Thought-provoking article, Ms. Saidi. ‘Entitled’ attitudes jump right on my last nerve, possibly because my early experiences taught me to never ask for, or expect, anyone’s help with anything. When I could afford to travel, “respecting sacred places, local laws, local people and their way of life” was simply my way of staying out of hospitals, prisons, abandoned warehouses, and shallow holes by the side of the road. I could’ve stayed home and seen those.
I do feel a need to question the apparently widespread assumption that begpackers “don’t do it at home.” I don’t know about Europe, but in the USA THEY SURE DO!! In every fashionable city, decidedly non-needy-looking teens simper “Spare change?” from the doorways of boutiques and music stores. It isn’t new, either. It’s been going on at least since the hippie movement of the 1960’s. Probably longer; Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, featuring the highborn Blanche (French for “white”) DuBois who “always depended on the kindness of strangers,” came out in 1947. So, although it probably won’t make anyone feel better, at least some begpackers and their ilk and their kith and their kin are equally shameless in every country, including their own.
Many, many people worldwide open their hearts to those in need, but (except for maybe a few living saints) slam and double-lock them against unjustified freeloaders. I sometimes worry that every sympathy-based scam drains a little more friendliness and generosity from the world. Could our “us vs. them” society eventually become the good-old-days of a snarling, grappling “me vs. all the rest of you $#!+heads” future? Meh: Dystopian doomsaying’s too facile. In the meantime, though, maybe signs at borders and airports need to say what no longer seems to go without saying: “Welcome to [Wherever]: Our Real-Life Home, Not a Theme Park.”
