Riding the bus from downtown, I saw kids playing basketball under the shade of the freeway overpass. Across the street, women sat on their door steps talking, trying to escape the heat inside their cramped apartments. Some big boys were playing marbles against the wall of their row-house.
The snapshot transported me back to the village in Nepal where I grew up. In the warm afternoons, after school was done and before evening chores and dinner, the boys would gather in the village green, along the dirt road, or under the big resting tree to play. They played chase, or soccer (if someone had a ball), or marbles, or a finger football game with players they folded out of discarded cigarette packets. Being a girl, I was never invited, but I didn't have field work or house work to do like most of the other girls, so I watched, never really understanding the rules, or the roles. I watched, fascinated by the interactions, by the insider knowledge of the game and the fierce competition for something that seemed so simple.
As the light of the day grew dim, mothers would start to call for people to come home for dinner. "Oh, Raju!" sang out from a house three streets away. The boys all looked at Raju, who eventually called back to acknowledge that he was coming home, and dawdled a few minutes more for some strategic play in the game. Slowly the boys would drift away, as their mothers called, or if they saw their fathers walking home from work, and the games were put on hold for the next afternoon.
As my bus rumbled on, the stops got fewer and farther between. When I got off at my corner and walked into my neighborhood I did not see anybody out. I saw cars parked in driveways. I could see TV's on behind gauze curtains.
I pick up the trash on my street, one side of the street today and the other side tomorrow. I'll make supper, and we'll all sit down together to eat. After dishes are cleared away, I'll probably play a couple of games of solitaire on the computer. I may or may not win.
The snapshot transported me back to the village in Nepal where I grew up. In the warm afternoons, after school was done and before evening chores and dinner, the boys would gather in the village green, along the dirt road, or under the big resting tree to play. They played chase, or soccer (if someone had a ball), or marbles, or a finger football game with players they folded out of discarded cigarette packets. Being a girl, I was never invited, but I didn't have field work or house work to do like most of the other girls, so I watched, never really understanding the rules, or the roles. I watched, fascinated by the interactions, by the insider knowledge of the game and the fierce competition for something that seemed so simple.
As the light of the day grew dim, mothers would start to call for people to come home for dinner. "Oh, Raju!" sang out from a house three streets away. The boys all looked at Raju, who eventually called back to acknowledge that he was coming home, and dawdled a few minutes more for some strategic play in the game. Slowly the boys would drift away, as their mothers called, or if they saw their fathers walking home from work, and the games were put on hold for the next afternoon.
As my bus rumbled on, the stops got fewer and farther between. When I got off at my corner and walked into my neighborhood I did not see anybody out. I saw cars parked in driveways. I could see TV's on behind gauze curtains.
I pick up the trash on my street, one side of the street today and the other side tomorrow. I'll make supper, and we'll all sit down together to eat. After dishes are cleared away, I'll probably play a couple of games of solitaire on the computer. I may or may not win.
