I've forgotten what it's like to see kids working. In the long walk in countryside today, I see all the kids are working: herding cows and sheep, washing, plowing, doing what they can alongside the adults. Then at the fabric store, I bought a piece of red cotton for a sarong just because the ten-year-old and her six-year-old sister are running the store on their own, and they're so adorable I just wanted to please them in some way.

In these places they haven't learned to stick their hand out to the tourists for candy or for money, nor to sale postcards or carry a little shoe polishing stand. They haven't learned to be aggressive, and there's nothing as tender as when the naturally shy ones warm up to you. I wish I can talk to them better... tell them about little kids in China, who also carry a full day's work load before they're ten, and such eager and sweet smiles on their dirty faces.

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