In Nepal Girls Work While Boys Play

This is a fairly unusual photograph of children playing outside in Nepal -- because two of them are girls.

When you first get here, the whole children-in-public thing is wonderful. It's a pleasure to be surrounded by playing, laughing children everywhere. Makes you realize quite vividly how few American children play outside in their neighborhoods anymore. (They are in back, or in classes, or camps, or watching a TV or PC screen.)

Then you start to notice something odd -- those playing-in-public children, they are ALL Boys. Maybe girls play inside, but I doubt that seeing as how typical Nepalese homes have such dark interiors that most of the family spends all their daylit time outside.

Of course there are girls around. You see them getting on and off the school bus with ribbons in their hair precisely matching the color of their uniforms. (The school may not have any unbroken windows or heat, but by god those ribbons match!) You also can see them responsibly sheparding younger children on their way to somewhere - which is no doubt how my husband happened upon these girls with their brother. And you can frequently see them helping their mothers with laundry and chores outside the house, especially hauling up jugs of water from the lake.

Nepalese girls, even fairly small ones, are too busy to play. They are working.