Playtime

I went to a reception for Indonesia's National Day this evening. I don't enjoy these diplomatic chores as a rule but the satay, the gamelan music, and (especially) the smoke from clove cigarettes sent me straight back fourteen years on a textbook trip of Proustian recollection. Indonesia is an amazing country - absolutely vast, so diverse, breathtakingly beautiful. I badly want to go back and explore it some more.

Anyway, it got me thinking again about my summer spent travelling through the country in 1992. This shot was taken shortly before the one posted on 21 June (global village), and a few days after a similar shot posted on 5 April (freak show).

We were walking through the farmland near Bukittinggi and found these kids playing on a pile of rice sacks next to a paddy field. They had made themselves superhero masks from banana leaves and were having a whale of a time, pausing only to do something even more interesting (stare at my white hairy blond legs). Remembering the fun they were having makes me feel a little sorry for my privileged daughter, an only child who has just spent a long, long summer in the company of adults. Kids need each others' company. She was very happy to go back to preschool this week, and came home this evening to report gleefully that she'd been ticked off for chatting to her friends. Good for her.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm lens, exposure not recorded. Near Bukittinggi, Sumatra, summer 1992. Placemark.