One of the toughest things for the kids to get used to is the poverty. Mumbai is an enormous city, and India is still a very poor country, and people from all over head to the big metropolis in the hopes of building a better life. Unfortunately for them, most end up in the sort of filth and squalor pictured here, where children with their heads shaved for lice squat in the street, surrounded by garbage, to relieve themselves. This was taken out our bus window one (typical) day heading home from school.
There are quite a lot of beggars throughout the city (duh), and they do seem to spot us fairly easily (duh) and head right over to us (duh). Breck has been having more of a difficult time dealing with them than Alea. There is one particular corner on the way home from school at which we get our windows knocked on quite often, and he dreads going to it. “I hope there are no beggars today” has become a refrain from him when we leave school. He asks us why they come asking for money, and I hope our pitiful explanations are adequate.
His class has been spending some time recently going into some of the roots of child labor and poverty, but this seems to upset him even more (there have been a couple of nights that he’s asked to sleep with us because of some of the things he has seen in class). It is such a pervasive fact of life here, wrapped up with so many ‘tinderbox’ issues ranging from alcohol to infanticide to abuse, that it is difficult to judge where to start and where to stop when trying to explain something that Alea and Breck see every day but have no context for understanding.
Breck has become more adept at using his ignoring skills when beggars approach him, but unfortunately this translates into him sometimes brusquely walking past other people who are genuinely interested in just saying ‘hi.’ It is interesting to remember that there are a lot of people in this country who have never spoken to a ‘white person,’ and many who have never seen on in real life. We don’t want him to ignore all Indians, but he is such a sensitive boy that it is a very fine line for us to walk in terms of helping him judge when to engage and when to ignore. This is such a ‘teachable moment’ for us while we live here; I just hope we are helping him understand things in a way that won’t haunt him for life.
(And just for some background information, we were told before coming - and have had it reinforced while here - that most of the street beggars are basically “pimped out” to local thugs who take the money they manage to earn. We’ve been encouraged to give food to them (but nothing that can be resold, because it will be and the money find its way into the boss’s pockets) and to contribute money to organizations that can better place it in the hands of those who are truly the needy.)
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