Nameless Woman... Again

Remember I wrote about some lady who was asking me for R100 at FNB (bank), well it turns out she lied. I saw her again at the bank, this time sitting outside with her two children. I think she is sincerely stranded but what she said about her car needing petrol... well that must have been a lie because here in Johannesburg, beggars don't drive cars. The broke people with cars have a back up plan of some sort.

I felt sad for her because I can see that she has some dignity, she does not beg in the most obvious way, and her head is turned downs when she asks, like she is embarassed. Her children are so adorable (Coloured, as in a race in South Africa) and the whole scene is just heartbreaking. I wonder if she would have bought food for her children if I had given her the R100 rands, or if she would have bought alcohol to drown her many sorrows.

Well I didn't help her in anyway so I should not torment myself with thoughts of her and how I think she lives. I must get her out of my mind because I will just end up condemning myself for seeing a woman in need and not helping her. What can be done with the situation of ... I don't want to say beggras, too demeaning ... of desperate, homeless people? My concern is that giving them money is not sustainable, a woman like that with clean clothes on herself and her children, no perfume but smelling clean, a woman like that has some hope in her. She probably does have a place where she lives, because I know the smell of living in the streets, I have some people sleeping by the doorstep of my workplace. She has not that pungent smell.

I think that she needs her hope to be reignited by God. And after that, when she decides that only God can help her and she does have a future and a responsibility to her children, after she recognises that then she needs support with food and clothing for herself and her children. And she will also need counseling and to be reminded that though her children are not in school, she must teach them herself, counting, colours, all the things she is able to teach them and she must believe God for a turnaround. After that she will be in a better position to restructure her life and look for a job or start a business.

There is a way out, because as long as you are living, there is hope for you. Unfortunately with the resources i have, the time and funds as well as the know-how, I am not at this phase able to implement this idea to help my nameless woman. See how I now attach her to myself. She refuses to leave my mind.