Sardines

Sometimes things happen that are frustrating.  For instance I can't seem to get the paste function to work from my word processor to blogger.  For those of us who are grammatically and spelling challenged this is a catastrophe.  This is no doubt my problem but still it is frustrating as I have about 45 pages of text to share with you.  Oh how silly of me.  Drag and drop works.  Never, mind.

Here in Mongolia on weekends we have more free time.  We often walk around and look at the shops near out flat or explore for a restaurant that looks inviting.  Both are luxuries.  Near some of the shops where we like to buy food there are two young men who I suspect are homeless.  One has crippled feet and the other seems a little slow.  They often wash cars while people are eating or shopping to earn some money.  As it gets colder washing cars is a not so often thing and they have started asking for donations so they can eat.  This places us in an awkward position, we want to help but we also don't like being followed down the street by these young men asking for money every time we visit.  

When our children were in the boarding school 9 hours drive away where we lived before coming to Russia, I kept a few cans of Sardines in the console between the car seats.  When we encountered the children sent to beg along the gravel section of the only road between the two state capitols, I would give them a can of sardines.  Our thoughts were they could only eat them.  Cash could be diverted for addiction of others but food really has no value other than as food.

We have lived outside the US long enough to know that this kind of thing is more the norm than the exception in cities big enough to have a tourist population.  Still however this is a very convicting situation.  If I tell them I have no money to give them they know I have enough to not miss buying them a meal.  They ask for food and see my hands full of bags of food I just purchased and they know that I am not saying I can not but rather I will not.

Yesterday we encountered them again.  If we had thought far enough in the future we could have planned and purchased something to have given them but we hadn't.  So having not planned ahead we were faced with the hypocrisy.

Here Sardines are not that easy to find and we have no console to keep them in.  We will attempt to find a Mongolian equivalent to keep in the overcoat for next time.

Bayartai  (good-bye)