Begging for Survival

I was not in any particular hurry, so when this young man hailed me, I stopped dead in my tracks. He was tall, Black, handsome with an athletic figure. He greeted me with such familiarity that I felt stupid that I didn’t remember his name, nor his face. It was in the alley between Nagico and Flow. I was returning from my Sunday radio program. My car was parked on the side of the Central Bank building.

The young man walked up to me gingerly. We shook hands and started the kind of conversation old acquaintances engage in after a long period of absence.

How have you been, Pops? He asked with a smile on his face.

How is work? I haven’t seen you in a while.

I’m here, I responded politely but still going rapidly through my memory archives to identify this fine gentleman. His file was missing. Or maybe misplaced.

The conversation turned into the weather.

It’s very hot these days, Pops.

I nodded in agreement, but I began to feel uneasy about being called “Pops”.  

Yes, I’m old enough to be his father. But I’ve been called “Pops” by people it was impossible for me to have fathered. Maybe, I was misinterpreting the signals.

Maybe he was just being respectful; polite. Or maybe I was just being too vain and my age was actually betraying me.

I started walking towards my car. He kept step with me.

The young man was right. It was indeed very hot. Meteorologists blame it on something they call “El Niño”. I know enough Spanish to know that it translates into “The Baby Boy”. He was of course, no baby; more a young man. He would be called “El Joven” in Spanish. I noticed that “El Joven” next to me was sweating from the heat. I was too.

As I was about to open my car, El Joven tapped me on the shoulder and asked me in a low voice if I could “help him with some $5 dollars” so he could buy some food. It was only then I realized I didn’t know him from Adam.

My first instinct was to tell him No, because after the pleasant conversation and all that, I thought I had been played. I looked at him and said: Let me see.

I groped in my pocket to see if I had any loose change. I didn’t.

Then the thoughts started racing in my mind. Could El Joven be a crack head who just wanted some money for his fix? I discarded that idea. He looked too healthy, too polished, even sophisticated to be a druggie. Maybe he was just hungry, indeed. Or perhaps jobless. Or maybe he was doing this to help an infirm mother at home.

It was Sunday. I was planning to go to evening mass. What if it was Jesus Christ himself disguised as El Joven? How would I feel if he tells me when I meet him: I was hungry and you refused to give me $5 to buy food?

I found a $10 note in the cup holder in the car and gave it to him. He was so happy he hugged me very tight.

“Thank you, thank you, Pops. God bless you.”

I drove off still unsure of what had just happened. But at least my conscience was at peace.

Then I saw him a few days later in front of a Chinese restaurant close by. Apparently, he had forgotten my face. Or maybe he thought if he fooled me once he could do it again. This time I gave him one dollar and told him that was all I had.   He took the note but before he could walk away, I found four quarts and gave them to him. He smiled and said thanks and left.

Not too long after, I had a similar experience, this time in Marigot. Another  young man, of about the same age and build approached me. He knocked on my car window and said very politely if I could help him with some money for food. Being such a sucker for hungry young people, I reached into my pocket and found a $10 bill and gave it to him. He took it and looked at it as if I had insulted him.

What can I buy with this? He asked almost angrily.

I couldn’t believe it. A beggar has a choice nowadays? I asked him to return it, but he walked away briskly, partly to avoid oncoming traffic and partly out of disgust, it seemed to me.

But this phenomenon of begging is not limited to young, able-bodied men alone: women, too, engage in it. Going in or coming out of some of the major supermarkets, I have been asked, not as audaciously as the men, by some thirty-something looking woman for “help”.  

What is causing this? How did we get here? Am I the only one who is “targeted”? Are they begging because they are too lazy to work or simply for survival?

Begging, which has historically either been non-existent on our island or restricted to small pockets of chronic social marginalization, has become noticeably more visible around our commercial centers.

The causes cannot be reduced alone to the general hardship we are all experiencing due to higher costs, fewer employment opportunities or the social degradation that accompanies a deepening poverty.

According to data from the United Nations, approximately 22 percent of St. Martin (South)’s population lives below the national poverty line. Social advocates such as the Anti-poverty Platform, argue that the practical impact of poverty reaches much wider, particularly when assessed against the income required to meet basic daily needs.

They strongly call for poverty eradication rather than poverty reduction, demanding that workers be treated equally like their counterparts in The Netherlands with whom they share the same Kingdom. They also argue for a livable wage rather than a minimum wage that not even a mini-man can survive on.

The just released Census data by the Department of Statistics (STAT) indicate that 7 percent of the population experienced hunger because they didn’t have money for food. The figures relate to 2022. Four years down the road, it would seem as if that number must have grown significantly. But even if we applied that number to the total number of inhabitants, we’re talking of close to 3,000 people that are too poor to buy food.

Our youth bear a disproportionate brunt of this pervasive poverty caused by the

structural constraints of our economy.  UN estimates place youth unemployment on the island at roughly 24 percent - that is about one in every four young person. .

This high level of joblessness among the youth stems from severakpl intersecting economic and educational factors, chief among which are: our one-pillar tourism economy; a chronic skills mismatch in the job market; automation and digitalization that is increasingly making certain functions redundant and, of course, emigration or the “brain drain” which sees many of our youth leave the island some of them never to return again.

The rise of public begging presents a dual problem for St. Martin. Functionally, it highlights systemic lapses in community care and social support networks. Economically, it risks altering public perceptions in key commercial districts, creating friction in an economy heavily reliant on visitor sentiment.

Youth unemployment, poverty, and street vulnerability do not exist in isolation; they feed into one another. High joblessness among our youth depletes household resources, pushing more families below the poverty line. Similarly, long-term poverty stresses family dynamics and community cohesion, driving vulnerable individuals onto the street and  sometimes into crime thus perpetuating the vicious cycle.

Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond temporary aid toward long-term policy interventions. It also demands a coordinated approach with the administration in Marigot because poverty does not stop at the frontier.

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