I attended mass today, a great homily was
delivered and I had the all is well and all will be well gait. I planned on sharing a feel good photo on Facebook therefore but something else happened.
On my way to establish the location for a meeting in the coming week I was driving at good
speed like all the other vehicles on the road so I could have missed the woman kneeling
just by the roadside in the dirt on the other side of the road, with a child
strapped to her back. She was evidently wailing and throwing her
hands about her in apparent despair. I am on the wrong side of the road and
it’s a little too late to stop now I thought. Truth is, it was plainly going to
be an inconvenience. I hope she would be here when I get back was my little
prayer. I would be on that side of the road then and then I could give her
something I rationalized.
20 minutes after and on my way back, the woman
was still where I saw her first and in the same state. I parked off the road and
reached for my purse. I figured she could use more than the
usual spare change. A good meal for herself and the child and enough for their transport
back wherever. She was still on her knees when I looked in the rear mirror and
I reckoned I would get out of the car and offer the money. Before I could do that though she
came up to my car. She would be in her late 30s though she looked slightly
older and the tiny child looked something below 2years. I stretched my hand out
and she took the money quickly without looking at it. Then she spoke.
It was not the ‘thank you’ or ‘God bless you’
that would normally follow the act of giving. Not that I required that but what
she said was nothing I could have expected. She said in a local language (Akan): ‘I want money, to
start a business so that I can look after my child’. See the thing is, I
started to respond to her before she ended her statement. ‘I want money…’ and I
said ‘I just gave you some…’ thinking to myself, damn it, I had a handsome sum
in my hands for her even before she got to me and if only she had looked, she
would have known not to even ask! Then the rest of her statement came out. I
froze momentarily. Then I said quietly to her, I did not have that kind of
money. She turned away quickly at those words and left me. I truly wanted to
leave just as quickly. It occurred to me that I had just blundered badly into
something I wasn’t even sure of.
Was this woman a con? Is this her trade? Mind
you I hardly use that route so I wouldn’t know. There have been stories of people on the streets coming up with all sorts of sob stories to get money out of road users. Curiously, many
vehicles were passing by and never even slowed down at the sight of her. Was I just the unwary stranger? Then again what
if she was genuinely needy, for I happen to hold the view that anyone on the
streets begging must be needy. Yet clearly my assumption of her need was wrong.
Besides her request was not altogether unreasonable. After all is there not
some saying about it being better to teach people to fish rather than give them
fish?
So I ask myself; how should I have
responded, what ought I have done? How should this state of affairs be
addressed, on that woman’s part and on my part and all of my countrymen … especially in the
‘new’ Ghana in which we remain citizens?
