Blind Confidence on a beach in Nghe An……

July 5, 2005

Blind Confidence on a beach in Nghe An……

‘How much you give him”
“about 2000”
“you should not – you will lose too much money – many people like him”
“they don’t have much money – 2000 is Ok”
“Some beggar in Vietnam earn more money than those who work in office”
“ah come on – the guys blind! He had his little son there, leading him about...got the stick and everything....”
(Tri Laughs loudly) “that not his son and he not blind!”
“How d’ya know that?… I mean....”
“Look! – now he walk on his own and no fall over deckchair”
“Oh yeah......cheeky wee bas...ah well he can have his 2000 for the acting alone”

That was with my partner in tea trading crime Nguyen Tri on a beach in Nam last year - now I’m in Jakarta - when I go into town there is always this guy who can’t use his legs pushing himself around the gutter on his cloth wrapped hands and when ever I see him I give him 10 or 20,000 rph - his face lights up like a firecracker and I hope that it means he gets a decent meal and can call it a day - but I doubt it - just means the average for the hour went up and he’ll stick around seeing what other good fortune can come his way, if any - as really what else does he have to do? When I drive home there are always two girls asking for money at the traffic lights up at Pondok Indah - again if I see her I give her what I have and usually I can give more than most (they know my licence plate by now I’m sure) - one of the girls must be about six the other maybe twelve - they’re pretty efficient at what they do - they work the cars that look like they have richer folk - they don’t hang around trying to play emotions - they try and cover as many cars as possible before the lights change and then they get the hell out of the way.

I mean I see far too many beggers in Jakarta and you can see who is good and who is bad at it - the old women tapping on your window for five minutes pushing a babies face at you - the guy with a crappy guitar making a noise at your bumper - the old man selling something he thinks is food but I’m sure has escaped from a science lab somewhere and is actually a genetic weapon - these folk aren’t getting my money - and yeah I should feel bad that I’m weighing up the worthiness of each and every person tapping on my window BUT there are a lot of people tapping on that window during the average journey I can tell you - so you have to pick - as right or wrong as that maybe.

In the Kampungs you have these very small narrow streets that wind their way around the various shacks, houses, side street stalls and restaurants etc - you can’t see round the corners and there is often not enough room for two cars - people use these side streets as they often are the secret oasis short cut that can rescue you from gridlocked hell (as described in One thing about Santa Carla I never could stand....) - they also can get you trapped in nightmare scenarios from which there is no reverse for hours on end - meaning you have to drive like a mental person to get out. These Kampung crossways do provide gainful employment for hundreds and thousands of little men however, they guard the corner of these warren road ways and direct traffic so that there aren’t too many ”points of no return” as I call them - when two cars meet and neither backs down and then they wait too long and a long line of traffic forms behind them in both directions. These folk make money from the change handed out by drivers as they are helped through.

One such corner is right outside my friends house over in Kemang (a suburb of Jakarta) and it really needs a little man to help you as it is a 90 degree narrow turn big enough for one car only - it has been the property of a little boy for more or less the three or four years Robin’s been here - they knew him from not only seeing him every day, but also because of the community of house staff in the area - Kemang is popular area with expat families you see and they all have hired help - guards, gardeners, cooks and cleaners etc etc - and they all have families too so there is a community within a community. The boys parents were known to the staff at Robins place, so when he and his wife offered to pay for the boy to go to school and assist with anything he needed to get there, food, books etc they could actually offer this to the boys parents and check that he was actually going if he took them up on the offer.

But the boy refused.

He wanted to be a kampung traffic director instead.

I wanted to see if I could help the girls at pondok Indah in the same way - I figured that I could go there with Dini from the office and we could talk to them and see if it was possible to pay for their schooling instead of begging at the traffic lights - I told Robin about the idea as he had tried to do the same thing with no success - he said that the girls will be organised and it is a prime spot so the money given will not be going to them (although surely they must get something so I keep giving them money) - that any attempt to give them cash will see it ending up in the wrong place - he told me to talk to Yvette, his wife, who works with charities in Indonesia and could advise on the best place to donate any money or time to see it actually goes towards something useful - I’ll do that of course - same as I am hoping to meet in the next week with Femke from Animalia about rescuing monkeys - but the thing is that in a city like this were so much falls through the net - were if you drive around at night you will see more street kids running around than I have ever seen anywhere else in the world - any money or time and effort you give, you sort of want to see a tangible difference being made - that you can influence something no matter how small - I hope that urge isn’t an attempt to buy myself piece of mind in some way - that an act seemingly unselfish is actually just the opposite - you justify the night out spending $100 against the fact that, shit, people in this city are really poor in places, but you know you sent that girl to school or bought that crippled guy a meal, so that’s ok.

I don’t know the answer to any of the problems in Africa for example - I know that when I was working there that, if anything, the main thing for me was systems. That Gift (RIP achemwene)and I sat on the steps smoking cigarettes talking about women, football and laughing in the same way that I did with Duong in Hanoi, Andrey in Moscow, Coops in Edinburgh, Flip in Rotterdam, Barnes in the pub back home, Michael in Mombassa, John in Toronto.... even Javed in a restaurant in Peshawar - that when it came down to it, you can mix and blend with anyone from anywhere on this earth about the fundamentals - but when I was back in the UK and Gift got sick - Gift was fucked - because Gift was in Malawi - and Gift died.

There were no systems in Kenya, Mozambique and Malawi - if you need public services you are fucked - if you don’t have a job - you are fucked - if you want to go to school and don’t have any money - you are fucked - if you are disabled or poor or homeless - you are fucked.

It seemed like there wasn’t anyone running the show and everyone had to get along by themselves, their friends and families - give a guy money but for what exactly? my company paid for Gifts hospital bills but there was nothing you could do by then - the point was how he got sick in the first place.

In Vietnam the government said rats were a problem and they would pay for every rats tail brought in - people started breeding rats - in Jakarta they said that during certain times you have to have minimum of three people in the car or you would be fined - next day hundreds of little men along the road offering to be the third man for a small fee - Cape McClear on the coast of Lake Nyasa in Malawi - it was a very poor African village self contained - hand to mouth - full of good people like Toby, John, Patrick, Patience and Irish - they travelled around buying and selling hand carved curios - pick them up in the forest in Mulanje - sell them for double in Blantyre - this was an identifiable way to make money - a process you can understand - same as the girls at the traffic lights in Pondok Indah and the guy with no legs on the way into town - you’re waking up every day and thinking how to get through it and that is the way to do it for them.

My girl friend in Malawi was Debbie Chikondi - she was fantastic - a bit mad at times - but she travelled around Sub Saharan Africa - she looked after her sister - she was raped by her uncle - she spoke five languages - her best friend drowned in front of her - she crossed borders in rowing boats and had no documentation - she carried a friend of hers who broke her leg down Mount Mulanje - her brother got burned out of his home for not joining up with the Zanu PF in Zimbabwe - she loved drinking and dancing and she slept with people she chose to for money sometimes. I don’t know what happened to her in the end.

But what I do know is that the size of the task that Live 8 is undertaking for example - or that anyone wanting to help out those less fortunate - is that I think that the world actually needs to hear some good news for a change - they need to see more differences being made otherwise all you will get in the end is apathy - and that apathy is not totally unjustified, as fucked up as that may sound - as people have shit to deal with on a day to day basis which may very well not be of the same magnitude as that which the guy with no legs deals with - but its still shit to deal with none the less - and because someone dies every three seconds in Africa does not mean you don’t have to pay your bills, raise your kids, keep your job and get through each day in your part of the world - I think it’s I don’t have much time or much money, but tell me how to help in a way that actually benefits something and I will.

People do want to help - the vast majority of people on the planet do give a shit about other people - they are not cruel individuals obsessed with their own problems saying sorry about your situation but not my problem - just that I think that most people don’t know how to help in such a way that makes any difference - or that they can see makes any difference. Live 8 is telling me people are dying and the continent is being crushed by poverty - many don’t know this and I’m sure it can’t hurt to keep telling people - but I know these things - I see this in the news daily, I read about it, I’ve been to some of the places they say are suffering, I know people that are living in some of those places - what I want to know is that if any of the money raised over the years is actually making a difference to anything? tell me more about the economic growth in Uganda, tell me more about the reversal of Aids in Botswana, tell me something other than ”this place is fucked and we need to fix it” - because I’m there - I’m willing to give what I can - but to where? and how? and what for? and most importantly to whom?

I’ve rambled here and gone off in different directions in this post - I don’t know the answers to these questions as many people don’t that would like to do what they can - I imagine that the people that do know the answers are meeting at the G8 summit and that the fact Live 8 and the demonstrations took place will make the media ask the right questions to the men and women in suits attending in Edinburgh - and that they give answers as a result and something actually happens - because it seems for as long as I remember it’s been going in the wrong direction no matter what people do.