Small Hands, Outstretched
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Kasane, Botswana. Our room has a view of the Chobe River, and this morning when I was sitting in bed reading the news on my phone, I looked up to see a baboon sitting outside on our windowsill, peering in at me. I could not have imagined this life back when I was driving middle-school carpool.
Small Hands, Outstretched
While we were in Livingstone, we went into the center of the small town and ran a few errands at the grocery store and the pharmacy. We stopped off at the bakery for a snack and a drink. Every time we exited a shop, there was a young boy waiting for us—the same young boy each time—holding out a hand for money and pointing to his mouth and stomach. I don’t know whether he spoke English, but he was probably hoping we didn’t: there were signs plastered around town pleading with tourists not to give money to street children.
We saw no one managing that child, primarily because it was a thousand degrees and I was focused on buying toothpaste and getting back to the hotel to cool off in the pool. I am painfully aware of the horror in that sentence—I ignored a hungry child so that I could get to the pool faster. But Lee and I have since talked about it a lot, and those signs—don’t give money to street children—are kind of a cue to us: there’s more here than meets the eye.
Here’s the thing: we don’t know what we don’t know, except that we know we don’t know. We DO know that there are children in the world who are forced or manipulated into begging. We know that there are begging children who are managed by adults, by their parents, by older children. My bleeding heart can’t distinguish between a toddler in need and a toddler being groomed for a life of crime or pain or misery.
All I know is that I don’t want to make things worse.
Children should not live on the street. The world has gotten something seriously wrong when children don’t have enough to eat, don’t have a place to sleep, don’t have safety and security and loving adult guidance. This mama’s heart breaks every time I see children begging. I want to simultaneously weep or scream or hug them or stick my head back in the sand and pretend things can’t possibly be as bad as all that.
When we were in Kathmandu, we passed a group of children; the eldest was begging, the next-eldest were supervising a toddler and a baby. When the eldest boy (who seemed about twelve, maybe) asked me for money, I kept walking. Around the corner, though, I saw a man selling tangerines, so I bought a dozen, then ran back and handed the bag to the children. No money, no words, no chance for them to ask for more. Just fruit. Added bonus—the tangerine guy got a few rupees.
I felt okay about that. There’ve been too many moments, too many interactions that I didn’t feel good about. It’s always hard to know what to do, and I think there might not be a right answer, just a tragic litany of wrong and wronger answers.
I try not to brush children off, but we never know what the circumstances are or how to read the cues, and where children are concerned, interacting is always tricky.
Once, in Vietnam, a little girl fell into step beside me and just strolled along with us for a long while. She was adorable, maybe four or so; I stopped and helped her zip up her jacket, looking around for her grown-up. There was no one. It wasn’t a huge town, so maybe she was just out for a wander? We reached the edge of the touristy area, and I didn’t know what in the world to do about my new little buddy. Take her back to where she had first glommed on? Turn her around and point back in that direction? Take her with us to our hotel? Start knocking on doors? I was uncomfortable letting her wander unsupervised past the historic district where we’d found her. I finally found a shopkeeper who spoke enough English to understand me, and he took over. It’s a different culture, one in which perhaps it wasn’t terribly strange for a child to be wandering alone, but I didn’t want to be the foreigner who misunderstood the situation and caused a problem. Was she a street child, or just a lost little girl who had no reason to panic, because her community takes care of their own? I will never know.
Sometimes a child will hand us an American coin, asking us to change it to the local currency. That always feels … sticky. Like perhaps we should walk away without engaging. Which is what we do.
When we arrived in Bangladesh in December, Lee and I went out the first evening in different directions. I was in search of clothing more modest than my usual shorts and sleeveless, while he was just strolling, taking in the vibe of Dhaka. He texted me a couple of times about kids, but I was so engaged in my shopping expedition that I didn’t pay much attention. When we finally met back up at the hotel, I realized he was slightly rattled by his experience.
A group of four boys—two preschool-ish aged, two who were more like 8-10 years old—had approached him on the street. The older boys hung back a little, while the younger ones wrapped themselves around his legs. Their hands roved up and down, searching for his pockets. Luckily his wallet is so light and small it’s hard to detect. Of course he was instantly shouting at them and shaking them off, but even an hour later, when he told me about it, I could see the cognitive dissonance it had caused him. Shouting at little children feels wrong.
Everything about street children feels wrong.
Take care,
Lisa
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