There might be a cave-like shop displaying hundreds of different sorts of nuts and spices of a variety we had never guessed existed. We might spot a man in a barbershop and reflect on how extraordinary the shaving ritual looks here, staring in utter bewilderment from a traffic island, and being almost run down by a family on a scooter (carrying a chicken) in the process. Shortly after landing in a new place, we might – for example – head out into the bustling streets of the capital.
A scene which leaves the locals entirely unimpressed will appear to us filled with wonder and surprise. In a much more limited way, we know from our experiences of travelling how much, in an unfamiliar country, we suddenly notice and are stimulated by. The whole world is, via their as yet unmarked minds, born anew. Coming from so far away, everything on our earth is to them new, interesting and worthy of examination. In the way they look at everything around them, in the wide open stares they give to ways of living and being that have grown utterly familiar and therefore invisible to our eyes, they may as well have stepped off a galactic aircraft in an unobserved corner of a wheatfield. One of the things it’s easiest to forget about children is that they are aliens recently descended from another planet.
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