24/08/2016

Credit

Yesterday I met a hungry man. I'd just been in the Marketplace in Raffles City and had bought all their old bananas (PSA: I discovered only after I'd bought them that unlike Cold Storage, green tape around old, brown bananas does not mean half price unfortunately.) and was walking back to the museum when I heard a wheezing whisper to my right.

I looked over and saw an old Indian man sitting on a bench, beckoning to me while saying something I couldn't quite catch. I walked over, and he said 'Excuse me Miss, could you spare some cash? I'm jobless and hungry, could you spare some cash for me to buy some food?'

Because on principle I don't give money to beggars or the homeless (This Atlantic article discusses the issue of giving money to the homeless, and although I know compelling arguments for both sides, I agree with the articles conclusion: If we drop change in a beggar's hand without donating to a charity, we're acting to relieve our guilt rather than underlying crisis of poverty. The same calculus applies to the beggar who relies on panhandling for a booze hit. In short, both sides fail each other by being lured into fleeting sense of relief rather than a lasting solution to the structural problem of homelessness.) I decided to instead give him some food. And the food I had at that moment were those bananas.

'Would you like bananas instead?' I asked, and he said he wouldn't mind one or two. So I left him with two bananas and walked back into the museum.

Yesterday I was hungry. I was out buying something for the artists that had arrived, when it hit me. That sort of shaky, cold feeling of hunger that I thought I'd left behind me when I finished the rice and beans challenge. Miserable, I looked at boxes of cereal - why is cereal so expensive in Singapore? I tried to buy a little bun, but the woman told me all the buns had milk in it (why?) and so I drifted through the supermarket, looking for something small, vegan and within my intern budget. As I walked by the sale rack, I spotted a packet of dried bananas on sale - and I grabbed it like lightning!

I think by the time I was out of the shopping mall half the packet was gone. Oh, to be hungry is such an uncomfortable feeling.

As I inhaled those banana coins I thought back to the man on the street previously. Both of us were hungry, both of us had bananas eventually. But the difference between us was that I am earning and he is not, and so I could afford to look through the shelves of a supermarket for something, while he had to hope that the girl walking by with quick steps would hear his dry whisper.

I hope that as long as I have ears and a job, I never block out those sidewalk whispers.