From Scientific American
Anabel is a young teacher, Barnabas a photographer of children. They spent more than a year flying to 18 countries around the world, lugging camera gear that weighed the same as the two of them together. They certainly enjoyed it, along with the local kids who became their friends on festive days. Here we will meet only a few kids. Twelve-year-old Janaina dances in pink-feathered boots and green sequins as Queen of the Drummers, at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro for the oldest Samba School in the city; she rehearses every Monday for that one grand day. People eat pink popcorn and drink coconut milk as the huge flamboyant parade dances past to the music’s beat. In Sri Lanka the Buddhist processions go on for 10 nights in the old city of Kandy. There are 100 elephants in that parade, with dancers, acrobats, flame throwers and drummers. We see 15-year-old Nishantha, a tambourine dancer, beside a costumed elephant that wears a gold-dotted suit of red velvet. Celebrants feast on the tropical fruits that are in full season. M’sangombe is a dancer at 10; he dresses for the part with a zebra-mane headdress, a leopard-skin costume, a cowhide shield and a long hardwood stick. A dozen villages send teams of young and old each year at harvest time to perform the fierce warrior dance before the Paramount Chief of the Ngoni people of Zambia. The women surround their favorites and sing their praises. Plenty of people enjoy the fresh corn on the cob. There are two dozen more kids. Some as familiar as Halloween trick-or-treaters in western Canada, others as novel as young Dalia in Amman who has a first good breakfast–and a day of gifts to come–after the fast of Ramadan, when no food or drink is taken between sunrise and sunset for a month. Around the world we are very much alike–and different, too.
About the Author
Anabel Kindersley is a teacher, a homeopath, a writer, and a business owner. She is the author of Children Just Like Me and Children Just Like Me: Celebrations!, which she wrote after traveling the world with her husband, Barnabas, and interviewing children in 31 countries about their customs and festivals. She helps run Neal’s Yard Remedies, an organic and eco-friendly health and beauty company.
Barnabas Kindersley is a photographer and entrepreneur. He and his wife, Anabel, worked as a writer/photographer team to travel the world and document different childhood cultural customs in the books Children Just Like Me and Children Just Like Me: Celebrations! He is the CEO of Neal’s Yard Remedies, which sells organic health and beauty products.
