Melville CookeTrue compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar Martin Luther King Jr.
EVERY AREA, it would seem, has a notorious beggar. From that skinny woman in Montego Bay who touches you on the shoulder like an old friend to the woman with the perpetual prescription, sometimes with baby, in Liguanea and New Kingston, hoodwinkers are a couple red money a dozen. However, while the tales that circulate around the water cooler tend to concentrate on the plots and the schemes, there is a side of the coin we sometimes grudgingly or willingly part with.
I have heard a lot about the elaborate stories beggars tell; I have been told how convincing some can be; I have listened to myself say yu woulda love help, but yu no know who fi trus. But we hardly, if ever, speak about the beggar's gratitude. Not the effusive 'thank you boss' or the dismissive 'yes faada', but the gratitude which comes with a direct look which demands that the recipient's membership in the human race be acknowledged.
I have had the experience maybe three times, the most recent being at 1:00 a.m. at Devon House stoplight in Kingston. I pull up to the light and a tall man with an angular face comes to wipe the windscreen. I tell him I have no money, but he insists. He does not, however, demand a coin, but as he walks away I call him back and give him $50. A quarter of my liquid monetary wealth at the time, actually. He took it, looked me in the eye and said 'thank you'. It is not the words that have the effect; it is the simplicity with which they are expressed, the sober, almost sombre tone in which they are delivered and the direct look. It is a look that lays the beggar open to the acknowledgement or scorn of the giver. It is a look of nakedness, of extreme vulnerability. It says that I too am a man. No, it says that I am still a human being.
It is also a gratitude that will not be denied. I will not forget coming out of the Red Hills Mall one night and being approached by a man. I gave him some money, he gave me the look and said thank you. I replied with a casual yeah man and turned away. He would have none of it. "No, I said thank you," he said and I felt compelled to turn back, look him in the eye and say, "you are welcome."
Most of us will be suckered by con men, hounded by windscreen wipers and pestered by beggars at some point or many points. Some of them will take the paltry sum we spare from our paltry sum and go straight to a crack dealer. Heck, they may even save it all up and go to the bank at the end of the week. I kid you not. It happens. But in all of this you will meet the windscreen wiper that I met at the Waterloo/Hope Road intersection. You will meet the man I met outside Red Hills Mall, or the other one I encountered while waiting at the bus stop across the road, who insisted on telling me about his path to beggarhood because yu heart clean.
It is up to you to either acknowledge this person as a human being or dismiss them as nuisance taking up valuable space on the planet. It is going to matter more than any amount of loose change you are willing to spare. Our politicians know this. The fanatical loyalty some poverty-stricken areas and persons still have towards the JLP and PNP continues to astound me. It would seem impossible that someone would be grateful for life for a toilet, or an apartment that I would consider a hovel. But that is me.
I have the wherewithal or hopes of buying my own, by my own efforts.
There are the lazy, just as there are the more monied sloths among us, but many of the poor among us will never be able to purchase the basics for themselves. But in addition - and I have seen them do it p the political pariahs acknowledge the right of their subjects to be respected as a human being. It is a very powerful thing.
And, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows out of the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. Martin Luther King Jr. (Why I Am Opposed to The War in Vietnam)
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
