Boys in Khiva

These two boys asked me to take their photo while I was walking around in Khiva. That's a ball, not a watermelon, they are posing with (incidently I had thought that watermelon balls were unique to Azerbaijan, but no they were for sale everywhere in Uzbekistan too). They were clearly proud of their smart sports kit - I loved the colours. I thought about cropping the photo, but decided that I liked the door - it gives it a sense of place.

Everywhere we went, children were keen to pose for photos - they didn't want anything in return, just to see themselves on the camera. The evening before Mum and I had been taking photos of the old city walls at dusk when we were called over by children picking mulberries. They wanted us to take their photos in the mulberry tree, then gave us a handful of mulberries to eat and invited us in for tea. They didn't speak very much English or Russian, and we don't speak any Uzbek, but they enjoyed looking through our photos - pictures of puppets and animals were a particular hit - the joys of a digital camera!