O to grace / how great a debtor / daily i'm constrained to be.

So I think the hardest thing about living here is seeing such poverty and feeling like there is nothing I can do. It’s a horrible feeling to be riding in a taxi to meet friends for dinner, and then a child comes up to the window, begging for money. Most street children are “owned,” meaning they are made to beg all day/night and then have to hand over any money to their “boss.” The boss feeds the child, but not enough to let her look well-fed, and no matter how much money the child brings in, she cannot earn her way out of destitution or into school. So I don’t want to give money, because I know it doesn’t help alleviate the poverty. But I don’t want to NOT give money, because what if the child is beaten for not earning enough? I could maybe give actual food, but it’s hard to just be carrying food around all the time…and if the food package isn’t opened and eaten immediately by the child, the boss will take it too. And what if I decide not to give something, and this was one of the few children that gets to keep the money they get? And how do I tell a shoeless, hungry, filthy, beautiful child that I have nothing to give them, when I am on my way to a restaurant, and I have more rupees in my fellowship stipend than they will ever probably ever see? How can I walk by a baby, so brimming with potential, naked on sidewalk, lying by a mangy flea-ridden street dog, every single day? Can we even really say that these people are “marginalized” when the margin is SO wide?

I see the destitution every day, and every day my heart just aches – actual, physical pain. I am not adjusting to such poverty as inevitable. I won’t - I can’t - look away and think “that’s just the way things are.” I don’t know what to do, but I can’t start thinking there is nothing I (we) can do. I’m sorry this post has no tidy solutions, no ideas for making the situation less uncomfortable. But I think we’ll get there!

On a lighter note, this morning on the way to work, whenever the taxi driver honked his horn (almost constantly) it played “Fur Elise.” Brilliant.

And also - Happy 99th Birthday Uncle Kermit!!!