InnocenceLate one afternoon, after a long day of trekking in the Ganesh Himal of Nepal, I paused on the porch of a mud hut in a village. A wide-eyed little girl came out of the house—to see this strange newcomer.
She was shy and quiet. I began to talk to her, and to sing little songs to her, as I would to my own children. I held her on my lap and played with her toes. But I couldn't elicit much response. So eventually I went on to my camp in a nearby rice paddy.
The next morning I awoke at 6 a.m., leaned forward in my sleeping bag, unzipped my tent, and pulled back the flap. There before me sat my new little friend, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. I didn't stand up—just leaned back and felt for my camera next to my bag, all the time maintaining eye contact and hoping she wouldn't move away.
After all, guardian angels are rare these days.
 "Nepal Moon Child" Nepal |
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 "Tender Age" Laos |
 "The Swing" Nepal |
 "Dreamer" Kenya |
 "The Yellow Dress" Yemen |
 "Windows to the Soul" Kenya |
 "On the Temple Steps" Laos |
 "Let's Play Ball!" Yemen |
 "The Sidewalks of Guanchou" China |
When I was growing up,
I spent my summers in Idabel, Oklahoma, with my grandmother,
aunt, uncle, and cousins. A town of about 6,000 (counting the
chickens, we said), Idabel was deeply rooted in the most conservative
American social values of the 1950s. In short, social justice
was not a dominant concern. All the black people lived on one
side of the railroad tracks; their kids went to a separate
school. I'm not sure where the Indians lived—I only got to
see them in the county jail when I visited my Uncle Jimmy,
who worked in the county court house. He was also the Boy Scout
leader.
Thirty years later, at President Clinton's inauguration celebration,
I stood looking into a throng of kids—a cross-section
of America. There were blacks from Washington's poorest neighborhoods,
Hispanics who had come from the Southwest, Asian immigrants
from New York, Native Americans with characteristic braids
... and right in the middle of them all—straight out
of my childhood in Idabel—was this beautiful Boy Scout.
And I thought, "My ... how times have changed."
 "Boy Scout" USA |
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 "By the Red Sea" Yemen |
 "Amber Care" Nepal |
 "No Entrance" Yemen |
 "Teddys Sleeping" USA |