Charity begins at home...and finishes on the road

I have the oddest notions about beggars. Today we were comparing Pnom Penh with Vientiane, and besides a lot of involved history, what really distinguishes these two Indochinese capitals are the beggars.

Pnom Penh actually has a noticeable number of victims of land mines. Or at least that's what springs to mind, since mines are so famous, and then you see someone without a limb- your mind makes the connection. Of course, not all of them are beggars, but Pnom Penh does seem to have many more people missing limbs.

The other thing, slightly more annoying, is that some beggars in Pnom Penh will walk up to you and ask for a dollar (one person actually asked for ten). The currency of the country is not dollars, and the meaning of being asked for dollars is that this particular person has been taught by experience that foreigners have a guilt complex that can be harvested by an open hand and the word 'dollar'...

Of course this is really out of proportion; these people with the guilt complex and the deep pocket are the NGO and UN mid and upper level executives, who make in excess of 100,000 per year, with a mansion and a chauffered car provided free. In other words, they are suddenly perceived by the people they have come to 'help' as being a kind of noble class, since they are in reality among the top 1% of the country who have 90% of the income.

Some of them realize this gap and perhaps grasp the hypocrisy of it all, and their pocket opens each time they see someone who reminds them of it. Not so the grubby backpacking tribe, whose money was made by washing dishes in Sidney or teaching English in China, and who extended that money by bargaining, haggling, and doublechecking menu overcharging all along the way to Pnom Penh.

Their pockets do not open as easily; nor do the pockets of well heeled travelers - since they tend to look harder at the person to see whether or not they might actually be capable of working instead of begging. This latter group is more likely to deny a donation to a beggar on economic or so-called 'moral' principles than either of the other two groups.

Vientiane apparently hasn't got as many of these NGO and UN types running around, though they certainly do have a presence. Perhaps they do have as many people on the ground here, but their effect is ameliorated by larger numbers of the other two types mentioned above (don't forget that some 'normal' people are still afraid of the land mine/political coup situation in Cambodia)

So I found it a little strange the other day when this Lao lady, mid-thirties, asked for money for food. She was in fact, the neatest dresser I had seen in the country, sporting very artistic tennis shoes, matching dress, makeup, etc. She had a brand new expensive looking backpack, and a 'fashion' bag full to the top with objects; all I could see was a silver teapot poking out of it.

She more resembled a mugged yuppie than an itinerant beggar; or perhaps an educated person; who as a result of a very recent lover's quarrel, had been thrust out upon the street with a few of her belongings.

I finally decided that she was suffering some sort of mental problems. Even if she was a 'scammer', this would not be an intelligent way to go about it, and by all appearances, she certainly had some intelligence.

Does this mean she didn't deserve some help? Certainly this was not the case, but how to help people like this? This appears to be our dilemma in the west, since so many more of our beggars fit into this category than beggars you might see in the third world.

It certainly leaves you wondering about the two situations relative to each other; though people confronted by beggars in third world countries feel guiltier - are they really any more guilty than those in advanced countries who rationalize away helping the mentally ill, who the government has cast out upon the streets and the tender mercies of the ignorant public?