Six Cents and a Handful o' Spit

I was walking from one taxi to another in Macanisa, headed home. Sitting on the ground, knees folded to her bony chin, was a little beggar woman. She didn’t look up when I walked by. She only saw above my dusty Toms the whiteness of my ankles, which triggers for a beggar blinking dollar signs. Her arm bounded up and down more aggressively and she yelled louder, “Se le Mariam! Se le Gabriel! Se le Igzyabeher!” (For the sake for Mary, Gabriel, and God.)

 I pass hundreds of beggars in a week. Every day, on every street they are there. They hold out there crinkled palms, step out to block my path, bang the cloth in front of them, tilt their heads, moan, and send out their small children to run after me. I have learned the hard lesson that I cannot hand money and food to every beggar that intercepts me. I can’t, but it’s hard. A lot of my perspective on them changed when I began the hospice program and realized how many of these people I personally knew were on some street doing this for their living. Most beggars – I have also learned that not all – depend on their beggings for income. Their food, their rent, their water, their health care.

I often drink machiatos at a café on a main strip with friends. There are easily ten beggars sitting on that strip daily. Some of them have children, some disabilities – blindness, missing limbs, etc…

            We sit out on the porch most of the time, which gives me a clear view of the walkway on which the beggars sit. I watch people, Ethiopians and foreigners alike, hurry or mosey through. The beggars call out to each person, but no one looks down. Everyone sets their faces forward and does not acknowledge the calls. This is not hard to believe. It’s extremely awkward to have someone looking up at you asking for money. What gets me more, is that even when people stop and give them money they do not look at them.

They drop the coins carelessly on the cloth without stopping. Never is there eye contact, or a sense of a person to person exchange. Beggars are dehumanized by the rest of us. Also the passersby are dehumanized by the beggars, only seen by them as potential donors. I observe these things intently from my seat at the café - my sociology teacher would be so proud haha – and wonder about my own behavior when I walk this street. I was ashamed to realize that I do as all the others. I walk by with my face forward, acknowledging with my eyes and my smile the world that is walking as tall as I am, but dehumanizing those sitting at my feet. I still know that I cannot stop and give to every beggar, but I can meet them. I can learn their names and their stories. I can hug their children and show them there is more to a ferenge than an opportunistic dollar. My dream is to sit down next to each one and tell them I will give them 50 birr if they will listen to a story. And then I will tell them the story of the fall of man and of grace that cannot be begged or earned, but is given by a wonderful, merciful God. I cannot do that yet. I can tell the creation story, and the story of Noah. Next I will start on the life of Jesus. By God’s grace I will tell the rest of the story soon.

So all of this was in my mind when I passed the little folded up lady in Macanisa this week. I started to pass and stopped. At my hesitation, she again began to cry louder, “Se le Mariam! Se le Gab-“ 

           “Simish man neow?” I grabbed her outstretched fingerless hand and interrupted her. (What is your name?)

She stopped begging and smiled the biggest smile a person can smile with only two teeth. “Werkaye!  Werkaye! Werkaye!” She repeated her name again and again, and then bade me to say it.

“Werkaye. Werkaye!” I got the explosive ‘k’ the second time.

“Yes! Yes! Werkaye!”

 I don’t think she would have been happier to shake the hand of the queen of England, and I had never been acknowledged as a person by a beggar either.  For the first time we saw each other. I was no longer a white ankled wallet and she was not another faceless crinkled palm. Praise the Lord. I reached in my pocket and placed a ten birr in her hand. Once in a blue moon does a beggar receive ten birr. Most donations are not more than coins, and even one birr is generous. She popped her crusty little eyes open in astonishment.  She again seized my hand and kissed the whole of it. Then she turned my hand over, opened my fingers, and she spit in my hand three times. Three times. She spit…in my hand. It’s a good thing I’m not in the healthcare system or that might have really grossed me out lol. I am in the healthcare system…and it was pretty gross. But I remembered that in the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, all the relatives spit on the bride all the way down the isle and they were blessing her. Not that Greece and Ethiopia have many things in common, but I wagered that the puddle of spit in my hand was no less than three blessings from a beggar. Ten birr is equal to six cents. That was not a sacrifice for me. It cost me nothing from my purse. It cost me a handshake, a smile, a moment of my time….and the need to really really wash my hands. J

Werkaye was made in the image of God, planned from the beginning of time same as me, same as all of us. And he can say her name perfectly.