On Street Charity

Last weekend I was having lunch with expat friends Maarten and Alexandra on the patio area of this restaurant when a beggar child came to us asking I think for money at first, and then for food.  The boy was probably eight or ten years old.  Perhaps he was a small teenager.  Needless to say, chronic starvation and undernourishment hinder physical development.  Now, we had just finished eating, and I was actually about to collect the left over bones for our pet Machu, so it was awkward for all of us, wanting to give the boy food, but not wanting to demean him by giving him our left-overs.  In the end, Maarten and Alexandra ordered bread and an egg sandwich for the child. 

Maarten and Alexandra at Casa Msika

Normally, I don’t give to beggars, whether they are children or adults.  This seems cruel, and the incident at the restaurant made me question why I am stingy and ungenerous.  I hope I'm not really cruel and stingy and ungenerous.  But I’m afraid after three years a PCV in Africa, I have become pessimistic and cynical.  Or more pessimistic and cynical than I normally am.  Giving the boy food was an act of kindness and generosity.  Had the same thing happened in the states, I think I would’ve given the boy bread.  I have actually done that, but to a grown man not to a boy, on Market St. in San Francisco.  Once, I even served in a soup kitchen there.  But here, I’m sorry to say, my tendency is to look away.

Many beggars people the streets of Chimoio.  There are blind elderly led by kids asking for “ajuda,” (help).  There are disabled men and women sitting cross-legged on the streets, calling for “patrão” (a patron).  While I turn away, I’d like to think that I still see.  And it is a sight painful to the eyes.  Unlike last year in Cuamba, where I biked almost everywhere, here in Chimoio I walk almost every day in the city to go to the market, to go to work, to meet up with other PCVs, to get something done.  I don’t mean to excuse my turning away from beggars, but at least I can see how it is easier or less painful than interacting with them every day.  Luckily, they don’t usually become aggressive like the ones I’ve encountered in San Francisco and Berkeley.

I do take issue with monetary handouts, however.  Yes, we impoverished PCVs don’t have much of it, but a couple of meticais is not a lot out of our pockets.  I think my issue with it, though, is that it’s an act rooted not so much in generosity but in pity.  And while this feeling isn’t necessarily bad or negative, I do think its effects can be detrimental.  I do not want the kids to learn that it is okay to be pitied.  I do not want them to learn habits of servility.  I do not want them to see foreigners as casual distributors of change, as the natural “haves” while they are born into the lot of the “have-nots.”  

While it saddens me to see anyone beg, I do not want the person to learn that to beg or “pedir” is fine as the natural (and only) way of interacting or being with us.  So many times we hear the phrase “estou pedir” (I am asking or begging for something), not just from street beggars but also from other host-country nationals, from neighbors and acquaintances, from Mozambican friends and even colleagues.  Some say that this habit is based on a culture that shares resources. . . Perhaps.  But I do believe that giving away money based on pity has unfavorable, cultural consequences:  maybe we feel better temporarily, but I’m not sure how real that emotion is if it is founded on this unequal relationship and unfair cultural exchange.  Perhaps pitying another person is okay in and of itself.  But if that person learns to be okay with being the object of pity, if that person doesn’t learn what it means to act with dignity, then this is the real danger.  It is not only unsustainable, it actually sustains the unequal relationship and unfair cultural interaction.  Giving handouts so casually can be an easy way to accept how things are, normally.  It is giving in to the way things are.