Exploitation

I was sitting at the wine bar enjoying a late morning cappuccino, and the surrounding beauty and atmosphere of the Campo de’ Fiori: the pretty girls in their summer frocks, the smiling, laughing faces, the colours of the market, the lovers walking hand in hand, the shouts of the vendors, the myriad languages of the tourists, the busker singing ‘O Sole Mio’, the pastel colours of the buildings, the restaurants preparing for the lunch invasion, the sun worshippers sitting at pavement tables, their faces turned up to the sky… Perfect.
Perfect until a little girl, she can’t have been more than eight years old, came up to me with her hand out and begged me for money, her practiced eye already sweeping the other tables for potential hits. My answer was an immediate and irrevocable ‘no’, as strong as my contempt for her parents. Not even remotely affected by my refusal, her expression uncaring, unchanging, she moved on to the next target – a table of elderly foreign tourists. And just as her parents knew they would, the tourists (motivated by kindness and, no doubt, a touch of guilt) gave the child a handful of change. I cursed the child’s parents (probably sitting in a Mercedes around the corner ready to collect their pimp earnings) for depriving her of her childhood, of an education...
Don’t give these children money; it just encourages their parents to keep them on the street, exposing them to danger and abuse. It’s no wonder when you look into their eyes you see nothing, the child long gone, hopefully (if you believe in reincarnation) to a far better place.