Money?

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People ask for money all the time if you’re white.  And they kind of expect you to give it to them without asking.

 

Once I was walking along the beach with Spencer and a little like twelve year old kid came up to us and asked in pretty broken English where we were from and where we were going.  Then he ran away for a while.  And he came back up later and asked what we were doing, and then he asked us for money.  He hung around for a while, but we insisted we had no money, and finally he left.

 

Later when we were walking back from the beach, we walked past a group of “docked” boats with a couple people hanging around.  One of the guys walked up to us and just straight up asked for money.  We said no, we don’t have any money, we’re sorry.

 

When we were walking on a path near the water, there were some guys playing cards and they called us over to have us watch.  So we stood and watched for a minute, and then one guy said, “You know, my people, they’re very poor.  Can you give us some money?”

 

A guy that we met on the train was a sunglasses salesman, and he told us about how he wanted to work in America but he didn’t have the $10 he needed to have a background check done or something along those lines.  He never actually asked for money, but he did pose himself as a friend before trying to sell sunglasses to us.  I guess I kind of did feel bad for him and did sympathize with him, but I didn’t really know how to handle it, or know if I could find out that he was telling the truth.  He did specifically mention Carnival cruise lines though.  We didn’t tell him about Semester at Sea.  I think I’m glad I didn’t.  I think I would have felt really guilty.  Eh.

 

I met a guy walking back to the boat in Cochin.  He was standing with friends on the street in front of his law school, and asked me what I thought about the economic problems in America.  I told him that compared to India, America basically didn’t have economic problems.  Sure, unemployment is higher than usual and the Dow is kind of low, but we have nothing near the kind of crushing absolutely poverty than India has, nor is our income distribution as terrible as India’s.  He kind of laughed at that, saying that of course America was worse.  Then he talked about his friends and how they were gay, and I didn’t know if I should believe him or not, and then he talked about how all of them had sex with girls every day, which isn’t even true in America and I’m sure as hell it’s not true in India.  Then he said that they were having a party that night and asked for $10.  I think he was just kind of a jerk in general, and so of course I said no, and then headed on my way.