It is around nine o’clock in the morning. I am on my way back from the market, and I take street no 2 towards the white elephant pagoda, thus being in the city centre. In front of me, on the other pavement, I see three boys dressed in rags. Their heads are shaved and two of them are beating the third, who is lying on the ground. They are 11 and 13 years old, and they are enthusiastically kicking the lying boy, the youngest of the three, in the head and in the stomach.

Finally, they stop kicking and the lying boy stands up. Weirdly enough, all three of them laugh. In that very instant, they seem happy, but soon they take up scrutinizing the dustbins along the commercial street.

Their work is to find the few valuable things among the trash. Therefore, the cardboard boxes and the plastic bottles disappear down their huge rice sac. These are hard people; they already have eight years of street experience.


A few minutes later, I come across two small girls, who are begging and, like the boys, searching their way through the dust bins. One must be the older sister; she is 9 years old. Her bag is already heavy and judging from the look on her face, she is already tired of life. When her body starts to attract men’s eyes, she will probably be sold to a brothel for around fifty dollars.

That kind of work won’t stop until several years later, when the young prostitute will get ill and then die.

note: testimony of a young German tourist