The streets tell a different story.
Different from the one we (or I should talk of myself?); different from the one
I have heard from the lips of the government.
They say that street- begging has been banned. To rephrase, if the
meaning would be different, is to say that to beg is an offence.
The story on the streets emphasizes that
street begging was and is still a very viable trade. It is not like I mean to
sound mean but if the truth must be told; I have never seen as much beggars in
this town as in any other town that I have visited previously. So I thought
with the ban of street begging, the society we live in would, at least, not
smell of so much of poverty. I will save
the talk on poverty for another time and focus on how my dream was dashed. Not
dashed without hope but dashed anyways.
I used to be uncomfortable with the beggars
on the streets; I did not know what to do to make the situation any better so I
used to avoid them. I used to ask myself what my five or ten naira could do to
alleviate poverty in the families that I see their representatives on the
streets. I wondered how many loaves of bread the sum would buy or how many cups
of garri that could be bought. How many books could be bought or even how many
drugs could be afforded on the meagre collections raised from the streets? I
was even more pained when I noticed that the beggar was a young mother with
twin babies. It took me a while to
understand that it was believed that the spirits associated with twins was
responsible for calling both mother and babies to beg in the streets. After
that I began to wonder why the spirits did not work on twin babies born of rich
parents.
With time I stopped being uncomfortable
with seeing so much beggars on the streets. I got used to them. Getting used to
them surely did not make it easier for me to give to them. I simply learnt to
ignore them. I believed (still believe) that most of them are miniature
fraudsters. What else would you call putting on a catheter with urine that is
probably not yours or pretending to be blind or even taking up a collection for
oneself while labelling it as belong to the under privileged. Moreso I had had
a nasty experience with some 419ers over fifteen years ago in the process of
trying to help strangers out. That experience left me scarred a bit. More than
a bit because it made it a lot easier for me to walk away when I ought to stop
and help.
However if you are a deeply religious
person (as I try to be), there will be days when you will be forced to ask
yourself some questions. Trying to live out one’s Christian life makes ignoring
the less privileged impossible. At least the measure of charity is what we are
told that eternal judgment will be based. In a situation where it is not easy
to get the less privileged as a result of modernization, recourse still has to
be made to the streets.
So the beggars still litter our streets
and if you want to you can, like me, ignore sometimes, or all the time if you
like but there will always be that someone who will not. It does not look like
they will reduce anytime soon.
Keep faith.
