Begging As Means Of Livelihood

The major fallout of the COVID -19 pandemic is the desperate quest for survival. Various strategies have been deployed by the people to make ends meet.
There is a compelling need for survival at all costs and begging offers to be a way out to ward off hunger and discomfort. Both the able and disabled, the sane and insane, and plain lazy people now involve in begging as a way of life.
Port Harcourt and its environs are crammed with different types of beggars. As part of measures of perfecting the acts of begging, some able-bodied people now bring their deformed relatives from the village to the city to beg while they play the roles of guards along the high ways.
They approach motorists and other passers-by on behalf of the invalids whose pathetic situations are expected to draw deserving sympathy to attract alms.
Perhaps, they use the proceeds from the begging for their own upkeep and that of the invalids. There is another set of corporate beggars who dress smartly and stand at strategic positions in the city, soliciting for transport fare from passers-by but use the money for their upkeep.
The concept seems absurd but it is a way of life, a regular chain of activity designed to keep body and soul together. This class of beggars are very clever and always on the alert.
When it becomes obvious that their tricks are about to be exposed, they move to another location where their faces are relatively new. They are very calculative in their deception.
Some beggars also disguise as deaf and dumb, or feign themselves as having deep festering wounds to make themselves incapacitated enough to attract sympathies. They cover particular parts of their bodies with copious cotton wool soaked with red colours to trick the public into the illusion that they are indisposed and make their gimmicks look real and believable. There are also an intruding band of foreigners with children who throng our cities hibernating under the dark covers of the cities and sending their children out to beg for alms, the barefooted, hair tangled, vulnerable children roam the streets for alms to feed their families.
They cling to passers-by and refuse to depart unless something exchanges hands. The children sing songs of adulation to the expectant giver and are either given the alms or are simply rebuffed while their docile parents watch from a safe distance with calm and ease, yet, cautiously, only calling the attention of the begging children when the encounter becomes unproductive or for fear that the children could be spirited away. But there is always an unusual boldness on the part of the children.
There are also some groups of women and children that cluster around strategic locations in the city with their bowls which serve them in dual capacity: alms begging and eating of their improvised meals. They cuddle together in their poodle with lines of strain and fatigue etched on their faces, yet, there is no iota of disaffection among them.
Their sordid conditions expose the negligence or sheer indifference of the authorities to social welfare planning and border surveillance which allow the influx of majority of the beggars who are foreigners. The streets are also besieged with individuals using the names of non- existing orphanages and charity homes to beg for alms. They stand at strategic positions and intimate their potential benefactors on the need to contribute to charity and they display T-shirts with vague descriptions of their objectives to gain attention.
Interestingly, there is another emerging class of beggars in town which can best be classified as the soul mate beggars.
Gaunt, glassy-eyed and passionless, they crouch in the heat straggling behind one another in a single file, hungry and diseased. Their destination is mostly in the cities were they scout around for alms, attracting sympathies as well as the odiom of the teeming residents. Their true identities are relatively unknown and their emotional stability is in clear doubt. They conjure images of mental maladjustment and emotional imbalance. Their freakish behaviours expose every clue to the defence of their sanity. They are soul mates united in their zeal and determination to keep body and soul together through begging as a way of life.
In their apparent sense of physical and psychological discomfiture, they devise measures of appealing to their benefactors. Their leader, a tattered muscular man with overgrown hair, directs them on their city prowls. Like a club of men and women of emotional imbalance, they trudge on in an exhibitionist orgy, dancing to the tunes of the metals in their hands which also serve as containers to collect the alms.
Their improvised musical instruments, emit stacoco sounds in monotonous rhythm. They move around to shops and business premises where they linger for a while as the leader puts forth the container to the expected giver until he or she complies. If there is no positive response from the expected giver, they do not protest but make a U- turn and randomly approach other passers-by or simply move on playing their music.
The soul mate beggars comprise a mixture of men and women including teenagers. They are haggardly dressed and some of them look like drug addicts that have metamorphosed into full blown lunatics. Some appear like escapee inmates from psychiatric homes while some look like people coming out newly from prison to seek rehabilitation. Some might as well be people who migrate from various communities and neighbouring states out of frustration into the city of Port Harcourt in search of better living conditions but are further confronted with failed expectations.
Apart from those that manifest obvious signs of mental derangement, there are some persons who seem to be psychologically twisted by poverty and harsh economic realities without any option than to join the club of beggars. The physical discomfiture of the mendicants adds to their pitiable plights and portrays them as a brotherhood battling to sustain the tempo of their newly found fraternity. Their line of business exists strictly on public discretion and benevolence.
Another enigmatic posture of the new beggars club is how they convene for a day’s expedition. They vaguely settle in shacks at different locations in Port Harcourt but easily converge in their numbers at business time. There seems to be mystery behind their mode of operation which draws them together in an inexplicable way. Many believe that the beggars act under the hypnotism of some greedy business merchants to whom they make returns from their begging sprees. This may as well account for why some people especially shop owners and other private business operators refuse to give alms to the soul mate beggars. They fear that their businesses will liquidate as the money given to the beggars will fizzle away the ones they already have in custody.
Government and stakeholders’ intervention is needed to rekindle hope and foster rehabilitation for this particular class of beggars rather than making them more vulnerable to grave dangers.

Taneh Beemene