Uri Umucuruzi Cyangwa Uri Umusabirizi?*

*Are you a seller or a beggar?

Begging is a difficult subject. In phone calls and emails people have asked me a little bit about beggars and begging here but I haven’t done a blog post on it because I’m not qualified to speak to its causes. My undergraduate degree in international/development studies provided me with a rough outline of the systemic causes of macro-level poverty but for all the Sachs and Easterly I read in college I cannot explain why every small child here knows how to say “give me money” in English. That said, I deal with begging on a daily basis so I can at least talk about my experiences, eschewing my speculations as to the “why” and “how.”

First of all, there are two types of beggars. The first type of beggar is genuinely a beggar - that is, someone who subsists on money given to them by others. These are the people who, like in the United States, appear to have fallen through the cracks in the system. They are the crippled and the deranged** and others who for whatever reason cannot work and have no one to care for them. The second kind of beggar is not really a beggar and in fact would not ask anyone for money under normal circumstances except maybe as a loan. This kind of beggar presents a real challenge because she is one hundred percent convinced that I, as a white foreigner, have wealth beyond her wildest imaginings and that I’d be incredibly selfish not to share just a little of it. As far as she’s concerned, her persistence and aggression are more than justified and my refusal to give is not.

I encounter this kind of beggar everywhere. At the market, people ask me to buy vegetables for them. In town people ask me for money for a cup of tea. One time I was walking into town with a few coins in my pocket to buy bread and a woman asked me for money for a Fanta and when I said I didn’t have money to give her she pointed to my pocket and said, “So what’s that there?”

I rarely encounter this kind of thing when I’m at my house because my immediate neighbors understand my situation. They know that as a Peace Corps volunteer I have less money than some of my colleagues at school and that beyond the netbook and camera I brought from home there are no untold riches to be found in my house. However, there have been times when people have actually come to my doorstep looking for money. One time I was sweeping my porch and a woman with a small child came right up to me, greeted me and asked for 500 francs. I told her in Kinyarwanda that I was not in a position to give 500 francs. She said (in Kinyarwanda), “You want me to believe you have nothing?” I said, “I have enough so that I can eat but not enough to give everyone.” I thought that was a fair enough explanation, but it didn’t deter her. She indicated the child and said, “Look at him. Can’t you give something for him?”

He was an adorable baby, maybe a little underfed but healthy. I told the woman, “You have a beautiful child. But do you see the field by the church there?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Do you know the children who play there?”

“I know them.”

“I also know them and I love them very much, but many of them are sick and some do not have shoes and some do not eat because their families are poor. I do not have enough to give to all of them. How can I give money for your child and not to the children there who I love so much?”

The woman paused, thought about it and said, “I only want a little.”

This is probably the only thing I encounter at site that consistently frustrates me, the assumption that because I am a foreigner I have money to give. I probably wouldn’t be bothered by it if there weren’t some truth to it in a roundabout way. My Peace Corps “salary” might equal that of an average Rwandan teacher but when my service is over I will have the resources to return to the United States where I will have opportunities that people here do not have. But if I give money to a woman so that she can buy milk for her child one day, what am I doing other than creating a sense of dependency and/or strengthening the notion that foreigners have money, making life that much more difficult for Gihara’s next Peace Corps volunteer?

I have so many unanswered questions about this kind of thing, though. How is it that even small children in remote places know to equate foreigners with money? Is it because the foreigners they encounter are all aid workers and missionaries and tourists? What about those who have never seen an American before? Thanks to Sachs and Easterly, Jared Diamond and Paul Farmer, I know that the United States is a “wealthy” and “developed” country and that Rwanda is relatively “poor” and “developing,” but my neighbors haven’t read these books. Where did they learn this rhetoric of rich and poor, developed and developing?

These are not rhetorical questions. If anyone has any thoughts to offer or if you know of a book or two that might help, please share. Thank you all!

**I apologize if my use of terms like “crippled” and “deranged” is politically incorrect, but for me these terms best capture the condition of the beggars I’ve encountered in Kigali and Gitarama. If I’ve offended anyone, please feel free to comment or email me and I’ll make edits where necessary.