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Other entries in Siem Reap

On A Serious Note - You Can't Help All Of Them

I've been finding it particulalry difficult to dal with the beggars here. I don't know why it's harder here, or now, but it is. In India it's easier in my mind to deal with for 2 main reasons: firstly there are so many poor and underpriviledged that it's simply impossible to think about all those that you see, let alone help them. The sheer numbers of them mean that in order to get anything done you must develop a kind of shield, whereby the third leper on the street does not affect you at all. I feel it should be the other way around, that the more you see the more you feel, but it's not. The second reason for the desensitization is the fact that the credibility of real poverty-stricken people is put into question by the thousands and thousands of chancers. Some people pay doctors to amputate limbs so that they can get more from begging in the long run. Kids are used as sympathy tools and very often as the money-earner of the family. Dad stays put while mum carries the baby and the kids go off seperately. Kids have also learned to do it for fun. Of course they have. There is no reason not to. Some kids hold out their hand and say "school pen?" or "your country coin?" without even knowing what it means. Anything gained from this transaction is given to a local shopkeeper who will then either change the money into rupees or sell the pen back to tourists. There are always enough 2-week tourists around who will give a kid 5USD because he or she makes puppy eyes like on a postcard. If a kid learns that then how can you convince them that begging is not a viable option? It's simple conditioning. Pavlov would have a field day. Tourists, holidayers and backpackers need to take the initiative and break the pattern of conditioning. Reward people who learn a skill, or those who make an effort to work. Free money often does more harm than good.

Perhaps I had been sheltered from it for too long, as begging in Japan is minimal - obviously it happens but it's less socially accepted - and outside Bangkok I saw basically no homeless people or beggers. Here in Cambodia though, I'm finding it hard to turn away. All the way through my travels so far I have been selective in my donations, but it's more difficult now. Maybe it's just now that the scale of the reality has hit me, or maybe it's because I'm on my own and I can think about it without distraction. Maybe it's the background of the country, and the contrast with the smiles around town. I don't know what it is, but I have to give some cash to this boy who's literally just arrived.