A journey to generosity

I told you why not to give; now I'm telling you why you should

Image: Abs and his family. They say, “Hi.”

A year ago, I started a journey that is not yet complete, not by far. It has taken me to The Gambia, and it has taken me to Nigeria, and it has taken me to The Netherlands, and it has taken me to France, to Czechia and to many, many other places and, on my bended knees I give thanks to people in all of these places for their kind thoughts, and for their kind acts and for their humanity.

I wrote to the Humanist Society and asked if I can be a humanist if I believe in God and they replied, God bless them, and said, “No.” It’s true. You cannot be a humanist and believe in God and I find that an extraordinary proposition, one that almost makes me laugh, because what humanists attach strongly to is the absence of any diktat laid down by religion; and yet organised religion is not a prerequisite to belief in God. By my reckoning, organised religion is a great thing, just as military service, or standing for parliament. Yet, I remain of the conviction that one can validly serve one’s nation or procure good for one’s society without taking up arms in your country’s behalf and without standing as a representative of the people and without being a member of a church. What is more, we must all surely be aware that soldiers, members of parliament and church leaders have all, in their time, abused the position they occupied and the influence they wielded, so that it might have been better for society had they sought to serve it other than through joining an army, a parliament or a church, if service was their goal. Yet I can believe in the army or in parliament or in God without joining up to any of them, can I not?

So, what of my journey, what is this journey? And why has it taken a year to get this far? There are journeys that take a year, and there are some that take two years. And, without wanting to be trite, there are journeys that take a lifetime. I can journey across my office in a matter of seconds; and there are journeys I embarked on at times in my life that will never be finished, not during my lifetime at any rate and, perhaps even, they will be concluded after my lifetime ends. These latter journeys do not involve traversing a floorspace of an office but traversing the spiritual distance between me and my comprehension of things, the quest for knowledge of which I set for myself at some point past. My advance toward understanding knows occasional setbacks. But the journey of which I speak now is the following.

A year ago I made the acquaintance of a family in Africa. It took me some time and courage to establish my faith in them. Faith and trust are things that can be quickly placed in others and then abused. So, I was cautious. Perhaps you think I was nonetheless a dolt. There are dolts aplenty, and people are wise to that fact. They’ve been dolts before, and don’t intend to be dolts again. Once a dolt, twice shy.

I’d like you to look at the following film. It’s three minutes long, and it doesn’t do much, but it says a great deal to me and, I hope, to you. It is not an emotive plea to help Africa or to help anyone, in fact. The principal player is a professional actor, who is in fact well known in the Netherlands. His name is Theo Maassen. He enters a self-service snack bar at the beginning of the film and makes as if the snack he wishes to purchase is too expensive for the amount of coinage he has in his pocket. This is clever and essential to an understanding of how little understanding his fellow citizens possess in what ensues. I have myself been stuck for a coin for a parking meter and, upon asking passers-by, been readily supplied with the coin I needed in order to pay the parking: no compensation was necessary, people were glad to be of assistance. To a man parking his car. But not to Theo Maassen. Take a look at the film.

The film’s description is already an indication: als bedelaar. It means as a beggar. Do you beg coins when you need to pay your parking? No. You ask a favour.

Theo, here, has dressed himself up in a hooded sweatshirt with a skip cap, and he’s reasonably untidily tidy. He’s not in rags, and he’s not installed himself with a begging bowl and what most, if not all, of them whom he asks do not know is that he is a coin short for buying his lunch. One euro short.

As they pass him by, he asks people, “Heb jij een eurotje voor mij?” — “Do you have a little euro for me?” He’s not aggressive and the one positive response that he gets is from a little girl, whom he sends on her way by saying, “It was only a joke” - een grapje. Some of those who pass Theo by do so with a stern look on their face, and say nothing. Some respond with clever ripostes: “Yes, I have one, but you’re not getting it.” To one Theo responds, “Do you have two?” and this elicits a laugh at his comic talent, both from the person in question and, I’ll admit, from me. However, there are those who pass him by and give nothing who take umbrage at his asking anyone at all. Nobody asks Theo why he wants the euro. Nobody. Not one of them asks. If they have no euro, they don’t ask how else they can help him. People start to regard him as a nuisance, even though he doesn’t make a nuisance of himself. Someone calls the Stadstoezicht, who are officials charged with keeping good order on the city’s streets, but not of the status of the police, who become involved only when a criminal offence has been committed.

The Stadstoezicht ask him to stop begging here. He plays them along a little: can I beg a little further up? No. Do you have a euro for me, what about your colleague here? In the end, the matter is escalated to the police and the film ends. Theo has committed a criminal offence for asking for help to buy his lunch.

You can perhaps guess what I think about this film. I have been in a position in which I also didn’t have much in the way of cash, money or bank balance. I used to smoke and I know that most people who are forced to live on the streets gladly smoke if they get the opportunity. I would offer them, not a cigarette, but two cigarettes. So they knew it was not to salve my conscience, but because I cared (I’ve since given up smoking). On two occasions, at least, I took them into my care — with their consent, of course — washed their clothes and fed them and allowed them to take a bath. I was never stolen from and they always showered me with gratitude. Perhaps if I could have driven away from them or walked away from them and no longer had them on my conscience, then I would not have been so bothered. But even without being a soldier or a member of parliament or a member of an organised religion, I cannot see my way to ignoring a plea for help that it is within my power to succour to. It is not in the nature of mankind to forsake mankind. That is more in the nature of the animal world and, even then, elephants and gorillas and many other species have a great deal to teach us about care for fellow members of our species.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked what she viewed as the start of civilisation. The inquiry came from someone who expected her to identify some artefact crafted by a primitive human being. Her reply was, “A healed human femur.” She went on to explain that it was the protection, feeding and care by another individual that was unquestionably required to allow such a person to survive to the point of healing of such a fracture that signified civilisation. It’s heartwarming and it’s observant. But at what point, I would ask Ms Mead, did civilisation start to break down again? The day when not only were broken femurs not tended to but, indeed, when other individuals broke the femurs of their fellow men?

A few months ago, I launched an appeal, in which I told those to whom I was appealing nine reasons for not responding to my appeal. Some ignored me, and donated, and I gave them my heartfelt thanks. Perhaps my arguments for not donating were too persuasive. If you’d like to read them, you may still do so. They are here:

But now I’d like to give you one big reason why you should donate, or lend if you choose.

Much has happened since I started this journey, in key locations throughout the world that have forced their way into our newspapers’ headlines: Ukraine, Morocco, Libya, Canada and its wildfires, and the southern United States too, the shootings across the States, and floods that have taken lives across all regions; the 18 asylum seekers crossing into Greece from Turkey and being burned alive by grassfires; train crashes in India and countless road accidents across our busy highways and byways. Many, many are the folk who are not today alive who were living when I commenced my journey. But one is alive now who was alive then, and that is Abs. Abs lived in The Gambia a year ago, and he lives there now. And, remarkably, he loves his family so much, he will not abandon them to seek a fortune elsewhere. Abs is not a migrant and he is not part of the migration that much of Africa’s population is embarking on and causing — so they would have it — so much policy difficulty for Europe, its Union and its border guards. Abs wants to be part of a small success in Africa; he has no wish to displace himself, and he lives in one of the few nations in his region that has not succumbed to the wiles of coups d’état. To date, The Gambia, a fully fledged member of the Commonwealth and faced with many difficulties, is proudly battling on with what it has, which isn’t much.

But even without much in material assets, Abs cherishes dreams of his taxi business, and so do I. Look back at Theo Maassen and imagine Abs on that street in the Netherlands. Now, it is not a euro he seeks for his lunch; he asks people to give him what little they can spare to help set up a business. My God, Abs sends me pictures of bags of rice when I have them sent to him to feed his family’s mouths. Can you imagine how overjoyed he would be to send me pictures of his beautiful shining Mercedes taxi, bought with the generous donations of his friends on Substack? Sure you can. And you can help make those dreams real. It’ll cost you a few eurotjes. Just as many as you can part with.

There are thousands of good causes in this world, and, if you’re devoting yourself to one of them right now, I thank you for whoever benefits from your generosity. But, if you’re able to give and are not doing so right now, and want to tell me that you have a euro but that I’m not getting it, then I must reply to you: Then do you have two?

If you’d like to read more about how I started this journey, you can do so here. And if you watch this space, who knows but I can tell you how joyously this journey will end, one day.

Thank you.