“GIVE ME MONEY”
This isn’t a phrase often heard at home. A demand for something that I don’t - in my eyes - have much of.
But this simple phrase has been shouted at me by children as young as 3 or 4 throughout East Africa. The stories are all similar: I walk by a group of children, captivated by their spirit. They see me glancing. I make eye-contact and smile. They demand money. I walk away feeling privileged and sheepish.
There’s something about a child’s demand for money that feels uncomfortable…sinister, even.
Childhood is an era of our lives where we’re supposed to feel unbothered by money. When I was a child, I was protected, for the most part, from the economic stresses of the household. I knew we weren’t well off, but we also had everything we needed.
Before travelling, I would’ve told people I was working-class. I also would’ve told them about the difficulties of my childhood before talking about the presents and holidays that I treasured. I’m not alone in my tendency to cast a spotlight on the struggle. I wouldn’t lie about my childhood, as some do, but I’d probably paint things in a particular shade of grey as a way of emphasising the technicolor life that I’m fortunate enough to lead at present.
It’s not the biggest sin, but a sin all the same.
I digress. I have covered some 2,000 miles in East Africa so far. It is no exaggeration to suggest that most of the children I have encountered are in poverty. From the narrow, sewage-pooling streets of Mombasa to the empty savannahs of Northern Tanzania, many children have a hard time. I have witnessed legless infants propped in doorways, begging with crumpled cardboard cups. I have turned from a shop to a family of five, gesturing for food and following me some 50 metres down the road for simple reason that my skin is lighter than theirs. I have played football with a local team before being harassed on WhatsApp for money and supplies. It may be naive to think otherwise, but money’s shadow casts a long shade on almost every interaction here - even those with the most innocent-looking children.
It makes me think, for the children who are forced to go out and beg every day just to survive, what is childhood?
Don’t get me wrong, I have also seen unbridled joy among the youth of East Africa. I have seen the most staggering creativity from children with the twin gift of boredom and time.
I’ve seen children walking paint rollers along the beach like a dog on a lead.
I’ve seen the most fervent football matches being played with rocks with less than jumpers for goalposts.
I’ve seen so much, but it is the faces of children without a childhood that stick in my mind like a sea urchin’s spine.
The innocent faces that twist into a snarl when “GIVE ME MONEY” comes from their lips like a begrudged automaton.
If you enjoying this, check out a few of my other articles from East Africa below:
There is a duality of sorts, to the poverty-stricken children of the places through which I have progressed.
So far removed from the Western world and its insistence on technological progress, children are raised on a steady diet of beans and boredom. The former physically sustains while the latter provides a creative diet far richer than those proffered by a tablet or mobile phone.
But this lack of technological progress creates a chasm so vast that that it’s impossible to bridge with weak smiles and football small talk. I can give them my attention, but what is this when compared to guaranteed food on the table, their own bedroom or an actual football.
It might feel, to the western traveller, that our time and attention is extremely important. Our ego-centric existence demand that when we’re here, people take notice, and when we’re kind, they should be grateful.
But in reality, unless we’re materially changing the lives of the people we encounter, we are just white ghosts with a presence unfelt, passing through walls of one hostel to the next. We are new colonial administrators, imposing ourselves on an environment, taking our Masai trinkets and instagram posts with us.
So, then, the next time a child demands money from me while I pass through his home, I should probably excuse his lack of manners and put my hand in my pocket.