Chris Verrill is the author of the international travel biography Is For Good Men To Do Nothing. This is an excerpt from the book where he leaps into the fray to see the world post-September 11.

Chris Verrill and friend in Khurasan refugee camp Pakistan.

Upon my leaving home in the United States, bound for my volunteer mission in the Afghan refugee camps in the frontier province of Pakistan, my high school friend Linda snuck me a bon voyage card. I’d say she gave it to me, but in truth she sort of squirreled it into my possession as I was saying goodbye. Like many people in my life, in the card she wished me well in my travels. Here’s the kicker, which others didn’t do: She enclosed $58. A $50  bill and eight singles. What was I supposed to do with $58?

Linda wrote that I should use the cash for two purposes. One, I should order a really good meal and think of her when I did. Thanks. I appreciate that.

Two, and more importantly, I should “ease someone’s suffering.”

Linda, aware of the immense poverty in the developing countries I’d be traveling in wanted to do something, anything, to help. By proxy through me, she strove to do her part to make the world a better place. I tell you, here’s someone do-gooder humanitarians can be proud of.

In addition to the $50 bill, Linda said, “I am also enclosing all of the ones I have for you to give to any woman or child you find having to beg for survival.” This is anathema to my way of thinking. Anathema to my modus operandi for supporting those in need.

Although many people give street beggars their spare change, a nickel or a dime or so, I long ago resolved to support non-profit organizations generously, but not to encourage or be subjected to panhandling. There are more intelligent means of supporting those in need than handing out a few cents or a few schillings to someone who holds out a quivering hand. If everyone in the world supported non-profits and followed my lead, no one would need to beg on the streets. But that’s my soapbox.

In deference to Linda’s request, however, I made a decision. I would make an exception to my rule and honor my friend’s intentions. What was I getting myself into?

Just like every other day

I start leisurely walking down the main drag in downtown Nairobi, Kenya, one of my stopovers on my way to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This late afternoon, like many afternoons before it, I stroll along the streets of Nairobi. Today specifically, I walk four crowded blocks from my hotel to another hotel with an ex-pat bar and a band playing “The Tennessee Waltz.” I know what’s coming. I just know it. I prepare for it in a way that would surely surprise someone.

I continue to stroll.

Linda’s bon voyage card tucked into my book du jour, I head out. Knowing full well, as a Caucasian with a presumably affluent face, what this meant for Kenya’s poverty-stricken. Safe and probably not too secure in my book, the card sticks out an inch or two or three beyond the pages. I’m not paying attention to the card, let alone the cash it encloses.

Stroll, saunter. The sidewalk is crowded. People bustling about. Buildings rising six or seven stories above the thronging masses.

The average Kenyan earns $200 per year. As per my lifelong friend’s instructions, I clutch three months’ wages in my hand. I say “lifelong friend” for, while I know others better, Linda and her brother and I go all the way back to high school. Maui High School, which Linda and I graduated from in 1982, has a, shall we say, less than stellar academic record.

I weave in and out of the other pedestrians.

My stepfather graduated from Maui High School, too. Surprisingly, given the time lapse, we had the same biology teacher. That biology teacher was quite surprised — no, shocked would be a better word — that my stepfather, who was a delinquent in high school, could have a geeky, intellectual stepson like me. Mr. Biology Teacher referred to all his students as Mr. Insert-First-Name-Here.

Saunter.

He must have rubbed off on me. I don’t know how much biology I learned, but to this day I have an affectation of referring to people as Mr. Bob or Ms. Jane. But back then, I was Mr. Chris, and I am confident Linda was Ms. Linda.

Maui High School, with a college attendance rate lower than a blade of grass, must have produced a few good nuts. I mean Linda, not me. My sister is now the intelligent one in my family. Let me establish that. OK? Got it?

Walk and weave some more. Scan the oncoming crowd.

But the academic rigor (a word which many Maui High students would have to look up) leaves a lot to be desired. I say this knowing that my baby sister transferred out of Maui High. Oh yes, some of it was her own doing, that rotten bugger, but some of it is attributed to the environment of the school. I say this knowing that a friend of mine, who I spent lots of time with in high school but have barely spoken to since, is now, bless him, a teacher at Maui High School. Knowing him, I bet he’s a very popular and respected teacher.

But as I’m sure he and other educators would argue, high school is what the student makes of it. Fair enough. But there are many kids on the margin. Those kids get left behind in a program that doesn’t have the resources to help them. I won’t jump on the education soapbox now, but suffice it to say, I think a quarter of the kids will flourish even in a bad environment. Another quarter of the kids will fail even in a good environment. The remaining half, people like my baby sister, are up for grabs. That’s where a solid education system makes a difference. My statistics — quarter/quarter/half — may or may not be accurate, but the principle is very accurate.

And for all you legislators out there, remember it. Investing in education, as Thomas Jefferson would say, is the best investment any community can ever make.

You know it. I know it.

Glance at the faces of children living on the street.

All right, I said I wouldn’t get on my soapbox and I did. But I minimized it. Believe me, I could have gone on and on about the importance of education in a free and democratic society.

So, where was I? Ah yes, sauntering down the main drag of Nairobi, Kenya, Africa. Clasped in my grubby paws, a well-intentioned greeting card. Enclosed in the card is $58 in U.S. greenbacks — three months’ wages for the average Kenyan. Perhaps more than the average beggar on the street collects in an entire year.

Saunter.

Stroll.

Saunter some more. That rip in my jeans has gotten bigger.

It’s bound to happen.

It happens all time. Today won’t be any exception.

Stroll along, with purpose, card-carrying book swaying in my hand.

Sure enough, the inevitable happens. A little girl, perhaps about six years old — big pleading eyes, scraggly hair, dirty, torn clothes, and desperate demeanor — clutches my hand. Not letting go of my hand, seizing it like a line to a better life, she follows me. Like either a con artist who has mastered her craft or child in genuine need, she clasps my hand, weaving with me in and out of hundreds of other pedestrians, yet not releasing her grip on me, unrelenting with her pleading. In Swahili, I presume; I don’t know. I don’t understand her spoken language. Her physical language, however, was universal.

Walk, walk.

Pleading for about 20 paces. Thirty paces. I don’t really know. Forty.

“Please, mister,” she pleads in English. She wants a schilling. Half a schilling. Anything. More hand-to-mouth motions as if to say, “Is food such a bad thing to ask for?”

I don’t want to break my own no-panhandling code. I don’t want to teach this child that panhandling is a worthwhile option.

Keep walking. Eyes straight ahead as usual. Almost.

Except this time, instead of eyes straight ahead, I look. At her. At her pleading face. More importantly, I look around.

Ah, that’s what I’m looking for.

My stomach knots to see it. But as I suspected, there it is. A little boy. Clearly her younger brother. A not-so-old woman. Clearly her mother. The mother staring at me. Watching her child. Successful con artist or someone genuinely in need? The boy hurries to catch up. I’ve established Linda’s required parameters.

“Ease someone’s suffering,” she instructed. “Any woman or child you find having to beg for survival.”

If this doesn’t fit, my heart doesn’t know what does. I figures she satisfies Linda’s requirement for whom she wanted her donation to go to.

I stop.

Walking no more. Nairobi’s thronging masses maneuvering around me and a homeless girl in tattered clothes — a little girl who still has not released her grip on my hand.

Holding my breath, I open my book. Removing Linda’s card — everything: the envelope, Linda’s personal note to me, and the $58 — I hand it to her. At this point I speak the only words I ever spoke to her.

“This is from my friend,” I say.

I quickly, hastily, maybe perhaps guiltily, resume my focused walk down the crowded sidewalk toward the expat hotel. “The Tennessee Waltz” would sound good, grounding, comforting right about now.

I mean, who am I to think this pretentious act was even at all significant? Pious? I don’t know. Pompous? I don’t know. Perhaps there’s a fine line between the two. This gift, this — I don’t know what to call it, but gift is not at all right — violated my no-panhandling credo. It was a good deed yet a bad deed.

Or, more accurately, perhaps it just wasn’t as good a deed as I hoped it should be.

The six-year-old in the tattered clothes looks confused. When I hand her the envelope, for the first time she releases her death grip on my hand. But you could see the confusion in her. A schilling she would have recognized as success. I’ll wager my lunch she would have recognized a dollar or even a euro as success.

But there she stands, befuddled, her prey for the afternoon walking away purposefully, with an envelope in her hand. An envelope?

I just walk on. “The Tennessee Waltz” is calling my name. Anything to get me away from this child I had – I want to say “helped,” but that really sounds too arrogant. Away from this child whose panhandling habit I had in a lottery-like fashion significantly encouraged.

Besides, I have to keep walking. She presumably digs into the envelope. I don’t know. I don’t look back.

I firmly believe that true kindness is anonymous and doesn’t require acknowledgement.

It certainly doesn’t require gratitude.

When she gets the card open she’ll recognize the George Washingtons, I’m sure. But Ulysses S. Grant? Who’s that?

The personal note on the personal card to me from my old high school friend will probably be lost on her. That’s okay. That wasn’t Linda’s objective. But I hope, as I’m sure Linda does, that this unfortunate girl’s life for the next little while will be a tad better. Even if she can’t read the card or understand Linda’s motive in having me do what I did, I hope she benefits from my old friend’s generosity.

Ten seconds later, the little boy, her brother, chases me down and unsuccessfully attempts to grab my hand.

“Can I be your friend?” he boldly asks.  

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS >
            

Rotary International
URL: http://rotary.org/

Rotary Club of Pacifica URL: http://pacificarotary.org/

RESOURCES >

Pacifica Rotary
URL: http://www.pacificarotary.org/ProfileVerrill.asp

Shakesplace
URL: http://shakesplace.com/Pages/ChrisCorner1.html#Top

Terrorism and Energy: Bush’s 2020 Vision
URL: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2002/2002_01_02.guest02verl2.html

American Reporter article: A Walk Down Chicken Street
URL: http://www.american-reporter.com/2,544/6.html

KDVS Radio Interview
URL: http://www.kdvs.org/high-bit/TUE_05.00PM.mp3

In The Fray Contributor