campoes
New Member
37. Innocent Little Girl.
You just can't ignore street children when visiting Nepal. You find them in every city, although it is hard to tell how many of the children begging and peddling in the streets have a home to return to at night.
Almost 90 per cent of the street children in Nepal are boys. Girls are few in number and their task is usually to take care of the youngest ones. In a traditional society like Nepal, girls are, however, sent to serve as maids in rich households. They may also live at home farming and doing household chores until they are married, which in the countryside may take place before they turn fifteen.
38. The relationship between a tourist and a street child, someone from a rich industrialised country and a citizen of a developing country, is filled with tension.
It looks like a kind of trade. The child may do cartwheels or shine your shoes or even pose for your photo and then you will give them money for these tricks and services.
Few cents might be nothing for us, but what happen is that we have actually help to cultivate a begging culture which will finally ended up spoiling them instead of helping them.
I ask this particular little boy why he's asking money when we took his picture, I was quite surprise when he answer:
"You will sell my picture to newspaper, so you will get money and I get nothing"
Good entrepreneurial skill indeed
You just can't ignore street children when visiting Nepal. You find them in every city, although it is hard to tell how many of the children begging and peddling in the streets have a home to return to at night.
Almost 90 per cent of the street children in Nepal are boys. Girls are few in number and their task is usually to take care of the youngest ones. In a traditional society like Nepal, girls are, however, sent to serve as maids in rich households. They may also live at home farming and doing household chores until they are married, which in the countryside may take place before they turn fifteen.
38. The relationship between a tourist and a street child, someone from a rich industrialised country and a citizen of a developing country, is filled with tension.
It looks like a kind of trade. The child may do cartwheels or shine your shoes or even pose for your photo and then you will give them money for these tricks and services.
Few cents might be nothing for us, but what happen is that we have actually help to cultivate a begging culture which will finally ended up spoiling them instead of helping them.
I ask this particular little boy why he's asking money when we took his picture, I was quite surprise when he answer:
"You will sell my picture to newspaper, so you will get money and I get nothing"
Good entrepreneurial skill indeed
