Have you ever looked an adult street beggar in the eye? I mean when eyes lock and for some reason none is willing to look away first?
It has happened to me. He was so crippled that only a stone would be unmoved by his disability. Yet what I saw in his piercing eyes was shame. Not just shame, but also two disturbing expressions - one that said, "You will never understand unless you are in my position" and the other sobering one that seemed to suggest, "The fault lies with the state and the likes of you that have left us to languish here on the streets!"
As I walked briskly by, something that had been elusive came back to mind. It is something I had always secretly held – the notion that begging is the most difficult job. But I was about to experience what would prove to me that there is no pathetic existence than the existence of a thief.
It happened when I found a friend of mine, Hilda, waiting to pick her son from Buganda Road Primary School. She had parked her car a few feet away, and as we chatted, a thief broke in and lifted her laptop. He jumped on boda-boda and as they passed us by, Hilda saw him and screamed, "Oh my God he has stolen my laptop" and the noise of "thief thief" quickly rent the atmosphere.
The chase was on, and the boda-bodas joined it. The criminals thought fast; dropping the laptop and abandoning the boda-boda to save their lives. So flabbergasting to me however, was how someone can muster the guts to break into a car when its owner is a few feet away. Don't such people have a conscience at all? Are their actions motivated by survival or does the fault lie with the government for failure to provide jobs?
As I thought about this, I remembered a line from an old movie whose title I forget: "Inside every person is a gift, but it is our responsibility to discover, uncover and recover that gift." And I thought; are thieves or beggars alike thieving and begging because they have failed to discover, uncover and recover the gift within?
I don't know for sure. But from the whole episode of the thief and his accomplice surviving lynching by a whisker, I recognised that it is better to beg than to steal.
 |
| It's better to beg than to steal. Photo by Howard Carson, copyright 2009, all rights reserved |
It happened when I found a friend of mine, Hilda, waiting to pick her son from Buganda Road Primary School. She had parked her car a few feet away, and as we chatted, a thief broke in and lifted her laptop. He jumped on boda-boda and as they passed us by, Hilda saw him and screamed, "Oh my God he has stolen my laptop" and the noise of "thief thief" quickly rent the atmosphere.
The chase was on, and the boda-bodas joined it. The criminals thought fast; dropping the laptop and abandoning the boda-boda to save their lives. So flabbergasting to me however, was how someone can muster the guts to break into a car when its owner is a few feet away. Don't such people have a conscience at all? Are their actions motivated by survival or does the fault lie with the government for failure to provide jobs?
As I thought about this, I remembered a line from an old movie whose title I forget: "Inside every person is a gift, but it is our responsibility to discover, uncover and recover that gift." And I thought; are thieves or beggars alike thieving and begging because they have failed to discover, uncover and recover the gift within?
I don't know for sure. But from the whole episode of the thief and his accomplice surviving lynching by a whisker, I recognised that it is better to beg than to steal.
No comments:
Post a Comment