First I want to qualify this by making sure you understand I am writing about my experience and that involves the homeless in Central America which, I am sure is different than the homeless in the US. It seems to me that there are more homeless people in the US than in the areas I lived and visited, which seems odd. And I will address what I think may be a reason for that in my Notes on Re-defining poverty.
For now, I want to talk about Jerry and Eddy and Good Times and oh, the guy sleeping in the flies....
I like these guys. They have cool stories to tell and they generally are very nice and even respectful. Once they learn you are not going to give them money, that is.
Giving money to those in need can be a problem. It seems like the right thing to do when someone who doesn’t smell very good and is dirty comes up to you with tears in their eyes, rubbing their tummy and making the universal motion for give me something to eat. Sometimes it is the right thing to do. But not always.
This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
In many third world countries begging is seen as completely acceptable because "those gringos have a lot of money and we poor people don’t and therefore they should give us money." I have been approached by many people asking for a handout and I always used to give it. Then there was the day I was sitting in the park and had no cash on me and no cash coming in for a few days and I was going to need to go back on the banana-coconut diet, which I have been on before. The banana-coconut diet is the diet you go on when you have no money at all and you need to eat food that is basically free. Bananas go for five cents apiece and coconuts can easily be found along the beaches. You just need a machete to get into them so you can drink the life giving coconut water and scoop out the nutrient packed coconut meat. It isn’t a bad diet, short term that is.
Anyway, I was preparing myself for a few days of this particularly nutritious diet when along came a guy begging for a dollar. I really wasn’t in the mood. I had been living in Central America for four years and I could tell the difference between a guy who really needed the money and one who was either too lazy to work or was going to use it to buy drugs. Side note: cocaine is cheaper than marijuana in Bocas Del Toro.
Well he was very insistent, rude in fact. So I took out my LAST dollar and held it up to him and in butchered Spanish I told him, "This is my last dollar. I need it to buy some soup and then I will have no money. If I give it to you, I will not get any soup." And he reached out and grabbed it out of my hand!
ARRRG! (Pirate talk for ARE YOU SERIOUS!)
In truth, that was the worst episode I had of homeless bullying. And I don’t think he was really homeless.
In other cases, I have given money one day and been accosted the next for more, usually a greater amount and often with an, "I deserve it. You better give it to me," attitude. It can get a little uncomfortable. You want to give at first, and then after getting taken so many times, you don’t want to give at all. But I don’t think either answer is right. Of course sometimes there are situations where the person really is hungry and it is appropriate to give. But that isn’t really what I am talking about here.
What I have discovered is the power of NO.
After all, if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day and if you teach a man to fish, he will go broke buying fishing gear...I mean he will eat for a lifetime, right?
That is sort of the principle here.
I learned how to say, "No," firmly and politely. But then I didn’t just walk away. I didn’t tell the guy I figured he was going to use my money to buy drugs (even if I figured he was going to) and I didn’t tell him that I didn’t have any money (because he KNEW I did, even if I didn’t). Instead, I told him no and then I changed the subject.
I asked him how he was doing. I asked him about his family. I asked where he grew up and if he had brothers and sisters. I asked what he liked to do and what his aspirations were. (I didn’t use that word though).
And that’s when things started to change.
The guys living on the street are there for a reason. And giving them a handout doesn’t not fix it. But getting to know them gives them something they really need. It gives them simple human connection.
Let me tell you about Good Times. His real name is Sergio but we call him Good Times because he likes to hand out the local free newspaper called The Good Times in return for tips. He can be very annoying. Every time you walk by, he tries to sell you a free paper. But that isn’t the worst of it. He goes on and on about everything in the paper and expects you to listen like a good student and nod your head in agreement with everything he says.
The first time I met Good Times, I bought his paper and listened to his spiel. The second time, I ditched him and tried not to make eye contact. But then, as I got braver, I got to know him. I told him I did not want a paper and I told him (the harder part) that I did not need to hear about everything in the paper. Instead, I asked him about himself.
Good Times sleeps in the park because his mother married a guy who doesn’t like him and will not let him in the house even though it is on the street corner right next to the park. The guy his mother married is not a nice guy. I know. I've met him.
Good Times is in his thirties and you might think, well he is plenty old enough to get a home of his own. But that is not how things work in Central America. Families stick together and often many generations live in the same house so they can support each other. Good Times is a very smart guy, but he is not very savvy. He can read and do research, but he has trouble finding a job in town. He is rather obsessive about his paper and can't seem to function well in, say a carpentry position. Jobs are extremely limited on the island and poor Sergio just doesn’t have the skills that are in demand.
One evening I was out late and heartbroken from an argument I'd had with a loved one. I bought myself a plate of chicken and rice and sat on a park bench. Along came Good Times with every intention of selling me a free newspaper. But when he saw I was in distress, he folded his newspaper, put it in his bag, and sat down on the bench beside me. Then he pulled a to-go plate of fish and rice out of his bag and offered me some of his food.
We shared dinner that night, Good Times and I. I gave him some of my chicken and he gave me some of his fish and we both fed the street dog sitting at our feet. Good Times told me I could sleep on the bench next to his and I would not need to be afraid all night because he would look out for me.
A few months later I saw Good Times out late in the evening again. His mother died. Tears streamed down his face. He was hungry. And now there was no chance of him going home to the house of his dead mother and his ugly step-father. I bought him some fried chicken and rice and I hugged his neck.
I would like to get Sergio off the street, but I can't. At least not right now. It is a comfort to me that he is eating most days and Bocas is warm, so he is not in danger of freezing. As I build my friendship with Sergio, I hope a good solution will come to me. I am trying to find a sustainable way to help him fit in.
Just like Eddy.
Eddy is a drug dealer. He calls me Boss. No, I am not his supplier. Eddy calls me Boss because after he begged me for money several times and I told him no, I got to know Eddy. He doesn’t want to be a drug dealer. It’s risky and it isn’t very profitable. (Believe it or not.) Eddy just wants to make pinchos and sell them in the street. Pinchos are fried meat on a stick, usually served with a spicy sauce and a tortilla. All Eddy needs is a small food cart. He has done the research and has found a reasonable way to make a food cart for much less money than it would cost to buy one. So instead of giving Eddy a few bucks and wondering what he is doing with it, I am trying to raise money to help Eddy build his food cart. Then maybe I can give him some simple tutoring in how to run a small business. Then there would be a valid reason for him to call me Boss.
You get it.
Jerry told me the most exciting story about being dedicated to Satan at birth, studying magic for three years so he would be prepared to go into the drug trade, being killed over a hundred times, having secret knowledge about the location of the hole in the sea where the gold is and his spiritual not-very-nice guide The Engine. It all sounds crazy, but, given the circumstances, I believe the stories are real. Jerry has been through the ringer. He pushes a shopping cart around town, sleeps on the beach, bathes in the sea, and loves to clean. He carries a broom, a dustpan, and a rake in his shopping cart and he keeps the park spotless, free of charge. Jerry will accept a free cup of coffee, but he doesn’t want you feed him. He makes creamed corn-flour mixed with water in a coffee pot that he plugs into an outlet in the park. I have cooked Raman noodles in a coffee pot. It works great! I hope to get Jerry a job working for the town. He already cleans the park. It would be great if he could get paid for it.
The point is, it takes getting to know these guys to start coming up with real solutions. It is so easy to hand out a dollar, or to just walk past and do nothing because you assume they will use that dollar to buy beer. (They probably will.) But it isn’t the buying beer that is a problem. WHY are they buying beer? The answer to that question is where the problem lies.
Which brings me to the guy sleeping in the swarm of flies.
I was in Costa Rica on a solo trip and staying in a tiny town on the Caribbean called Chauita. It has a lovely state park complete with sloths and monkeys, beautiful beaches, and adorable little crafty shops and restaurants. It was late afternoon and I felt impressed to go down to the local pub and have a beer. Yes, I felt impressed to do this. So off I went.
I had just been online expressing my heart felt agreement with the idea that people need to be loved out of drug addiction. In fact, in a moment of passion, I threw my heart at God and said, "Please, let me do this!"
Anybody ever here the phrase, "Be careful what you wish for"?
So I sat and had a local beer and listened to some wonderful live Calypso music and when my one beer was gone, I felt impressed to get up and leave. So I did.
I walked across the street to the park and was stopped almost immediately by a swarm of flies coming from a park bench. I walked over to see what was going on and a man was lying there face down, passed out I assumed, and literally covered in hundreds of flies.
At first I wondered if he was alive. His body posture seemed like he was sleeping, so I asked a street guy close by what the problem was. The guy who answered me was short and small and mostly likely Bribri Indian. His hair was dark and he was fairly grimy. Let’s call him Bribri Guy for lack of a better name. So Bribri Guy explained that Fly Guy had...and he gave me a single word in Spanish. (Of course his whole conversation happened in Spanish.) I had no idea what the word meant, nor can I recall it now. So Bribri Guy explained that it was when a guy loses his wife and then drinks until he loses his job and his house and ends up on a park bench passed out with urine all over himself and flies swarming him. I didn't know they had a word for such a thing, but it must happen fairly often so I guess they had to coin a phrase for it.
About that time Fly Guy rolled over and sat up. He pants were wet. Snot dripped from his nose. His nice button up shirt looked like it had been slept in for several days. His dark hair was rumpled. He looked like he had been beaten up and blood was freshly dried on several parts of him. And, when he saw that I was asking about him, he immediately started sobbing.
I carefully selected a spot to sit on the concrete bench where there didn’t appear to be any blood or other bodily fluids. It was a little farther away from him than I normally would have sat because he pretty much destroyed every part of the bench. I asked him why he was crying.
"Because Jesus will never forgive me!" he wailed and went back to sobbing.
Oh my...I had just begged God to send me to someone who needed to be healed from addiction by love. My heart broke and though I wanted to hug this poor man, I consciously recoiled from him. I asked him to tell me his story and he told me about how his wife, whom he adored, left him. He told me how much he missed her and how she would not come back to him. He told me Jesus would never forgive him for that and he cried.
He was quite drunk and, seeing a food cart nearby and thinking a little something in his stomach might make him feel better and help him shake off the alcohol, I offered to buy him something to eat. But he didn’t want anything. So I asked him what he did want and his response was exactly what I knew it would be, "a hug."
This is the point when you look at yourself full in your private mirror and you make a decision to push past your comfort zone. You acknowledge how you are feeling inside, the contradiction of it, the compassion and revulsion, and you jump in. You throw caution to the wind and you hug whole heartedly and let someone snot on you. Once you break the barrier, it is broken. From that point on, in that particular situation, it seems you can do anything.
I hugged him and I comforted him and I laid my hand on his shoulder and prayed for him. And when I did, he immediately looked up at me and smiled. He FELT the love of God go through him. It instantly gave him relief. He shared with me how both his brother and sister committed suicide. He told me he had felt like he did not want to live.
I know I cannot make people's choices for them and I know I am not responsible for this man. But in that moment, it is hard not to feel the weight of responsibility. I am thankful I saw him there that day covered in flies. I am thankful I was able to get out of myself enough to reach out to him.
I did buy him something to eat eventually, and as he sat there and talked and ate, he seemed to come to himself a little more. I assured him that Jesus still loved him and that of course Jesus would forgive him. I wished I could take away his pain. When I got up to leave him Bribri Guy came over and asked me for money. I refused. He was angry. I didn’t give in.
It can be really difficult sometimes, knowing when to give and when not to. The trick is in getting outside yourself to give the really important thing, which is usually your time or a hug.
I saw Fly Guy the next morning. He was still wearing the same clothing, but he looked much better.
I do wish I had a better name for him. How about Forgiven Guy?