Living life: Changing a Beggar’s Attitude

At a certain point near the Union Trade Centre round about, there are two ladies of about the same age who best demonstrate how the difference between their chosen circumstances is most likely a result of differing attitudes. The first lady (lady 1) sells sweet bananas to evening rush-hour pedestrians while the second, sitted next to her, begs the same pedestrians for a living. One day, a colleague of mine and I were walking down their way. We got enticed by the yellow ripe fruits and as a result parted with a few hundred franc coins for a bunch of the scrumptious-looking fruits. Later I thought I was doing myself justice by tossing the loose change from the banana lady to the beggar lady, provoking fury from my colleague. According to him, the two ladies could have easily chosen either way; to either be beggars or be sweet banana sellers. The capital required to get a few bunches of bananas for the sweet banana seller to sell at the same spot everyday is probably the money that gets tossed into the hands of the beggar. He made it a point to tell the beggar that it would not take a genius to figure out how to move from the beggar lady to the sweet banana lady. With time I learnt to avoid the beggar lady and to buy more bananas instead. Never mind that most of the time I never really wanted to take sweet bananas home. That story reminds me of another tale I heard from this motivational DVD I was watching sometime. Mr. Speaker gives the perfect example of how your attitude can make or break you. He gives the example of two heartbroken men whose lovers have left them for other men. The first heartbroken lover thinks his world has come to an end, cries himself silly, and jumps off a high bridge into a deep river, to his death. The second one thinks deep and decides to sing a song which goes like, “Lonely, I am so lonely, I have nobody, to call my own.” Mr. Speaker demonstrates this while holding his nose with his fingers to produce a typical speaking-through-your nose similar to American superstar Akon’s signature voice. Am not sure if the Senegalese-born crooner did “Lonely” because he was heartbroken but the moral of that story is that your attitude towards any situation however difficult can make all the difference. The beggar lady is not the first one to opt for such desperate measures. The road next to Simba and Nakumatt supermarkets are lined with people who have resorted to bringing their children along because they better credentials as needy beggars in the eyes of pedestrians or prospective shoppers. Another lady friend shocked me when in response to one request for food by a child barely five years old, invited the child home for a meal. The beggar child promptly lost interest and went for the next culpable culprit. As humans we would always like to help those who we feel are less fortunate, but like these two friends of mine, we have got to learn that tossing a few coins to a beggar will never solve their problems and if there is way in which society can give them a long-term solution, it has to begin with their individual attitudes. Contact: kelviod@yahoo.com