Seldom seen kid...

I had just got out of my very-air-conditioned 4x4 and was standing on a high dune, starting to swelter in the sun. Then this kid seemed to appear out of nowhere, put his head down and began to run up the side of the dune towards me, grasping his handful of trinkets to sell.

So often one can become inured to the sight of hawkers in countries one visits; it becomes easy to adopt a callous mask of indifference... it's a self-defence mechanism as much as anything. One begins not to see the person behind the thrusting hands and the demands for money.

As I watched him, he suddenly stopped and looked up at me and I saw the Teddy Bear motif on his shirt - he couldn't have been more than four or five years old and his appearance seemed so at odds with his already hard life.

He trudged the final few metres up the dune towards me and held up his fistful of bracelets. I shook my head but gave him the money anyway... he could keep his merchandise for another day.

As far as I was concerned the price was cheap for a picture I like and the prompt to think rather than ignore.