Water Buffalo Boys

Don't the hours flash past when you're browsing the World Wide Web? A query on yesterday's post showing a boy diving off a water buffalo (scroll down or CLICK) has swept away a whole morning! Google "boy on water buffalo" and you get over four million hits, images galore. Boys in China, Indochina and India have been and still are in many parts the herders of water buffalo. Their role is celebrated in Chinese paintings and jade sculptures. The boys lead their charges, bathe them, swim with them, read books on their backs and even fall asleep on them! Here are two images. Top is a detail from a recent photo of A Boy on a Water Buffalo in Bangladesh. Left is the front cover of Water Buffalo Days: Growing Up in Vietnam (1997) by Huynh Quang Nhuong, illustrated by Jean and Mousien Tseng and published by HarperCollins Children's Books. CLICK to see a National Geographic photo of a Bangladeshi boy doing a back flip off one of his family's water buffaloes.