A good thing and a bad thing

[iamlying]

Yesterday a good thing happened, followed by a bad thing. We went to an old palacial garden and in the little center, there was a group of local kids who were singing and dancing. They were teenagers with hand drums and loud voices, the equivalent of a group of American teens singing along to Weezer in unison, but I've never seen so much pure joy

Comments

[hajenso]

The way I eventually stopped feeling bad about stuff like this was by not taking it personally when people asked for money. There was a tent village of Roma people in Peshkopi and some of them would sit up on the boulevard and beg every day. I gave them money sometimes and when I didn't, I didn't try to justify it to myself. Try to take obligation out of the picture. There's no obligation. They want some money, and maybe you want to give them some or maybe you don't.

As for when people accost you wanting to perform some kind of service, I would just assume that they want money for it and ask how much. Unless you are personally connected to them, it's a fair question. If they get offended, just laugh it off and walk away. Otherwise, you either know up front what you're signing up for, or they have no right to complain if you don't give them anything.

} kenji

[hajenso]

Oh, another important point about kids begging. I don't know the situation in Morocco, but in big cities in Albania, a lot of the street kids are trafficked. They don't get to keep the money you give them. You are just making them more profitable for their handlers. For this reason I would sometimes give money to the beggars in Peshkopi, because I lived there, it was a small town, and I knew where those people lived. They weren't trafficked. In cities I never would, because there was no way for me to eliminate the possibility of that money going into the pockets of traffickers. The easy way around that was just to buy a kid a sandwich or something. They would almost always take it, and it was guaranteed to help them (even if just for the moment) and not just make them more profitable.