By Umaru Fofana
Alimamy, not his real name, is blind. He begs on the street of central Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital. He moves around with a walking stick in his right hand, and a girl said to be his daughter on whose right shoulder he lays his left hand. She must be around 10 years old. He is probably in his late 50s.
Returning from lunch on Wednesday last week, I stopped in front of my office to have a chat with some young men trying to eke out a living on the street through some trade of some sort. I do this often to keep them company and to gauge their mood on many things. They’ve hardly been wrong on their assessment of the mood of the public!
While there – and responding to some interesting questions they were asking of me – I heard Alimamy begging for alms. Such was the intensity of our company-keeping that I gave him some money, subconsciously. Then I realised later that he was blind and was being led by the girl. Then I muttered to him that I wanted to give him a piece of advice.
“I want to advise you”, I said to him.
“About what?” he asked.
Then I asked whether the girl serving as his guide was his daughter.
“Just say what you want to say, don’t ask me about her” he said, sounding a bit temperamental and even bellicose, as he busied himself neatly folding the money I had given him. At this stage he had taken his left hand off the shoulder of his daughter, leant his stick by his side as if resting, with his face down. Apparently listening curiously, but also planning his reaction.
“I just want to know if she is your daughter before I say what I want to say”, I insisted.
“Yes, she is my daughter”, he said, adding: “is anything the matter?” He then shrugged his shoulders, literally, as if ready for a fight.
Then I told him why I recently stopped giving alms to street beggars who ply their trade with children. It was a personal decision that I know may not be perfect, but I thought that since the excuse of not having school fees no longer applied in view of the Free Education programme rolled out by the state, the child should be in school during school hours, and not begging with their parent. So anything that encourages their parents keeping them out of school I wouldn’t encourage.
“If you keep coming with this girl to the street to beg, you will be adding poverty to poverty”, I advised Pa Alimamy, adding: “whatever you get now lasts only for a day or two”. I went on: “Please let her go to school and join you on weekends and during holidays so she will grow up and lift you – or her siblings – out of poverty in future”.
I went on to reason with him that whatever amount they raised during those non-school hours and days would augment government’s efforts to providing his daughter with an education. “Please papa,” I concluded. His reaction was shocking.
“Are you done?” he asked me, sensing that I had paused. I said yes I had.
“Here!” he said, stretching out his hand slightly off me, asking me to take back my money; much to the surprise and consternation of onlookers.
When President Julius Maada Bio launched his impressive project of free pre-primary, primary and secondary education, he appeared to have said at the Miatta Conference Centre that it would also be compulsory. So driving along the streets of Freetown and seeing the hundreds of disabled beggars with children during school hours, I cannot help but wonder whether anybody is bothered by this blatant blighting of the future of these innocent children. Because I cannot change that, after all I am not in authority to enforce it, I took a personal resolution that I would not give alms to any beggar who brings their children with them during school-going hours.
So as I drove to work in the early days of the Free Education programme, I stopped around the Cotton Tree to talk to some beggars with whom I had developed some relationship of sort. I advised them to take advantage and send their kids to school. They agreed. But on my way to work one day, I met a woman I had not noticed before. I advised her to stop bringing her child to beg with school in session. Her reaction was spontaneous and confrontational.
“I don’t have money to buy her uniform and even feed her”, she said. As I tried to reason with her, she pushed her daughter shouting at her to “move away”, in a local language.
I understand that for some of these beggars it is a catch 22 situation. But in good conscience giving them money when they are begging with their children, simply means keeping the kids out of school, and entrenching poverty in their family.
Back to Alimamy, I duly obliged and took back my money. Otherwise judging by his temperament by what I thought was an innocuous piece of advice I had given to him, he could have dropped the money on the ground which I wouldn’t like. Or he could have even simply torn it.
The problems of Sierra Leone have been many and have been with us for decades. But I strongly believe that fixing education and getting kids into school and keeping them there would be the perfect way to starting to address these problems. If we get that right, everything else will be fine by the next generation. If we keep getting that wrong we can only sink and be buried.
It behoves everyone therefore to ensure that we help in any way we can to get children into school and keep them there. It may be hard to not give alms to a street beggar not least a disabled one, but if they are with a child, giving them money would be akin to keeping the that child out of school forever and ruining their future and the future of Sierra Leone.
© 2019 Politico Online
