A Humbling Experience

I was a little girl when the old, white man walked into our town. Tall, bald, in tshirt and shorts, he was unlike any old people I had ever known. Not sick, not tired, not limping, not slumping, he waltzed down our mud roads, the thick strap of a camera box dawdling down his neck.

I must tell you, he clicked and clicked.
On roads, of skies, in houses, of trees, he clicked and clicked and clicked.

Boys, with a stick, chasing a tyre down the road.

The old woman everyone called ajji, sifting rice, perched on a rattan stool.

The old man in the small house round the corner, who only always sat with a towel over his tummy.

Kids yelling, playing, climbing over the heap of gravel by the road.

His eyes land on mine. May I, he asked as I nodded fervently. He scrouched down and looked through his box, casting into permanence my disheveled hair, my face dotted with soot, my smile showing a gap tooth.

The shutter clicks and he lowers the box. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he looked me in the eye and in a smile that drooped downwards, said, perhaps mostly to himself, This is such a humbling experience.

I looked back at him, peering, peeling the layers of his liquid blue eyes, his irises, his pupils, as I scavenged for an answer, as I thought and wondered, it can only be one thing, what is it to you - humbling, or an experience?