The Profession Called Begging

Every day, they wake up, freshen up like every normal person and then head off to their business places.

Like every other business persons, they get to their 'business centres', dust off the old dust from the previous day and settle down for a new day's 'business'.

Quite unfortunately, there are no goods to display.

Theirs isn't the kind of business that requires any goods displayed and awaiting potential customers to patronise.

Theirs isn't the usual business that demands marketing to get customers to exchange their money for goods.

Theirs is such business where an outstretched arm gets filled with a few coins or notes as the case may be.

Theirs is such business that doesn't require so much plea before one drops a token.

Just as doctors treat their stethoscopes with so much care, these folks guard their bowls and plates so jealously.

There is something emotionally attached to their own brand of business - probably their pathetic situations or mien with which they state passers-by in the face.

Heavens might touch some passersby to stoop and drop their widow's mite to these fellows, while some have hearts as cold as a cup of Coldstone ice cream.

Street begging is not a pleasant sight, you will attest to that fact.

The sight of beggars splattered all over major cities is not something worth an invitation to behold.

The rigours and shame that come with street begging make me see it as something really undoable, but maybe I am being too logical.

The painful part of it is that most of these people that sideline themselves to begging on bridges and along the roads are quite healthy and full of potentials that sadly will never be harnessed because they have chosen a path for themselves - the dead-end path precisely.

I don't mean to bash street beggars, of course, some of them really do need help but my major concern is why a healthy person who had a deformity perhaps, on one hand, would condemn himself to the streets to beg for alms the rest of his life.

Have you not seen people with disabilities that turned them into abilities? Talk about rearranging LIMES into SMILE. I personally know two crippled men who are cobblers!

The patronage they get is next to none around them. Why? It's not because they have physical disabilities but because they have chosen to become masters in their field.

Let me give you a shocker, I intentionally take my shoes to them even the ones with little or no fault because I see them as doctors in the art who know the best prescription for my shoes and they have never disappointed.

It breaks my heart each time I see people with potentials begging on the streets.

Get off the streets with your bowls and make meaning of your life. I mean, there are blind people who are making huge if fervency in their time, ask Cobahms.

There's is one particular woman with four kids and a newborn baby who I feel like slapping senses into her head every day as I pass by.

Why do I feel this way? Because she is totally OKAY! When I mean okay, I mean O-K-A-Y! Her own business strategy is to definitely use the kids to emotionally blackmail people into parting ways with their money by dropping them down in her plate - offering time!

What is she doing on the street with innocent children exposed to the harshness of the sun? This woman in question is black and beautiful without any iota of disability in her.

I wonder why she finds the street so attractive and dragging the kids with her as if they were the ones who pushed her to spread her legs five good times to the gods of fertilization who was gracious enough to give her what she asked for.

If she could be sensible enough to moan and get seeds implanted into her womb during throes of sex, then why will she not be sensible enough to find something meaningful doing with her life? In this era of civilization where everybody's thoughts move faster than an aircraft.

It is appalling to realise that some people are still in the stone age while a whole lot of others have moved on to the 21st century.

I learnt recently that some crooks who found the 'business ' quite lucrative have started renting poor babies to draw people's emotions faster to themselves.

It is quite understandable that a lot of people are so poor that the only language they understand is food, but then how about helping oneself at least by making efforts to come off the poverty.

At least the efforts will attract help faster than just sitting idly and waiting for people who work their asses off to share their hard-earned income with you at the end of the day.

I feel more moved to help a crippled man who even in his state deems it fit to at least take up some community social responsibility like sweeping the environment with his hands other than while away time in a heap of dirt waiting for manna to fall from heaven.

An adage says that 'heavens help those who help themselves'. How about getting themselves off the streets and make life more meaningful.