MizBrown

Living in Managua and driving daily, there are many street vendors, the window washer crews, small children attempting to juggle and some people who need some help. There is one older woman in a wheelchair whom I give small bags of coins to her...maybe 10-15$C...many another 6 or so that are handicapped or Blind or..it is simply helping a person who has little in a country that does not help them.. Rarely, do I see any drivers of $60,00 cars/ trucks give even one coin, while many taxi drivers seem to be more generous.

Keep $C10 bills and coins in side pocket of door.
i also buy the small bags of rice and repackage beans and pasta in small bags and always have a small supply in the car...maybe $C35...food is greatly appreciated....just seems to me to be the right thing to do.

The small children are a bigger issue, agree with Miz that they are dragged around, but for me it is a problem of safety .some barely as tall as the fenders of my car...while cars driving very fast maybe a foot away...never once have seen any police try to get the kids this young off the streets..the police are much more interested in those major criminals that while driving cross a solid white line, which is now a $C1000 fine

Cab drivers tend to be from people who didn't have rather than people who did. One of mine here gave to a drunk. I'll give to the old people, just not if they're coming to my door to beg, which makes me feel like it can go from begging to robbery fast, especially when three people including the kid show up at the door. There are very few people for whom I might be La Patrona -- and strangers dropping that on me doesn't work.

The other side of this is that individuals handing out coins doesn't solve the structural problems and I've seen at least one guy taken advantage of without fixing even one kid's problems.

One thing I do is make my staples things that aren't local staples -- lentils and brown rice -- so I'm not competing for what the poor eat. Do like my butter fried chunked potatoes with rosemary and thyme (which I grow in my passageway).

What the country needs to do (and is apparently doing) is getting INSS straightened out so that people can have pensions in old age and for disabilities. My neighborhood takes care of two crazy homeless women who don't have families.

I used to live a couple blocks from The Bowery, and explaining that to people who didn't live in Manhattan was non-trivial. Basically, I shook my head before they got geared up for the mooch. Friend of mine in Philadelphia said that even if I wasn't giving, I should speak to them, be human with them. One of my professors thought I should call a cop or ambulance for every bum lying down on the sidewalk.

Managua is also very different from Jinotega. Even Matagalpa has more kid beggars who look poor than Jinotega has (most of the kids who want a peso here are just trying their luck or more interested in getting some drunk Gringo to yell at them).

I particularly don't like having people who are begging door to door trying to look inside my house. (Or banana sellers trying to get inside the house for that matter).

"No entiendo" works. "No, gracias" was what I used today.

The beggars with kids in Philly used to work the fast food places with gas stations. I don't even know if they actually have any real connections to the kids, and Philly had more structured help available that I knew about, so the begging was not necessary for survival. Begging door to door was rare. Kids trying to get inside people's houses to steal, not unheard of, there or here.

I've found a use for my smattering of Russian -- it's what I speak to the obviously drunk guys trying to call me over in English.

If someone does a good juggling act in the intersections, I'm up for paying them for that, and have.

I've also given an older begging woman a few coins and she did the lip point at my purse and wouldn't move until I gave her the rest of my change.

C$1000 is a nice chunk of change. Pity you can't ear-mark where it's going.

Originally Posted by Playa Pete

Living in Managua and driving daily, there are many street vendors, the window washer crews, small children attempting to juggle and some people who need some help. There is one older woman in a wheelchair whom I give small bags of coins to her...maybe 10-15$C...many another 6 or so that are handicapped or Blind or..it is simply helping a person who has little in a country that does not help them.. Rarely, do I see any drivers of $60,00 cars/ trucks give even one coin, while many taxi drivers seem to be more generous.

Keep $C10 bills and coins in side pocket of door.
i also buy the small bags of rice and repackage beans and pasta in small bags and always have a small supply in the car...maybe $C35...food is greatly appreciated....just seems to me to be the right thing to do.

The small children are a bigger issue, agree with Miz that they are dragged around, but for me it is a problem of safety .some barely as tall as the fenders of my car...while cars driving very fast maybe a foot away...never once have seen any police try to get the kids this young off the streets..the police are much more interested in those major criminals that while driving cross a solid white line, which is now a $C1000 fine

The problem with just handing over money to people in the street, is you cant really tell who needs it and who is just out there for the easy money. (ok, maybe everyone could use a few extra cords). I have talked to a number of people in the streets, some of which are young kids whos parents send them out there, one told me his mom has had him going out in the street since a neighbor kid did it and came back with a chunk of cordobas for his family, so now his mom expects him to go do the same, he was about 10 years old. The teenage girl on the highway by La Union has a nicer phone than me. Touchscreen Samsung, that she checks facebook in between begging on the street. The girl thats way to young to be wearing such skimpy clothes who is always rapping along to music and washes windows at the multicentro lights, she takes her money and goes next door to the pizza place on the corner to buy drugs for her and her slightly older guy friends on the corner.

The other aspect, is i would go broke giving money to everyone i see who asks. On a long day of running errands, i once counted, and i got hit up for money 42 times. In parking lots, on the streets, in the market, at my house. (im white, so this happens with a higher frequency to me than it seems to my darker skinned friends). If i gave everyone even something small like C$10, thats $20 a day roughly, or $600 a month i would spend for who knows what. Maybe some would be used for help, and others not, but i dont know. But i do know i dont have nearly 600 dollars a month for charity.

I still do give some here or there, but with the frequency it happens, i am sure that many bystanders like yourself have looked at me saying no, or ignoring a beggar, and thinking "well there goes an american being rude....he cant even give C$10. Pinche". When in reality ive already been hit up 15 times that day for money.