divert and pilfer

Now that it is summer, two types of people walk the city streets in mad droves: foreigners and homeless people. The former are often European and can be found sipping lattes and networking at a European café or restaurant (or lugging around gigantic backpacks tying their dredlocks into a ponytail). The latter come in various shapes and sizes, can be found in interesting places, and are usually children. Foreigners I don’t really find all that interesting, it’s the homeless kids that astound me.

On my way home today there was a young boy, probably 11 or 12 but so physically stunted for lack of nutrition looked 8 or 9. And dirty as if the crud was embedded into his skin, like the dirt itself was becoming the skin’s replacement. On his lap was a ragged sleeping child. I can’t be sure of the age; I can only say that he was barely off baby food. And this child was as limp as a soggy rag doll. I have a niece who’s one of the deepest sleepers I’ve ever seen – you can pry open her eyelid and she won’t wake up. But this little, soggy rag-doll child looked dead, like he had just been wrung out with the laundry and was lying there to dry.

Most of these kids will have a cardboard box in front of them where passersby can drop in a few tugruks. Some of them, like this child, have figured out what really disturbs people. Apparently, soggy rag-doll babies and dirty, starved 11 year olds do it to me. I ended up buying a bottle of water and some biscuits at a nearby shop to lay down in his box with a 500 note (about 50 cents). More than likely the money in his box will go back to a parent who will buy alcohol and cigarettes with it. Some of the kids can be pretty persistent and irritating having learned a few key words in English (money, please) that they repeat pitifully while stretching their encrusted palms in your face. Some of them have worked out a system of “divert and pilfer” where they’ll target a loaded foreigner, distract him or her cleverly while a compatriot effortlessly relieves the foreigner’s pockets of a couple hundred tugruks. Others will display birth defects, facial or physical deformities and generally succeed in breaking your heart. The persistent ones you can find around shops or restaurants frequented by the wealthy. The divert and pilfer groups you’ll most likely find at bus stops. The deformed, handicapped or the ones holding babies will find a spot anywhere that’s shady (preferably near a busy area with lots of people) and stay there all day. At times, they will sing.

One will utterly despise the world for being the way it is when looking into the eyes of a starving child, whether they are irritating you, robbing you blind or awkwardly cradling limp infants. My friends, it is not right. For as much beauty as there is on this planet, in this reality, in this time, there is equal parts ugly - and it is an old ugly, a cunning ugly. This homeless boy that I encountered today, will most likely be homeless and starving and begging the rest of his life, however long or short that is. And I clench my teeth in anger at that thought, at my own helplessness. But one cannot love truthfully out of a hateful heart.

It seems my role in this child’s life was to show him kindness, the only kindness I knew how to show with my limited human scope. And the only way I can keep showing him kindness is in expectant prayer. For beauty, love and joy. For peace and comfort. The everlasting kinds.

My friends, love truthfully.