KIDS PORTRAITS CAMBODIA

On our way to the pier a few kids came to us to either beg or sell postcards.
We’ve been told not to encourage this because it keeps kids out of school.
So again, against my guts feeling I turn them down and then I hear one of them singing some kind of famous song I don’t remember now.

I asked him if he was singing what I thought he was and it made him smile.
So he got some kind of tiny boomer out of his pocket and started playing all his tunes so as to blind test me.
Other kids then gathered around and Kate shot beautiful portraits of them.

Later, a few girls, same age as my little Rose want to sell us postcards but they get distracted by a parrot in a cage nearby that Rose has also spotted.
They don’t speak the same language, don’t live in the same world.
One of these girls looks so sad, she stares at Rose in puzzlement.
My little girl has both her parents around her and she’s enjoying her holidays.
On the other hand this little one is begging for a dollar selling postcards all day.
This is cruel and I watch them girls get around this bird in a cage with a heavy heavy heart.
Maybe it is at this point through our travels that I realised this fact : While most kids where I live or used to live in Europe often only trigger annoyance to me, every single kid I’ve met in this place have filled my heart with smiles or love or compassion but not even once with that “smack that kid already” feeling I am sure lots of us experience even with our own !

#headshots #kids #poverty #cambodia #smiles