A beggar of a life
October 22nd 2007 19:31
At home in New Zealand, mostly because of the social welfare system, it’s rare to see anyone begging in the streets. But in the equally well-off countries of Germany, Switzerland and Italy, we’ve continually seen beggars. It’s hard to know what to make of a system in which they still feature, and it’s hard to ignore them too, knowing that we’ll probably always be better off than they are. We’ve given to some and not others, not because we know some are deserving, but because we sometimes don’t have the cash on us, or because we have a feeling that the beggaring is more street theatre than genuine need. But of course that’s probably just us judging and not really knowing anything for a fact.
The prime candidate for the Beggar’s Academy Awards, though, was a woman on the Metro in Rome the other day. She suddenly appeared in the midst of a not very crowded carriage, spoke with great passion, pointed to the child (literally) at her breast, and held her hand out. The speech was so well-prepared, and even though it was in Italian, sounded so polished, that our instinct was to ignore her pleas. She may have been saying something utterly genuine, of course, though the rest of the people in the carriage refused to give to her as well, but she may equally have been saying: My child will starve if you people in your wealth do not give to help her. She will become an orphan, a child of the streets, because her mother will be forced to throw herself like Tosca from the Castel San Angelo. Can you bear to such suffering?
And so on. Not knowing enough Italian, it was hard to gauge the situation.
Another beggar who didn’t get our attention financially was bowed down on the street in the typical Muslim prayer pose. You wondered what his intention was, or whether it just happened to be prayer time when we passed.
And yet there were people like the beggar outside Cologne Cathedral who stood on one leg, or the old woman crossing the piazza in front of Milan Railway Station. Her legs were bandaged and she had considerable difficulty walking. She was carrying bags and struggling to make her way. There was the other old woman sitting outside St Michael’s Church in Hamburg, almost in tears, both at her plight and in gratitude to those who did give to her.
And there are always so many beggars. Nothing like the streets of Calcutta, of course, but still more than enough to make us Kiwis wonder and search our hearts as to which ones we should help even a little, and whether the ones we don‘t help really are just as deserving.
The prime candidate for the Beggar’s Academy Awards, though, was a woman on the Metro in Rome the other day. She suddenly appeared in the midst of a not very crowded carriage, spoke with great passion, pointed to the child (literally) at her breast, and held her hand out. The speech was so well-prepared, and even though it was in Italian, sounded so polished, that our instinct was to ignore her pleas. She may have been saying something utterly genuine, of course, though the rest of the people in the carriage refused to give to her as well, but she may equally have been saying: My child will starve if you people in your wealth do not give to help her. She will become an orphan, a child of the streets, because her mother will be forced to throw herself like Tosca from the Castel San Angelo. Can you bear to such suffering?
And so on. Not knowing enough Italian, it was hard to gauge the situation.
Another beggar who didn’t get our attention financially was bowed down on the street in the typical Muslim prayer pose. You wondered what his intention was, or whether it just happened to be prayer time when we passed.
And yet there were people like the beggar outside Cologne Cathedral who stood on one leg, or the old woman crossing the piazza in front of Milan Railway Station. Her legs were bandaged and she had considerable difficulty walking. She was carrying bags and struggling to make her way. There was the other old woman sitting outside St Michael’s Church in Hamburg, almost in tears, both at her plight and in gratitude to those who did give to her.
And there are always so many beggars. Nothing like the streets of Calcutta, of course, but still more than enough to make us Kiwis wonder and search our hearts as to which ones we should help even a little, and whether the ones we don‘t help really are just as deserving.
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