Thursday, February 4, 2010
Balance
One of my biggest challenges here is finding the balance between not being taken and being human. I feel guilty walking into a restaurant to eat when there are homeless women and children on the street with nothing. It's painfully difficult to ignore the begging children, but I'm told it's bad to give them money because they will learn to beg instead of earn their living and that some of them are not really poor. I buy things..kleenex and bracelets from kids and street people and feel a little like I'm tossing money in the air. I went to buy a homemade instrument from two street vendors. Originally, they asked for 15 pounds. I knew it was worth no more than 7 pounds. One of the men's legs was seriously swollen and pussy. They asked for 30 pounds. I knew it was too much; but was concerned about the leg. 30 egyptian pounds goes a long way here and is less then 10 dollars; so I agreed. I didn't have correct change;so the man took my money and wasn't going to give me change. Instead they were going to give me more instruments. I asked for change in arabic several times. Finally, I put the instrument I'd wanted down, grabbed my money out of the guy's pocket, and left.
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. . . I feel guilty walking into a restaurant to eat when there are homeless women and children on the street . . .
ReplyDelete. . . yes shannon . . . i feel that way watching haiti on tv . . . and afterwards, i cannot look at a channel 2 ... a cooking class on tv . . .
thanks for sharing . . .
greetings from werner
If you look hard enough you will find them in your own cities as well.
ReplyDeleteAs at every Olympics the press shows up a week before without anything to do so they try to find the worst about the city. In China it was the Human Rights, Korea the pollution, Greece it was all the wild dogs they poisoned, and now in Vancouver it is the poor people. Problem is, there isn't many places warmer than Vancouver in Canada, so if you want to live on the street (you know, the personal choice to live in poverty they make) that is the place to go.
Anyway, you can't save the world yourself.
Enjoy the rest of your time there,
Art