Help out a Little

I don't know whether I'm the smartest person in this country regarding our homeless especially in the city, or whether everybody else is just plain dumb. Or maybe, people have thought of this but unlike me, refused to share their ideas and therefore gone nowhere with all their good intentions. Or maybe the government is just too plain selfish and only interested in superficial economy growth to actually care about the people that need them to care the most. The homeless, the street people, the beggars.

Everyday, I come to work, I'm assured that at the end of the month, I'll get a little money for my trouble and that it will sustain me for the rest of the month and if not, at least I could always get a part time job in spite of my meager qualifications. So I’m not always hard up.

But every evening as I’m going to work or just taking a walk during my break, I see these people, people that most able people would shun. People that people with money would call “lazy”

But really, what do we the working class, know about the lives of the homeless, the street kids, their parents, what do we really know? A kid will follow me for over half a kilometer trying to get five shillings off of me. I’ll admit that sometimes, I can be mean, especially when I know that I don’t have enough money to be sharing with anyone, let alone a street kid who isn’t even my family. But why would anyone follow me that far and for that long?

Do I have the facial expression that makes people believe that if they pester me for long enough, I’ll give in so that they can leave me alone? Or is it that I look like I just have loose change with me all the time that I want to get rid of. Or maybe, just maybe, the kids are really hungry, really desperate that they would follow me for eternity just to get that worthless coin that to them means the only meal they’ll have for the next week or two.

Well whatever the reason, sometimes I’ll give in and sometimes I simply won’t.

But imagine this, the world will always have lazy people, the world will always have hardworking people, rich people, poor people, penniless people, homeless people and all sorts of other people. I don’t know what kind of balance we would have if all people were rich or if all people were just okay or if all people were poor. Well if all were rich or at least well-to-do, then no one would need anyone and it would be such a boring uninteresting world, now wouldn’t it? And if we were all poor then everyone would be begging and borrowing from everyone else and no one would ever be satisfied, right? So think of it this way. The reason we have so many social and economic classes is so that we can help each other out, learn to appreciate what we have and realize that no one ever gets where they are solely by their own power.

You might not realize it but possibly, the reason you are so well-up today, is because of that beggar sitting on the corner of Kenyatta and Moi Avenue. Sometimes, it’s not always because we made the right decision that we have a good job. Sometimes it’s because the other person who would have gotten the job instead of you decided that he could do better and in spite of him/her being more qualified and better suited for the job than you, the employer settled for you because, the other guy, ditched the opportunity.

So you see, it’s not always because we are the best that we get the opportunities that are deserving only of the best, it’s because sometimes the best, decided they can do better. In other words, the opportunity gets handed to you, even though you don’t really deserve it. Let’s look at it this way. The guy after turning down the opportunity to get a good job fails to get another job anywhere and goes insane because he simply can’t believe that with all the skills, qualifications and brains he has, no one will hire him. So he starts to walk the streets, forgets who he was, or is, he stops bathing, he forgets to eat sometimes, he abandons his home and family and finally settles down at the corner of yes, that street.

You? You pass him by every morning when going to work and every evening when going home. And yet, you have no Idea that that was the man that put you where you are now, opened up the avenues for you to better yourself. He? He has no idea that you are the one that took his place. You are the one who gets to sit in that cozy office that could have been his, claiming that you got there because you were the best. You claim that you got there fair and square, but you don’t know and neither does he.

You ignore a little girl who comes to you at the behest of her mother, to borrow a few coins or at least a little shopping for milk and bread. When you do, things start to smoothen out for you and you think that you have your life under control and you think to yourself, ‘wow, I’ve really improved myself’. But you don’t know that this little girl’s mother prays for you night and day, everyday of her life, and all because you bought her one packet of milk and a loaf of bread. You think that it’s because you are so good that things are working out for you, but really, the woman’s prayers are that you might prosper in life and be happy with yourself. I guess the prayers work, but really to think that you are the cause of your own happiness?

It pains me everyday when I encounter a little child begging, a mother sleeping on the street with her newborn, a teenager sniffing glue to drown out the hard reality that he shan’t have a bite to eat for the next two weeks or so, men lining the pavements displaying their severed limbs, blind people trying to entertain pedestrians for a shilling or two on Tom Mboya Street. It’s painful, it really is.

Why can’t the rich, or the government or those that claim to be fighting for the rights of the people, think up something to help these people? Why? I’ve thought something up.

Why can’t we, like America and other countries start soup kitchens? Just a bowl a day of any kind of rich, nutritious soup will do for most people. Think of the breast feeding mothers, especially those that were displaced during the violence in December and January? It doesn’t have to be a big thing; it could be a mobile truck with barrels of soup and a pickup full of loaves of bread to eat the soup with. Then later, we could develop a semi-permanent structure that could be used as sleeping quarters for the homeless just for a night at a time. Then later on, we could make it a permanent structure which helps the homeless get jobs and only allows people a maximum of three months support, after which they must get a job and pay to use the sleeping quarters. Think of all the people that would benefit from all this. Think of all the good it could do! I know that sleeping somewhere for a night and having to go back onto the street at the crack of dawn is hardly dignified but really, it beats roaming the streets all day and using the pavements as your bed at night, doesn’t it?
So please, whoever you are, if you can, and I know you can, help out a little. In reality you not only help the beggar, but you also help yourself out. You just don’t realize it, until you stop.