.”

ETTA, an accountant, opens drawer after drawer in the couple’s flat in La Montage, Pretoria, to show us the contents.

“Each child has their own two drawers – one for winter clothes and one for summer clothes,” she says, holding up the tiny garments.

“Just look at these cute shoes,” she says, pointing to a pair of slippers with a Superman shield.