Cast in Mud: Child Laborers
of Cairo
Finlay: This was the only day off that these children had and they were still wandering around in their bathrobes. The older girl, who is looking at me, grabbed my hand and led me around through this elaborate maze, pulling me here and there. Her little sister followed. They began telling me "This is how I work and this is what I do and this is how we make these tiles." On the left are terra-cotta tiles that the sisters have made. On the right is a smaller mud bowl like the big pit where the boys were working, but this one has a little barricade set up with pieces of clay and broken terra-cotta tiles. She took me in there to show me her work. At one point she just stopped and looked at me, and that was the image.
Girls work longer hours, on average, than boys because they carry the double workload of an outside job and domestic chores when they return home.