Here in the rustic but fast-developing tourist town San Ignacio, not a day goes by that I’m not approached by most of the same ragged and often inebriated street people asking me for something.
I mean, every day I hear it.
“Hey big man! Give me a shilling for some water!”
“Hey buddy! I need a dollar!”
“My friend! Can I borrow a dollar for a bottle of water?”
“I need money for noodles. Help me out, man!”
Honestly, some days I feel like saying, “Hey buddy, give ME a dollar why don’t you?”
They hang out by a small but thriving Chinese kiosk, right in the big middle of town. Scores of tourists pass by them every day. The beggars know better than to bug the visitors too much because downtown is heavily patrolled by police walking in packs.
But sometimes, for reasons I don’t understand, you’ll see one or more of them throw all discretion to the wind and swarm some nice-looking couple who just have too-nice-to-refuse written all over them. These nice folks usually stop and dish out the coins, most of which go to the Chinese-Belizean kiosk owner for rum or rolling paper or whatever.
The shop owner prospers selling his endless supply of cheap, mini-sized, plastic bottles of rum, beer, cigarettes and rolling papers for “herbs.”
Saturday night in San Ignacio is always festive and there’s a lot of music of all kinds in the air. When Sunday morning comes down, it looks like a ghost town. Walking by the kiosk, you might have to step around somebody like this man in this picture with the little rum bottle on his chest.
A beggar, after a Saturday night of mini-rum binging, at rest on Sunday morning.
Like I say, on my worst days I feel like telling the poor, wretched besotted beggars to bug off.
On my better days I remember the words of John Wesley, who wrote:
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A poor wretch cries to me for an alms. I look and see one that has an immortal spirit, made to know, and love, and dwell with God to eternity. I honor him for his Creator’s sake. I see, through all these rags, that he is purpled over with the blood of Christ.
Now, the drunken beggars aren’t exactly begging for alms, of course, unlike the many beggars you see in San Ignacio with mangled bodies from birth defects. It’s easy enough to honor the man born with no legs or the heart-breaking young girl with the twisted body in the wheelchair being pushed by her weary grandma.
And yet that alcoholic beggar laid low by poverty and all the varieties of self-abuse and destruction that poverty spins has an immortal spirit and is “purpled over” with the blood of Christ.
On their better days and moments, when they’re not blitzed out of their heads with alcohol, I smile at those beggars and maybe give them fist bumps and tell them I hope they’re having a blessed day and say “God bless you.”
They’ll say God stuff back at me, like “Yes, my brother–God is good!”
They light up with joy because I’ve given them what they really want from us all: affirmation that they too are children of God, created in the image of Ultimate Love, worthy of honor for the Creator’s sake.
Chapters in my book The View From Down in Poordom: Reflections on Scriptures Addressing Poverty, available online at Amazonbooks.com and Barnes&Noble.com.
I thought you meant hygiene products for the bathroom – not THOSE rolling papers for “herb.”